Can Larry Page Turn the Page for Google?

A major management shuffle saw CEO, Eric Schmidt (News - Alert) relinquishing his post to Larry Page, one of the co-founders of Google (News - Alert), Inc. The move was unexpected given the fact that Google reported stellar earnings in its quarterly financial report.

Schmidt, a technology industry veteran, who entered the Google arena 10 years ago to provide “adult supervision,” tweeted recently: “Supervision overnight by an adult is no longer needed!” He became CEO in 2001 to provide management expertise to an emerging company.

However, with the competitive social media space heating up and fast-growing rivals like Facebook (News - Alert) and other younger and nimbler companies dotting the landscape, it was important for the company to turn to its co-founders in an effort to make a return to its start-up roots.

Schmidt, who will hand over the reins to Page on April 4, seemed to indicate that the shuffle was not “a reaction to competition.” He believed that it was an effort to accelerate decision-making in the company. 

He further added, “Google has many different businesses and the question we’ve been getting is that there are too many ways these companies can be slow.”Page is set to take over after he and fellow Stanford University students Sergey Brin (News - Alert) founded 13 years ago what became the world’s No. 1 Internet search engines with 29 billion per year in revenue. Brin will focus on strategic projects. With all its financial success and domination of Internet research for over a decade, Google has failed to keep pace with the new generation of Web companies that are taking away a lot of traffic from Google. The social network is still something where it has not been able to make a foray, but Google has diversified into mobile and online advertising pretty successfully.

 Tricia Salinero, Managing Partners Newforth director said in an e-mail, “Because spending has slowed and restored order in recent years, some of that Google magic is lost.”

Can Google regain the lost sheen? Can it successfully compete with a host of social networking Web companies and hold its own? Let's wait and watch.