Larry Page (L), Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin (R)

What’s not as clear is why longtime CEO Eric Schmidt is stepping aside.

TechCrunch reports that Schmidt will become Executive Chairman on April 4, while Google co-founder Larry Page takes the reins as CEO.

Pleasantries were exchanged about the shift, with Schmidt saying the change will “create clearer responsibility and accountability at the top of the company.”

Page says “Eric has clearly done an outstanding job leading Google for the last decade. The results speak for themselves. There is no other CEO in the world that could have kept such headstrong founders so deeply involved and still run the business so brilliantly. Eric is a tremendous leader and I have learned innumerable lessons from him. His advice and efforts will be invaluable to me as I start in this new role. Google still has such incredible opportunity–we are only at the beginning and I canâ€t wait to get started.”

Page and co-founder Sergey Brin have always played a role in day to day operations of the search giant, so there probably won’t be any huge outward shifts. We do wonder if there will be any differences business wise. Google has had some successful acquisitions (ITA, a travel booking system), but has famously had two disappointing prospects that failed to happen. Groupon is the one you probably remember, Yelp is the one you may have forgotten, but both were supposed to help Google in the local market where algorithms haven’t been as successful as (sales)people at getting small businesses advertising online.

While $8 billion in revenue and a 26% increase in revenue is no small feat, tapping into the local market is obviously important to Google and the inability to close deals with 2 major players (or come up with a formidable competitor) may be something those at the top kept in mind.

The next Nexus?

The phone is rumored to be the Nexus S. It’s “S” and not “Two” because, as the rumor goes, Samsung is developing the phone with a build similar to the company’s Galaxy S smartphones. At the Web 2.0 Summit Eric Schmidt just so happened to pull out a phone that looks just like what Engadget seems to have confirmed is the Galaxy S.

At the press conference Schmidt’s phone had a piece of tape over the manufacturers logo, but the phone’s appearance seems unmistakable. He would only refer to the phone as an “unannounced phone” from an “announced manufacturer,” that was running Gingerbread. The phone is also apparently touting NFC, which some believe may eventually make credit cards obsolete by allowing you to just pass your phone over a scanner to make a transaction, or perform other tasks such as opening hotel room doors.{Engadget}

While showing the phone Schmidt announced that Gingerbread would be released within a  few weeks {Engadget}. Hopefully the Nexus S will be accompanying the launch just as the Nexus One accompanied the launch of Android 2.1, and was the first to receive the 2.2 upgrade.