I am sure you’ve heard the news that Google’s head of search, Amit Singhal, has announced on Google+ that after 15 years he is leaving the company. He is retiring. Why? To pursue philanthropy and spend more time with his family.

His replacement is awesome, John Giannandrea who leads up artificial intelligence at Google and was the man behind RankBrain.

But Amit, he has made more of an impact on you and I and the world than 99.9% of the world. He is the man behind the Google search box. The search results and how they are laid out, returned and the answers – are his baby. As Matt Cutts said “billions of people have benefited in some way from Amit’s insight and judgment.”

But why now? I know, he doesn’t need the money. But he was/is a man driven by solving problems, big problems. Leaving Google, well, he won’t have access to such a platform to solve those problems at such a scale anymore. I know, he’s been doing it for 15 years – it’s a long time. But on his 15th year anniversary, which was just a few months ago, he posted on Twitter “Fifteen years ago, on this day, I joined a small startup called Google. The journey continues.”

And now he posted a continuation of that “The Journey Continues…” on Google+.

I guess when he posted that message on Twitter just a few months ago, that was our hint that the journey does continue – even without Amit at the helm.

I just get the feeling, a gut feeling, he wasn’t done. I am not sure why I get that feeling.

Either way – Google will move on, survive and continue to innovate – of course, SEOs are now saying with John Giannandrea running things, the algorithm will become 100% AI based. 🙂

Paul Haahr who is a big player in search at Google for 14+ years said on Twitter:

Matt Cutts wrote:

Gary Illyes posted on Twitter:

Read some of our Amit stories here.

The journey will continue and I wish all the best to Amit Singhal and his family – with the deepest respect.

Forum discussion at Google+.