Google Cloud CEO to leave to teach and mentor female CEOs

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced she would leave her position Friday in a letter noting the service's expansion during her three-year tenure.

"We've built a strong business together, set up by integrating sales, marketing, Google Cloud Platform and Google Apps/G Suite into what is now called Google Cloud," Greene wrote. "We established a training and professional services organization and partnering organizations. We revamped customer engineering and added a team of experts in the Office of the CTO [Chief Technical Officer]. We also pioneered a way to help enterprises adopt AI through our Advanced Solutions Lab. We built out a full marketing organization that in just three years has received many recognitions, including Cannes Lions awards."

Greene said she will leave Google to mentor female founder CEOs who have engineering or science backgrounds. She added that when Google bought her enterprise development platform startup Bebop in 2015 and brought her to work for Google Cloud, she committed the proceeds of the sale to philanthropy.

"It is high time I put that money to work," she wrote.

Greene will stay at Google until January, when her position will be filled by former Oracle technology executive Thomas Kurian.

"I'm excited to join the fantastic Google Cloud team at this important and promising time," Kurian said Friday. "I'm looking forward to building on the success of recent years as it enters its next phase of growth."

Google also announced its sister company Loon, a spinoff from Google's X innovation laboratory, will partner with Telkom Kenya Ltd. to expand Internet access in rural east Africa. Their plan is to launch large pumpkin-shaped balloons.

The project is scheduled to begin early in 2019.