Google Partners Aren't Concerned About Search Leader's Departure

The retirement of Google's search leader signals a changing of the guard in Mountain View, Calif., some Google partners told CRN, but they don't worry that Amit Singhal's departure will reverberate through the Internet giant's channel.

Singhal, senior vice president for search and one of Google's most prolific and accomplished engineers, posted on his Google Plus account Wednesday morning that he'll be leaving the company Feb. 26 to spend more time with his family.

Google, a subsidiary of parent company Alphabet, still makes the lion's share of its profits by selling advertising through search queries.

[Related: Sources: Google, Verizon In Talks About Strategic Hybrid Cloud Partnership]

A couple of Google channel vets told CRN they don't believe Singhal's departure will have any impact on the company's burgeoning channel, or its enterprise business.

"The wheels are in motion," said Dj Das, founder and CEO of Third Eye Consulting, a Google partner based in San Francisco. "Amit did his part very well. Now another team can augment search further with machine learning and the show will go on."

Allen Falcon, founder and CEO of Cumulus Global, a partner based in Westborough, Mass., pointed out that leadership changes come somewhat frequently in Mountain View, "so this is part of the continuum."

Falcon noted that the company's partner ecosystem is already starting to see positive results from some recent leadership changes, most notably Diane Greene, who's taken over Google's entire cloud operation, the segment of the business that most directly affects the company's channel.

Singhal will be replaced by John Giannandrea, who currently leads Google's artificial intelligence efforts, a clear sign Google is working to make its search algorithms more intelligent by incorporating methods like machine learning.

Cisco Systems partners also recently learned the company would soon lose a preeminent engineer.

Pankaj Patel, the leading technologist for the networking giant, said last week he plans to step down in the second half of the year.