At the end of last year, when Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced they would step away from parent Alphabet and give Sundar Pichai full control of the empire, it was a hint that some big changes might be ahead.
And indeed, the past 12 months have seen some notable shifts within Google, with some new names joining – and a few departing.
While Google has made bets in areas like ecommerce and health, bringing former PayPal COO Bill Ready and former Obama administration health official Karen DeSalvo aboard, some Google veterans have made an exit.
Here are Google's biggest hires and departures in 2020:
Hire: Bill Ready, president of commerce
Bill Ready, PayPal's former chief operating officer, joined Google as its new commerce chief at the beginning of 2020. That's good for Google – and potentially bad news for Amazon.
Ready is leading the charge on Google's commerce products, and with fortuitous timing: under Ready's watch, Google has made changes to its Shopping channel through the pandemic, allowing retailers to post their products online for free.
Expect more moves in 2021. With Amazon eating into the search ad market, and Google trailing behind in the e-commerce space, Ready could be a potent weapon for the company in the months ahead.
Departure: Mario Queiroz – VP, product management
Mario Queiroz was previously head of Google's Pixel smartphone division, but made an internal shift last August into a mysterious role reporting to CEO Sundar Pichai.
Then, in February of this year, The Information first spotted that Queiroz had left Google entirely to an executive VP role at Palo Alto Networks.
Queiroz had been with Google for 14 years and helped launch the Nexus One, Google's first smartphone. He also worked on Google TV, Chromecast, Google Home, and even Stadia during his tenure at the company. In short: he's a big loss for Google's hardware team.
Hire: Derek White, vice president of global financial services, Google Cloud
Just this September, Google Cloud added former US Bank executive Derek White to the team as vice president of global financial services.
White joined Google Cloud after serving as chief digital officer at US Bank, where he worked since July 2019. Before that, he was the global head of client solutions for Spanish financial firm BBVA and also spent over eight years at Barclays, where he held various senior roles focused on tech and the customer experience.
As Google Cloud makes the push for winning over financial firms as customers, White will be key to this strategy. White reports to Lori Mitchell-Keller, vice president of industry solutions at Google Cloud.
Hire: Brian Hall, vice president of product and industry marketing, Google Cloud
Brian Hall left his post as vice president of product marketing at Amazon Web Services in April and joined Google Cloud as its vice president of product and industry marketing in May. Hall had spent nearly two years at Amazon Web Services, and prior to that, he was a longtime Microsoft veteran.
When he joined, Amazon filed a noncompete lawsuit against Hall, arguing that his move to Google Cloud puts Amazon's confidential information at risk. In July, Hall posted on LinkedIn that he has been cleared to work.
Departure: David Drummond, chief legal officer
Alphabet's chief legal officer David Drummond stepped down in January following an investigation by the board into his relationships with women at the company.
Drummond's departure came more than a year after Google employees protested the company's handling of sexual misconduct claims, following revelations by the New York Times that the company had paid millions of dollars in exit packages to male executives who had been accused of misconduct.
Drummond was one of Alphabet's highest paid executives, but was not handed an exit package when he left the company at the end of January.
Hire: George Nazi, vice president of industry solutions in telecommunications, media and entertainment, Google Cloud
In May, Google Cloud hired George Nazi as its vice president of industry solutions in telecommunications, media and entertainment. He leads the strategy for those sectors and also collaborates with Google Cloud's artificial intelligence team to develop new products.
Before Google, Nazi spent seven years at Accenture, including as the global communications and media industry lead. He had also worked at a British telecom company for almost seven years, bringing to Google Cloud experience that can help in winning over telecom customers and partners – something Google Cloud announced would be a priority this year.
Hire: Abdul Razack, vice president of engineering strategy, Google Cloud
Former SAP chief product officer Abdul Razack joined Google Cloud as its vice president of engineering strategy.
Razack is a SAP veteran, having spent a total of 15 years there. He spent over 12 years at SAP, had a three-year stint at Infosys, and then returned to SAP in 2017. At SAP, he helped lead its cloud strategy.
Now, at Google Cloud, his goal is to help cloud customers find value in its products and bring "resiliency and scale to businesses in these uncertain times," according to a statement.
Hire: Jewel Burks Solomon, head of Google for Startups
Jewel Burks Solomon joined Google in January and leads Google for Startups, which connects startup founders with Google's products and people. Solomon described the role as a way to "level the playing field in the startup ecosystem" in an interview with Hypepotemus earlier this year.
Solomon is the first person to have this role at Google, but it's far from her first gig at the company. From 2014 to 2016 she was an "entrepreneur in residence" focused on diversity markets. She's also a managing partner at Collab Capital, an investment fund aimed at closing the funding gap for Black entrepreneurs.
Hire: Lori Mitchell-Keller, vice president of industry solutions, Google Cloud
Under the leadership of CEO Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud is targeting six industries: retail, financial services, health care, manufacturing, media and entertainment, and the public sector. In May, Google Cloud hired Lori Mitchell-Keller as its vice president of industry solutions to lead the strategy of all six sectors. She also works with the sales and marketing teams for each of those teams.
Prior to Google, Mitchell-Keller spent 13 years at SAP, where she led sales and partner strategy for 20 industries, including financial services, healthcare, and retail. Mitchell-Keller now reports to Rob Enslin, Google Cloud's president of global customer operations.
Hire: Yolande Piazza, vice president of financial services, Google Cloud
In June, Google Cloud hired long-time Citi executive Yolande Piazza as its vice president of financial services.
