Eric Schmidt is leaving his post as Google CEO to become executive chairman. His departure -- and replacement by co-founder Larry Page -- raises the question of whether a stool with two-and-a-half legs is as stable as one with three.
No one questions Page's tech credentials, but he has no experience being the sole decision-maker of a sprawling global company with over 24,000 employees and resources spread across many disparate markets. And the more he focuses on operations, the less time he'll have to devote to product development.
At some point, when search business slows, the man at the top of Google will have to make hard decisions about which projects to fund and which to kill.
And unlike Schmidt, he won't have decades of experience in the tech industry to draw on when he makes them.
When Schmidt, 55, was named CEO in mid-2001, the company said that he and founders Page and Sergey Brin, both 37, would run Google as a collaborative triumvirate.
Schmidt left much of the product development work to the two youthful founders while he worked out the company's strategic vision. It worked spectacularly.
Google grew from a hot startup with an unproven business model to become the largest seller of online advertising and by far the most dominant Internet company, leaving rivals like Yahoo in the dust.
Schmidt helped guide Google through its 2004 IPO and was viewed by many -- especially on Wall Street -- as the adult supervisor to two founders whose mistakes included a pre-IPO interview with Playboy magazine that drew the scrutiny of federal securities regulators.
But Schmidt did more than bring a mature approach to running a company. His years as a top executive at Sun Microsystems and Novell gave him valuable experience battling Microsoft -- the company many now believe to be Google's biggest rival.
Microsoft is spending large sums of marketing money to promote its Bing search service as an alternative to Google, even as Google makes inroads into Microsoft's software stronghold with its online, on-demand applications.
At the same time, Google is taking on Apple and other tech hardware companies in the markets for mobile phones and electronic tablets.
As Google invests millions in a broad variety of projects, including Web video, thanks to its purchase of YouTube, it still gets the overwhelming amount of its revenue and profit from its core search business.
While Schmidt's new role will keep him somewhat involved in strategic decisions, the release accompanying the shake-up makes it clear that Page will now be in charge. Co-founder Brin will devote his efforts to "strategic projects."
Write to John Shinal
