Kent Walker
Kent Walker is an American legal executive who has served as President of Global Affairs and as an chief legal officer of Google & Alphabet since 2021.
Early life and education
Walker was born in Palo Alto.He graduated from Harvard College in 1983 and received his JD from Stanford Law School.
Career
In 1990, Walker began his legal career in San Francisco at Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Robertson & Falk, now Arnold & Porter, and worked as a litigator specializing in government and public law issues. He then served 5 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the United States Department of Justice.Walker worked at various technology companies, starting in 1995 with Airtouch Communications. From 1997 to 2001 he was deputy general counsel at Netscape, from 2001 until 2004 he worked for Liberate Technologies, and from 2003 until 2006 he was deputy general counsel at eBay.
Alphabet Inc.
Since 2006, Walker has advised Alphabet Inc.'s board and management on legal and policy issues, its work with governments around the world, its policies for content on its various services, and its philanthropic efforts.Since 2021, he has been President of Global Affairs and chief legal officer at Alphabet.
On September 12, 2023 Walker was followed by a man dressed up as Mr. Monopoly, as he went to attend Google's antitrust trial United States v. [Google LLC (2023)|United States v. Google LLC (2023)] at federal court in Washington, D.C. in which the DOJ accused Google of illegally abusing its monopoly power as the largest online search tool.
As of 2022, Walker base salary at Alphabet was $1,000,000, with a maximum of a $2,000,000 annual bonus, one tranche of performance stock units of $5,000,000, and one tranche of restricted stock units worth $18,000,000. For 2024, Walker's total compensation from Alphabet was $30.17 million, marking the first time that the general counsel of a US-based corporation was awarded more than $30 million in annual compensation.