Piazza spent over three decades at Citigroup, most recently as the CEO of Citi Fintech, which leads mobile efforts for Citi's consumer bank. Now, Piazza heads North American financial services sales and customer engineering teams and creates new solutions specifically targeted at Wall Street customers. She reports to Kirsten Kliphouse, president of North America for Google Cloud.
Google Cloud has been sharpening its efforts to bring on Wall Street and banking customers. Already, it has gotten customers like HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and KeyBank.
Hire: Zoubin Ghahramani, Distinguished Researcher, Google Brain
Zoubin Ghahramani joined Google's Brain AI team in September as a distinguished scientist and senior research director, according to his LinkedIn page.
Ghahramani was previously chief scientist and VP for AI at Uber, where he'd worked since 2016, and a notable get for Google. He also serves as deputy director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, and has been a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge for more than a decade.
Hire: Jose Pastor, vice president of product management for Google Cloud's Workspace
Jose Pastor joined Google Cloud in July as vice president of product management for Workspace, Google Cloud's suite of office collaboration and communication software. He brings in experience working with video and voice conferencing tools, having spent over eight years at RingCentral.
Most recently, Pastor worked as RingCentral's senior vice president of product management, where he led the Voice, Video, and Collaboration product lines.
Hire: Phil Venables, CISO at Google Cloud
Phil Venables joined Google Cloud this month as its chief information security officer, as well as a vice president at Google. At Google Cloud, he leads cybersecurity, cloud services, and more.
Prior to Google Cloud, Venables spent two decades at Goldman Sachs. Most recently, he served as an operating partner who provided support for companies in cybersecurity, IT risk, and more.
Hire: Stephanie Hannon, senior director of product management (exposure notifications)
Stephanie Hannon joined Google in July, making it the third time she has done so. She previously worked on Google Wave and the launch of Google Maps in Europe during previous stints at the company.
She rejoined this year as a senior director of product management on Google's Exposure Notifications system, jointly built with Apple to help public authorities fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
In previous roles, Hannon was a chief product officer at Strava and, most notable, the chief technology officer for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
Departure: Marc Levoy – distinguished engineer
Mario Queiroz wasn't the only big name in Google's hardware division to make a recent exit. Marc Levoy, the man responsible for the software tricks that gave Google an unbeatable smartphone camera, left the company back in March, after nearly six years, to join Adobe as a VP and fellow.
Levoy's contribution to the Pixel smartphone shouldn't be underestimated: it undoubtedly caused Apple, Samsung and others to work harder on their own phone cameras. Interestingly, it sounds like Levoy's work at Adobe will be to build a camera app for all smartphones, although it's not clear what it will do exactly.
Levoy continues on as VMWare Founders professor of computer science at Stanford University. That's also where he first met Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who were grad students at the time.
Hire: Karen DeSalvo, chief health officer
A former health official in the Obama administration, Karen DeSalvo joined Google in January as chief health officer. DeSalvo is one of several big healthcare hires made by Google, which is beefing up its new Health division led by former Geisinger CEO David Feinberg.
Alongside Feinberg, DeSalvo is leading Google's Health org to solve some of the world's stickiest health problems with a focus on artificial intelligence and clinical tools. DeSalvo has also assisted Google's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including getting search results to prioritize credible information.
She's also on the advisory board for Google's sister company Verily Life Sciences.
Departure: Tariq Shaukat, Google Cloud's president of industry products and solutions
In February, Google Cloud underwent a reorganization to streamline operations in international markets, the partner ecosystem, and customer engagement, sources told Business Insider. As part of this organization, a "small number" of employees had their roles eliminated, and Tariq Shaukat, the former president of industry products and solutions, was leaving the cloud division entirely.
Shaukat spent over four years at Google. In his role, he had led initiatives to target specific industries like finance and healthcare, including a major deal with the IT-services giant Accenture, chose Google Cloud technology for a key life-sciences platform called Intient.
Shaukat left Google altogether in July and joined Bumble as group president.
Departure: Dr. Nicole Forsgren, founder and CEO of DORA (acquired by Google Cloud)
Nicole Forsgren founded DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA), which does research on how developer teams can be more productive. After Google Cloud acquired DORA in 2018, Forsgren helped lead research and strategy there.
In March, GitHub announced it had hired Forsgren as vice president of research and strategy to conduct research on the open source community, developer productivity, and related topics. With a background in academia, Forsgren is seen as a leading expert in DevOps – a term that blends of "development" and "operations," and intended as a way to help programmers deliver software faster.
Departure: Steffan Tomlinson, former CFO and vice president of Google Cloud and technical infrastructure
In June, the $4.5 billion startup Confluent nabbed Steffan Tomlinson from Google Cloud, CNBC's Ari Levy first reported. Tomlinson took the position as Confluent's new CFO as the startup prepares for an IPO.
Tomlinson joined Google Cloud in 2019 and served as its CFO and vice president of Google Cloud and technical infrastructure. Prior to that, he served as Palo Alto Networks' CFO, where he took the company public in 2012 and worked for over six years. He had also served as Aruba Networks' CFO, where he led the company through its IPO in 2007.
Departure: Miles Taylor – head of national security policy
Miles Taylor was hired by Google last year as head of national security, following his departure from the Trump administration, where he served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security.
Taylor's hiring drew criticism from Google employees who were unhappy with his involvement in the travel ban that barred visitors from six Muslim-majority countries entering the US – a policy that some Google executives had themselves condemned.
Taylor had been on unpaid leave from Google since August, but officially made an exit last month after revealing himself to be the "anonymous" writer of a New York Times op-ed critical of Trump. Buzzfeed first reported Taylor's departure, though it is not clear if it was his choice to leave or Google's.