Google has promoted Gaurav Bhaskar to senior director, global communications & public affairs for APAC. With over 20 years of comms experience, Gaurav has been elevated internally. He earlier handled the same function for India, South-East Asia and South Asia.

He announced his new role on LinkedIn this week, thanking Meenu Handa, who recently retired, for "her mentorship, wisdom, and leadership."

Google, like their fellow big tech firms, Oracle, Microsoft and Facebook, are engaged in a race to dominate the fast-moving AI market. An increasingly complex market is taking note of the GEO in addition to SEO as consumers move to the one-answer in one-place search format.