Prabhakar Raghavan set to steer Google’s $100-billion ad business
Bengaluru: India-born Prabhakar Raghavan will be the new chief of the $100-billion ad business of Google, the first major managerial change for the ad business in half a decade.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in astatement that he “can think of no better person to lead our monetisation efforts” than Raghavan. “Prabhakar has incredible management experience and the deep technical expertise to match.”
Raghavan was previously the head of Google’s business-application unit, responsible for the growth of the company’s cloud-based apps including Drive, Docs and Hangouts to an enterprise service called G Suite that has over 4 million paying customers now.
AI-powered smart features such as Smart Reply and Smart Compose in Gmail which suggest relevant response to emails were introduced with the help of Raghavan who co-authored some of the patents.
The Chennai-born executive graduated from IIT-Madras and went on to pick up a PhD from the University of California. Before joining Google, Raghavan ran Yahoo Labs and worked with the research arm of IBM.
Raghavan has a strong background in AI and will be replacing Sridhar Ramaswamy who is leaving to join the venture firm Greylock Partners as a venture partner.
“I have been extremely privileged to have spent the past 15 years at Google, where I focused on starting and scaling new businesses and platforms,” Ramaswamy said in post on Greylock’s website. “I have always been drawn to earlier-stage entrepreneurial projects and becoming a venture partner at Greylock is an exceptional way to explore these types of opportunities.”
Ramaswamy successfully oversaw the ads business for more than five years during which Google adjusted search results and ads to run on smaller smartphone screens.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in astatement that he “can think of no better person to lead our monetisation efforts” than Raghavan. “Prabhakar has incredible management experience and the deep technical expertise to match.”
Raghavan was previously the head of Google’s business-application unit, responsible for the growth of the company’s cloud-based apps including Drive, Docs and Hangouts to an enterprise service called G Suite that has over 4 million paying customers now.
AI-powered smart features such as Smart Reply and Smart Compose in Gmail which suggest relevant response to emails were introduced with the help of Raghavan who co-authored some of the patents.
The Chennai-born executive graduated from IIT-Madras and went on to pick up a PhD from the University of California. Before joining Google, Raghavan ran Yahoo Labs and worked with the research arm of IBM.
Raghavan has a strong background in AI and will be replacing Sridhar Ramaswamy who is leaving to join the venture firm Greylock Partners as a venture partner.
“I have been extremely privileged to have spent the past 15 years at Google, where I focused on starting and scaling new businesses and platforms,” Ramaswamy said in post on Greylock’s website. “I have always been drawn to earlier-stage entrepreneurial projects and becoming a venture partner at Greylock is an exceptional way to explore these types of opportunities.”
Ramaswamy successfully oversaw the ads business for more than five years during which Google adjusted search results and ads to run on smaller smartphone screens.
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