Internet powerhouse Google Inc beat Wall Street's quarterly sales and profit estimates, and announced that co-founder Larry Page would take on the role of chief executive, overseeing day-to-day operations of the company. Its shares rose 1.4 percent.

The following are comments from investors and analysts:

AARON KESSLER, ANALYST, THINKEQUITY

Very strong top-line growth. They're investing pretty heavily still, but very robust bottom line growth too.

On new CEO: Initially Larry (Page) and Sergey (Brin) were pretty young when Google started, so maybe they weren't prepared at that point to run the day-to-day operations of Google. But at this point they've been involved for several years now, and are in a better position to really run the company as opposed to just being in the founder role.

On Page's task ahead: I think it's executing on core search, innovating on core search, and executing on the non-search areas like display, mobile and local.

JOE KINAHAN, CHIEF DERIVATIVES STRATEGIST, TD AMERITRADE

On new CEO: Obviously, the Street has a good view of this executive change. If this were a negative, no matter how good the earnings, the stock would have been down.

It is hard to say what the options action in Google will be tomorrow. We have January options expiration playing into this and in many of these situations, we see a contraction in volatility once the news is out.

BRIAN PITZ, ANALYST, UBS

On CEO change: The Street will think it's a negative that there is probably some issue going on. Google is trying to get more efficient and trying to get a tech guy in the seat to compete with Facebook.

We are OK with the move. To be frank with you, pre-IPO one of the big issues on the stock was it was a triumvirate management team.

Look at (Facebook CEO) Mark Zuckerberg -- he is younger than all these guys and he's running Facebook. I don't think it changes anything strategically where the company is headed.

MIKE HICKEY, ANALYST, JANCO PARTNERS

When you see an executive change, you hesitate because generally, it's a disruption at the top. Obviously the numbers look good, so it's a balance between the two.

COLIN GILLIS, ANALYST, BGC PARTNERS

It's the holiday quarter, the biggest quarter of the year, and they delivered. We got a little upside on revenue, and on earnings.

There's this notion that Google hasn't produced good products on its own, that most of their wins have come from acquisitions.

On new CEO: It's not like Larry (Page) wasn't there. He's not fresh blood. But it will be interesting to see what he'll do that's different, what he could not have done in his prior role.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba, Ritsuko Ando, Liana B. Baker, Doris Frankel)

Mark zuckerberg Larry page Artificial intelligence Google