Connect with us

Published

on

In this article

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Alphabet’s Google Cloud, speaks at the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco on April 9, 2019.
Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images

As a part of a recent reorganization within Google Cloud, CEO Thomas Kurian sidelined multiple tenured company veterans — one way he’s is living up to the company’s big expectations when it hired him two years ago.

CNBC reported Wednesday that Kurian, in a recent email to staff, announced a broad reorganization within Google Cloud’s engineering units. The shakeup is meant to help Google Cloud continue to grow its market share while streamlining an organization that has ballooned since Kurian took over. The technical unit alone has doubled since he joined, Kurian said in his recent email.

Google still lags behind Amazon and Microsoft in market share, but the recent reorganization and steady gains show why Kurian, an initially unlikely candidate, is doing what Google had hoped.

In the latest re-org, Kurian sidelined several veterans who otherwise may have stayed on board thanks to their tenure. There’s a joke among Google employees that longtime middle managers and executives can sit comfortably in their positions for as long as they want despite changing business needs, thanks to the cultural bureaucracy. But in this latest move, Kurian showed he isn’t afraid to bench veterans and give others more responsibility.

Kurian removed Eyal Manor, who has been at the company more than 14 years and worked within Cloud for five years. Manor oversaw the app management service Anthos, which Google hopes will give it an edge against rivals. Manor will look for other areas inside the company to work, Kurian said. Google spokesperson Jacinda Mein said that Manor chose to leave the group, and that the timing coincided with this reorg.

The reorg also effectively sidelines Urs Holzle, who was one of Google’s first ten employees and first vice president of engineering, removing him from some of his day-to-day responsibilities in favor of a more strategic role. Holzle recently faced backlash from employees for contradicting his own remote work policies, too.

Kurian also moved to unify Google Cloud’s technical teams under Brad Calder, who will take on some of Manor’s and Holzle’s responsibilities and report directly to Kurian. Calder spent eight years at Microsoft before joining Google Cloud in 2015.

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer at Google LLC, speaks during the Google Cloud Next ’19 event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, April 9, 2019.
Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Growth trumps culture, for now

While Google Cloud still isn’t profitable, Kurian has more than doubled revenue and slashed losses from when he first joined the company, earning praise from Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, CFO Ruth Porat and investors.

In the most recent quarter, cloud revenue grew to $4.63 billion, up nearly 54% from $3.01 billion a year ago. The cloud business had operating losses of $591 million, a dramatic 58.7% improvement from last year’s loss of $1.43 billion.

Kurian has also put a strong focus on the company’s sales organization. Prior to Kurian, 10 managers would have to provide approval before a salesperson could offer a discount to a customer, and the deal would then require non-disclosure agreements and a team of lawyers. Kurian streamlined some of those practices early on.

He has also encouraged the sales teams to incorporate other Google products, such as artificial intelligence tools and the Android mobile operating system, into their pitches in attempts to compete for more customers, especially more noteworthy ones. Kurian also reportedly boosted salespeople’s salaries to be more competitive than Amazon and Microsoft. 

Kurian had a reputation for a no-frills, at-times militant leadership style at Oracle. When Google hired him in 2018, it came as a shock because he was the least “Google-y” person to be a leader at the company, where employees largely felt they had a voice and everything was working toward a greater good.

Culturally, Kurian is still trying to figure out how to navigate that longstanding justice-motivated employee culture, but he isn’t completely writing it off, as some internally expected. Most recently, he claimed to seek information from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol about how the company’s artificial intelligence cloud tools would be used amid employee concern. While, there’s still a contingent of employees upset with the prospects, Kurian hasn’t completely written those concerns off yet.

But culture fit is not why Google hired him. They knew his reputation. Google’s culture more generally had already begun moving toward a culture that no longer shied away from military contracts or used slogans like “Don’t Be Evil.”

Whether or not Kurian’s process works in the long run, growth is what Google wants and growth is what what it’s getting — for now, at least.

Watch Now: Google Cloud is reorganizing its engineering units

Continue Reading

Technology

Google agrees to pay Texas $1.4 billion data privacy settlement

Published

on

By

Google agrees to pay Texas .4 billion data privacy settlement

A Google corporate logo hangs above the entrance to the company’s office at St. John’s Terminal in New York City on March 11, 2025.

Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty Images

Google agreed to pay nearly $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle allegations of violating the data privacy rights of state residents, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday.

Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.

The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.

Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.

“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.

“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.

Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.

“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”

Continue Reading

Technology

Virtual chronic care company Omada Health files for IPO

Published

on

By

Virtual chronic care company Omada Health files for IPO

Omada Health smart devices in use.

Courtesy: Omada Health

Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.

Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.

Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.

Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.

The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.

But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.

Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.

In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.

“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”

WATCH: The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark’s Rick Heitzmann

The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark's Rick Heitzmann

Continue Reading

Technology

Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

Published

on

By

Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.

Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images

Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.

Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.

The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.

The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones. 

Read more CNBC tech news

Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. It’s lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users.

Apple’s SVP of Services Eddy Cue testified Wednesday that Apple chooses to feature Google because it’s “the best search engine.”

The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.

Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.

“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.

Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.

Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.

The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.

Continue Reading

Trending