Urs Hölzle

Urs Hölzle served as Google's first vice president of engineering and has been leading the development of Google's technical infrastructure since 1999. His current responsibilities include the design and operation of the servers, networks, datacenters, and software infrastructure that power Google's internal and external cloud platforms. He is also renowned for both his red socks and his freerange Leonberger, Yoshka (Google's original top dog). Urs grew up in Switzerland and received a master's...See more

Urs Hölzle served as Google's first vice president of engineering and has been leading the development of Google's technical infrastructure since 1999. His current responsibilities include the design and operation of the servers, networks, datacenters, and software infrastructure that power Google's internal and external cloud platforms. He is also renowned for both his red socks and his freerange Leonberger, Yoshka (Google's original top dog). Urs grew up in Switzerland and received a master's degree in computer science from ETH Zürich and, as a Fulbright scholar, a Ph.D. from Stanford. While at Stanford (and then a start-up later acquired by Sun Microsystems), he invented fundamental techniques used in most of today's leading Java compilers. Before joining Google, he was a professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a Fellow of the ACM and AAAS, a member of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and serves on the board of the US World Wildlife Fund. See less