Vinton Cerf will step down from his role as Google’s chief internet evangelist next week, marking the conclusion of one of the most influential careers in technology history. While speaking via video feed at the Open Frontier conference hosted by the Laude Institute, Cerf was recognized by Dave Patterson, the UC Berkeley professor best known for co-developing RISC processor architecture. “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,” Patterson said, to cheers from the room. A Google spokesperson confirmed that Cerf will be stepping down from his role at the company. Cerf, 83, and collaborator Robert Kahn are credited as being the architects of the networking protocols that became the internet we know today.…