LONDON (Reuters) - The man charged with overseeing Google's operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia has stepped down after a decade in post.

Matt Brittin first joined the tech giant as head of UK and Ireland operations in 2007, before rising through the ranks to become vice president of northern and central Europe, and then EMEA president in 2014.

Prior to his time at Google, Brittin spent several years working as a consultant for McKinsey & Co, as well as a stint as commercial director Trinity Mirror, later rebranded as Reach PLC.

In a post announcing his departure on social media platform LinkedIn, Brittin praised colleagues whose AI advances this week won the Nobel prize for chemistry, and shared advice one of Google's co-founders gave him when he arrived at the company.

"When I joined Google in January 2007, Larry Page advised me to 'put the best people you can on important work, and get out of the way.' It's been the privilege of my life to try to honour this - working with brilliant teams to help build tech that makes the world better," he wrote.

Brittin said he would continue running Google's EMEA operations until a successor had been chosen.