Ruth Porat

Alphabet still relies on Google’s enormous online advertising business to generate the bulk of its sales, which jumped 23% to $136.8 billion in 2018. But investors are looking to Porat and the executive team to diversify by nurturing other businesses. Porat has stressed that Alphabet is directing significant resources toward its enterprise cloud business, and she was instrumental in hiring a top finance executive for Google’s cloud unit. The business isn’t as mighty as Amazon’s or Microsoft’s yet, but Porat is hoping that will soon change. She has also overseen some of Google’s big investments in the past year, including $13 billion on new data centers and offices, partly intended to help the cloud business.

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