Nikesh Arora leaves Google, joins SoftBank Corp

In a surprise move, Google’s Chief Business Officer India-born Nikesh Arora, regarded as among the top lieutenants at the Internet search giant, is leaving the company after almost 10 years.

Mr. Arora is moving to Japan’s SoftBank Corp as vice chairman, according to a post by Google CEO Larry Page on his social network site.

“After almost ten years, Nikesh Arora, our Chief Business Officer, has decided to leave Google to join one of our partners, SoftBank, as Vice Chairman of SoftBank Corp and CEO of SoftBank Internet and Media.

“I remember first meeting him at the British Museum, which for some reason (Google co-founder) Sergey (Brin) had decided would be a good interview location. Mr. Nikesh has been a tremendous leader, adviser and mentor to many Googlers — including me. We have learned a lot together, and had a lot of fun along the way,” Mr. Page said in his post.

Mr. Page said Omid Kordestani, who was Google’s business founder and led the sales teams for many years, will be taking over from Arora on a temporary basis.

Earlier in April, Vic Gundotra, Google’s India-born senior vice president for social and one of the creators of Google Plus, had left the company after working for almost eight years.

In a post on Google Plus, Mr. Gundotra had said that he will be “forever in debt to the Google+ team“.

“This is a group of people who built social at Google against the scepticism of so many. I have been incredibly fortunate to work with the amazing people of Google. I don’t believe there is a more talented and passionate collection of people anywhere else,” Mr. Page wrote in a blog post.

Earlier, Google had announced that Mr. Arora would receive a bonus of $3.5 million, the highest amount paid to a top executive at the company for performance in FY2013.

Mr. Arora was a graduate of the Institute of Technology in Varanasi and Northeastern University.

According to a filing made by the technology company with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Arora received $3.5 million annual discretionary cash bonus, up from $2.8 million in the previous year, in recognition of his contributions to performance in fiscal year 2013.