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Larry finally gives up the empty chair 

Fully Charged
Bloomberg

Hi there. It's Gerrit here. Alphabet Inc.'s announcement late Tuesday that Larry Page was ceding the CEO title to Sundar Pichai formalized a move that's been a reality for a while now. Over a year ago, multiple Google employees described Page as absent and uninvolved in the company's major challenges. Tech critic Scott Galloway joked that the news was accidentally released two years late.

Google representatives often pushed back on the idea that Page was CEO in name only, but now they can finally give up the ghost. Though he and Sergey Brin (Alphabet president until now) retain serious influence as controlling shareholders, their formal titles are gone. And with that, Page now has even less reason to be beholden to the regulators, politicians, investors and employees asking him to tell them what exactly he's up to and what his vision for the future of Alphabet is.

As questions about the company's size and how it treats its employees grow louder, Page has staunchly refused to engage publicly. Images of an empty chair reserved for him at a Congressional hearing last year drove the point home: Larry isn't available for comment on the company that made him one of the richest people on earth. 

Instead, the job will stay with the man who has been trying to do it these last two years: Pichai. The company veteran suddenly has a lot more work to do, but a bit more authority to get it done now. If you're still searching for what Larry's up to, don't expect to get the answer from Google. —Gerrit De Vynck

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