Vint Cerf retires at 83, leaving Google as Chief Internet Evangelist

Harriet L. Whitmore • August 28, 2026 13:07

Vint Cerf, one of the engineers behind the protocols that made the internet possible, is retiring at the age of 83. He is set to leave his role as Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, a position he has held since 2005. For context, Cerf and Bob Kahn devised the TCP/IP protocols back in the 1970s.

Vint Cerf to retire from Google at 83

Most people have never heard of Vint Cerf or Bob Kahn, despite relying on their work every day. They are the inventors of the Internet protocol suite-TCP/IP-used to allow machines to communicate with one another.

Now 87, Bob Kahn serves as President and CEO of the non-profit organisation Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). Meanwhile, Vint Cerf, 83, has been Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist since 2005. Soon, however, this “father of the internet” will be stepping into retirement.

According to TechCrunch, the news was shared during the Laude Institute’s Open Frontier conference, where Cerf was in attendance. “Vint has worked at Google for more than 20 years and is retiring in a week. He therefore deserves to be congratulated on a wonderful career”, announced Dave Patterson, a professor at UC Berkeley, during the event.

TCP/IP: the protocols that underpin the internet

People often mix up the internet and the web, even though they are not the same thing. The internet is the network that the web runs on, and the web itself came later. TCP/IP-created by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn and published in the 1970s-forms the foundation of the internet.

Internet vs web: what Tim Berners-Lee created later

As for the web, it was created by the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in the late 1990s. It is described as an “universal interconnected information system”, but it depends on the internet and on TCP/IP to function.

It is also worth noting that Tim Berners-Lee remains active today. He is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Inrupt, a company developing a solution intended to help internet users regain control of their personal data.