Business this week

In an unexpected move, Sergey Brin and Larry Page stepped down from their respective roles as president and chief executive of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The pair founded the internet giant in a garage while at Stanford in 1998. They will retain their combined voting majority in the company and continue to sit on the board. Sundar Pichai becomes Alphabet’s chief executive in addition to his job running Google, expanding his brief to oversee “moonshot” projects, such as driverless cars and electricity-generating kites. Messrs Brin and Page assured Mr Pichai they would still be around to offer “advice and love, but not daily nagging.” See article.