Google veteran Amit Singhal has announced that he’s leaving the company after a 15 year stint. Currently the Senior Vice President of Search, he’s among the most influential engineers in the company, having worked on rewriting the revolutionary algorithms that powered Google’s search engine. Singhal says he plans to retire and focus on philanthropic activities.
Singhal had joined Google in 2000 as employee no. 176. Born in Jhansi, he’d graduated from IIT Roorkee in 1989 and had then gone on to finish an MS in Computer Science from the University of Duluth in Minnesota. He completed his PhD from Cornell in 1996.
At Google, Singhal ran Google’s search department, and his team was responsible for the Google’s famed search algorithm. He was named a Google Fellow for his efforts, and in 2010, Fortune magazine had named him one of the smartest minds in tech.
In his farewell post, Singhal recounted his beginnings as a child in India. “My life has been a dream journey. From a little boy growing up in the Himalayas dreaming of the Star Trek computer, to an immigrant who came to the United States with two suitcases and not much else, to the person responsible for Search at Google, every turn has enriched me and made me a better person.”, he said.