Nigeria, July 1 -- The announcement was made at the Open Frontier conference, hosted by the Laude Institute. Dave Patterson, a UC Berkeley professor known for co-developing the RISC processor architecture, informed the audience of Cerf's departure while introducing him for a panel discussion. Patterson said, "Vint has been at Google more than 20 years, and he is retiring a week from today, and so I think we ought to give him a round of applause for a relatively good career." The remark was met with applause from those in attendance.

Cerf joined Google in 2005 as vice president and chief internet evangelist.

In the 1970s, Cerf worked with fellow computer scientist Robert Kahn to develop the TCP/IP protocols, which established the techni...