Even though Google doesn't get to work on internet balloons or futuristic cities anymore after blowing up its corporate structure last fall, there's still plenty going on inside the search giant.
Meet the men and women running Google's most important products.
Clay Bavor wants to bring virtual reality to the masses.Reuters/Robert Galbraith
Bavor originally joined Google's ads team more than 10 years ago. Today, he's leading the charge on its virtual reality ambitions.
The company just announced a new platform called Daydream to encourage manufacturers and developers to create smartphone-centric VR experiences. Meanwhile, it's also still improving its simple Cardboard headset, which Bavor helped design.
He summed up Google's stance on VR on stage at its big developers' conference earlier this month:
"VR should be mobile, approachable, and for everyone."
Nick Fox heads up Google's communications products, including its shiny new messaging app, Allo.Google
A longtime Googler, Fox leads the inexpensive cellphone service, Project Fi, as well as mobile messaging products like Hangouts, Messenger, Duo, and Allo.
Google just announed those last two and new conversational smart assistant will power the app, allowing it to offer "smart replies" and learn more about users over time after it launches this summer.
Prior to his current position, Fox led product development for Google’s search-ads business.
John Giannandrea has the most important product job at the whole company: he's the search king.Google
When Google appointed Giannandrea to lead search earlier this year, it underscored the company's push to bake machine learning and artificial intelligence into more of its products.
The company's already planning for the day when you'll want to use a chat app or your voice — not its classic search bar — to surface context-aware information instead of a list of ten blue links. For example, Google's search chops power Assistant, which is the backbone for Allo and Google's upcoming Home smart speaker, too.
Giannandrea has been hustling at Google for roughly five years, leading Google Research and machine learning before getting the promotion to search chief.
Sridhar Ramaswamy has the *other* most important job: running the ads business that keeps Google afloat.Getty / Laura Cavanaugh
Ads aren't as sexy as internet balloons, smart contacts, or messaging apps that can ID pictures of your dog, but the work of Ramaswamy's team basically bankrolls Google and parent company Alphabet alike.
The company's ad business has officially survived the migration from desktop to smartphones, and at a recent conference, Ramaswamy boasted about how Google's mobile ad products can prove to businesses that people are actually visiting their stores.
But Ramaswamy has some huge challenges ahead of him, like figuring out what advertising will look like when we finally do enter an AI-first world.
Jen Fitzpatrick makes sure you always know where you're going, through Google's Maps and Local products.Google
Google's ad products wouldn't work like they do if it weren't for all of Google's location data.
Enter Fitzpatrick, who leads product management and engineering for Google Maps and the company's Local search products, which both get used by more than 1 billion people around the world.
One of Google's earliest employees, Fitzpatrick joined its first-ever summer internship program in 1999. There were only four other interns at the time, and no one had even heard of "this crazy little startup" called Google.
Before helming Geo, she led software development for products like AdWords, Google News, and Product Search, and she cofounded Google's user-experience team.
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