Dive Brief:

• Google’s search maven, Amit Singhal, announced Wednesday plans to retire from the company on Feb. 26.
• Singhal, Google’s senior vice president for search, has led the Internet search engine’s technical development since he joined the company in 2000. During his tenure he worked to create a faster and smarter search capability that today can answer almost any query.
• The company’s head of machine learning (aka artificial intelligence), John Giannandrea, will take over Singhal’s post.   

Dive Insight:

Under Singhal’s leadership Google’s name has become a verb in its own right. With a machine learning specialist at the helm it is likely that the search technology will grow even more intelligent and intuitive.

Tech companies have worked to invest in artificial intelligence, hoping to expand their offerings and remain competitive in crowded markets. Advancements in machine learning could help a company make breakthroughs in the next era of technology.

Google has already made significant strides in the field of machine learning. For example,  in November, the company deployed a tool that uses AI to write intelligent responses to emails. And, of course, the company has worked for years on its self-driving car project.

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said that AI technology has the capability to fix some of the world’s “hard problems,” including population growth, human development and education. Schmidt promised continued investment in the technology to try and grow its capabilities.

Now that Alphabet is the most valuable company in the world, they have plenty of capital to invest in revolutionizing the field.