Google revamps its top management

What are Google's core businesses?

Until this week, that answer was singular: search. But four days after taking over as CEO, Larry Page unleashed a management shakeup that puts several of Google's other product lines on par with its dominant one.

Page promoted six executives to the level of senior vice president, each leading product teams in search, ads, mobile, YouTube, Chrome, and social, a Google spokesman said. The company would not confirm who the respective teams will be led by, but the Los Angeles Times reported their leaders will be Alan Eustace, Susan Wojcicki, Andy Rubin, Salar Kamangar, Sundar Pichai and Vic Gundotra. Each was a team leader or top executive in their previous positions.

They all will report directly to Page and replace the position previously held by Jonathan Rosenberg, who, under former CEO Eric Schmidt, managed all of the company's products. Rosenberg announced earlier this week that he would be stepping down.

The new structure is part of a previously announced initiative to make the company more efficient. When Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) disclosed in January that Page would take the reins, the company's co-founder said it would be his top priority as CEO to clarify Google's focus areas.

Some inside the company -- and many who left recently -- have said that Google has lost its startup roots, and engineers needed to clear too much red tape to get new ideas approved.

Hanging onto its talent has become a struggle for Google, prompting the company to issue a 10% across-the-board pay raise to move to boost morale in November. Defectors often head to smaller, faster-growing companies: about 15% of Facebook's staff is made of of former Google employees.

Google's spokesman said the reorganization will create clearer lines of accountability and responsibility across the company by streamlining the engineering and product areas.

Though the reorganization appears to be a shift from a horizontally integrated approach to a more vertical one, the products teams will not function as separate entities within the company, said a person familiar with the matter.

Page and Schmidt said in January the CEO switch would not result in a material change in the company's strategy.