Google unveiled a surprise shakeup of its top management on Thursday, announcing that co-founder Larry Page would replace Eric Schmidt as chief executive of the Internet giant in April.

Schmidt, who has served as Google's high-profile CEO for a decade, would remain with the Mountain View, California-based company as executive chairman, focusing on partnerships, customers and government outreach, Google said.

Schmidt, 55, will also act as an advisor to Page, 37, who served as CEO previously, from 1998 to 2001, and Google's other co-founder, Sergey Brin, Google said in a statement.

Google said Brin, also 37, will work on strategic projects and new products, what he described in a conference call with financial analysts as his "personal passions."

Google said the management changes would take effect on April 4.

"Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!" Schmidt said in a message on his Twitter feed.

The unexpected shakeup in the "triumvirate" at the top at Google overshadowed the company's announcement of its fourth quarter results.

Google said net profit rose to $2.54 billion in the fourth quarter from $1.97 billion in the same quarter a year ago while revenue climbed 26 percent to $8.44 billion over a year ago.

Technology bloggers and analysts were uncertain what exactly to make of the management shakeup at the company which dominates the search engine market but has been coming under pressure from social networking rivals such as Facebook.

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of technology blog SearchEngineLand.com, said Google's "probably overdue for a major management reorganization."