Google LLC is shaking things up at the executive level amid reports that its search and artificial intelligence chief John Giannandrea is stepping down.

Computer scientist Giannandrea (pictured) took over the unit when Google’s search and AI divisions were merged in February 2016. Now, with his departure, Google is splitting the two groups up again and placing them in the hands of a couple of different execs.

Bloomberg reported that Google is widely considered to be one of the tech industry’s leaders in both search and AI, but is also coming under threat. Its main concerns are rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., both of which are making gains on Google with the rising adoption of voice-enabled search devices such as Alexa and Siri.

Giannandrea joined Google in 2010 after it acquired his previous employer, Metaweb Technologies Inc., to get its hands on its knowledge database called Freebase. With Freebase, Google later built its Knowledge Graph, which serves as the main source of verified knowledge for products such as Google Search and Google Assistant.

The timing of Giannandrea’s decision to quit is interesting as it comes less than a week after rival Microsoft Corp. announced its own leadership shakeup following the departure of longtime exec Terry Myerson, one analyst noted.

“There’s an interesting similarity of events between Google and Microsoft,” said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst of Constellation Research Inc. But he said that one of the main reasons for Giannandrea’s departure is that search and AI are “too important to be in a single person’s hands,” because the former is the foundation of Google’s business, while the latter represents the future for a company whose Chief Executive Sundar Pichai calls “AI-first.”

Analyst Charles King of Pund-IT Inc. shared Mueller’s sentiments, saying that while it may once have made sense to tie search and AI together, that’s no longer the case with the latter technology moving so fast.

“Yes, AI can and will play a role in search and related functions, including personalizing recommendations and related advertising services,” King said. “But since more sophisticated AI and related machine learning and deep learning processes require considerable discrete technological understanding and expertise, it makes eminent good sense for Google to split AI and search into separate disciplines and businesses managed by suitably qualified leaders.”

Giannandrea’s decision to step down was first reported by The Information, which also said he was being replaced by two longtime Google execs. Nineteen-year Google veteran Jeff Dean will head up Google’s AI division while also continuing to head up Google Brain, which does related research based on machine learning, a subset of AI.

Meanwhile, Ben Gomes, the current head of search engineering at Google, takes full control of the search business as a vice president. Gomes had previously led Google’s efforts to root out so-called “fake news” from within its search results.

“With Dean and Gomes, Google has a strong bench and I expect things to move faster than before,” Mueller said of the two replacements.

As for Giannandrea himself, he’s reportedly set to stay at Google in a different capacity where he’ll be more “hands on” with technology.

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