It’s the end of an era at Google LLC as Sridhar Ramaswamy, the internet giant’s senior vice president of advertising and commerce, left the company today after 15 years to take up a position with venture capital firm Greylock Partners.

Ramaswamy (pictured), who joined Google in 2003 and became head of the ad business five years ago, led a team that oversaw the growth of the company’s advertising business from $1.5 billion a year to a figure likely to break $100 billion for the first time this year. Advertising remains Google’s main source of revenue despite efforts to diversify its revenue streams into new businesses such as cloud computing.

During his time in charge,  Ramaswamy is credited with developing the company’s mobile advertising business as well as spearheading the development of new Google shopping, travel, video and app installation ads.

Prabhakar Raghavan, currently the head of Google’s business-applications unit, will step into the role on Friday, Bloomberg reported. Before joining Google, Raghavan spent time working at both IBM Corp. and Yahoo Inc. and is described as a veteran of search technology and artificial intelligence research.

“I’ve worked with Prabhakar over many years now and can think of no better person to lead our monetization efforts,” Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said in a statement. “Prabhakar has incredible management experience and the deep technical expertise to match. He is the right person to succeed Sridhar, whose contributions over the past 15 years have helped grow Google into the company it is today.”

Raghavan said his first task in his new role will be to ensure continuity for the ad business. “The ecosystem remains strong. The business remains strong. The team is fantastic,” Raghavan said. “My focus is on how to take that fantastic machine and keep it going rather than being a bull in a china shop.”

Ramaswamy is joining Greylock Partners as a full partner with an initial focus on working with and investing in companies that leverage data at scale, AI/machine learning and analytics.

“I have been extremely privileged to have spent the past 15 years at Google, where I focused on starting and scaling new businesses and platforms,” Sridhar said in a post on Medium. “I have always been drawn to earlier stage entrepreneurial projects and becoming a venture partner at Greylock is an exceptional way to explore these types of opportunities.”

Despite the announcement of a change at Google’s most important business, the appointment of the well-respected Raghavan to take his place appeared not to ruffle investors. Google parent company Alphabet Inc.’s share price closed up 0.12 percent for the day.

Photo: TechCrunch/Flickr