Once upon a time, you could go to Alphabet’s main website and peruse the list of high-ranking executives. You could check out their names, pictures, jobs, and bios, all in one place, giving you a pretty decent look at who are considered the Googliest of the Googly. That page, however, is gone now. Trying to navigate to it will reward you with a 404 page for your efforts, sporting the by now ubiquitous panicky robot in the middle of doing some self-repair. The big question here is why? With this being Google we’re talking about, so the likelihood of the missing page being thanks to a hacker or hacking group is pretty unlikely, as is internal vandalism; such a thing would be spotted straightaway. According to Business Insider, there are indications that the page has been that way for a good few months now, without much notice.
When Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat was hired, she immediately started working toward more transparency for investors. A good part of transparency for shareholders, when it comes to a large company, is knowing who should be reporting to you, what they do, and who reports to them. While this information is still available in bits and pieces through news sites and the like, the completeness and veracity of such information is, by virtue of not coming directly from Alphabet, not entirely trustworthy. This means that the page going missing is a pretty big deal, so why did it happen, and why has nobody noticed and raised the alarm until now?
It’s a genuine mystery, as are a good amount of things that Google has done over the years, but there are a few possible answers here. There is always the classic fall-back that the page is undergoing renovations, but if it has truly been gone for months, that could no longer be the case. Some speculate that the page is gone because Alphabet is waiting to see what names will need to be added and subtracted. A number of key players throughout Alphabet have been jumping ship lately, which means that the list will need to be changed. While inconvenient, maintaining a current list that includes changes to the roster is far from beyond Google’s power, so this possible explanation has little to stand on. At this time, Alphabet has not said anything about the issue.