Larry Page takes over as Google CEO, Eric Schmidt now Executive Chairman

Google's Q4 financial results press release contains a bombshell: as of April 4, co-founder Larry Page (on the far right, above) will replace Eric Schmidt as CEO. That doesn't mean Schmidt is leaving -- he'll carry on as Executive Chairman and serve as an advisor to Page and co-founder Sergey Brin, focused on external things like deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership." As for Sergey, he'll now "devote his energy to strategic projects, in particular working on new products," while Page assumes responsibility for day-to-day operations and product development and strategy.

Schmidt's clarified the change in a blog post, saying that the idea is to make leading Google as efficient as possible, and that "Larry, in my clear opinion, is ready to lead."