Oracle veteran Thomas Kurian to replace Diane Greene as Google Cloud head

Oracle's ex-product chief Thomas Kurian will head Google's cloud division, replacing Diane Greene.

In a blog post Friday, Greene said Kurian will join Google Cloud on November 26 and transition into the leadership role in early 2019.

"I believe that he'll do an amazing job helping to take Google Cloud to the next level. Thomas has 22 years of experience at Oracle; most recently he was President of Product Development," she said.

She will continue as CEO through January, working with Kurian to ensure a smooth transition.

Greene, who will remain a director on the Alphabet board, had joined Google in December 2015 to run its cloud business.

"...after an unbelievably stimulating and productive three years, it's time to turn to the passions I've long had around mentoring and education," she added.

Greene said the mentoring will include investing in and helping female founder CEOs who have engineering or science backgrounds.

"I want to encourage every woman engineer and scientist to think in terms of building their own company someday. The world will be a better place with more female founder CEOs," she said.

Greene noted that Google Cloud has moved from having only two significant customers and a collection of startups to having major Fortune 1000 enterprises.

"The cloud space is early and there is an enormous opportunity ahead," she said.

Google had in February announced that its cloud division was generating more than USD 1 billion in quarterly revenue.