Alan is extremely well respected at Google. I seriously doubt Sundar had anything to do with it. Alan has effectively been retired for several years now (ever since he took a hiatus to work on the stratosphere jump).

I don't disagree with your point. To clarify, I was stating that it's expected to hear people leaving following a decrease in responsibility; I was not trying to imply that such change has been necessarily involuntary. It could very well be the other way around, in fact, i.e. a reorg happens as a result of one's intent to retire in the near future.

Yeah. That makes sense. I guess demotion makes it seem like it wasn't his choice. I would slightly change your statement to say "he had effectively resigned ever since he took his initial leave of absence."

Did you read the article at all? It says right in the second paragraph that he's retiring.

You do realize that in the world of boardrooms, "retiring" is just the reason somebody gives when they need to save face and they don't want to cause an incident. Incidents typically effect stock prices...

Now, I'm not saying you're wrong, or that he's for sure not actually retiring (he's close age-wise, after all), but I'd argue most retirements aren't.

Alan is an extremely well respected, super nice, and very smart individual. I can all but guarantee no one asked him to leave. He's always been open about having passions for many things and I think he simply decided to prioritize those other things over Google.

When you jump from the stratosphere, and are wealthy, returning the same desktop you've had for a decade may seem underwhelming.