Former Oracle product chief Thomas Kurian replaces Diane Greene as Google Cloud CEO

Google Cloud’s CEO Diane Greene announced in a blog post that she will be stepping down from her role and former Oracle (ORCL) executive Thomas Kurian will be succeeding her. Thomas will be joining the company on November 26. Greene will continue as CEO till January 2019 to ensure the smooth transition. She will remain as a Director of the Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) board.

After joining Google’s Board in 2012, Diane joined Google full time in December 2015 as CEO of Google Cloud. Prior to Google, Diane co-founded and ran three successful technology companies: VMware. VXtreme and bebop, an enterprise SaaS startup acquired by Google.

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai said, “In a few short years, under Diane’s leadership, Cloud has become an incredible business built on Google’s decades of investment in infrastructure, data security, and AI.”

Google also witnessed another key executive’s resignation this week. According to Synced, Google Cloud AI’s Jia Li, who joined in 2016, resigned as head of research and development on Wednesday. During her three years with Google, Jia Li advanced the implementation of AI-enabled products on the Google Cloud Platform.

Thomas Kurian, who has got 22 years of experience at Oracle, most recently served as President of Product Development in Oracle and resigned in September 2018. Before resigning from Redwood City, California-based company, Kurian was taking an extended time off. Reports stated that he had a difference of opinion with founder Larry Ellison over Oracle’s cloud business.

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