Google has a new CEO and his name is Sundar Pichai.
In a shock reorganisation of the business, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will run a new holding company called Alphabet and Pichai will step up to run Google in their place. But who is Pichai, and what are his qualifications to take the helm?
Sundar Pichai was born in Chennai, India in 1972 and as a schoolboy he was a keen cricketer. He is married with a daughter and a son, and is reportedly a chess enthusiast.
He earned his bachelor of engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, before going on to earn a MSc from Stanford and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania. His background in metallurgy, engineering and business management saw him take up roles at McKinsey & Company before joining Google in 2004. Since then, he has risen fast through the company, leading the development on both Chrome and Chrome OS, and helped pioneer Gmail and Google Maps. Twitter tried to poach Pichai from Google in 2011, but he stuck with the company.
In 2013 Pichai replaced Andy Rubin as the head of Android, becoming the most pivotal member of Larry Page's L-Team. At the time he said of his sudden promotion: "I am passionate about computing and so to me, it was very exciting to be in a position where I could make an impact on that scale."
In that same interview with WIRED.com, he also told of his excitement about the role computing had to play in the developing world.
"The scale and scope is even bigger than what I had internalised. The momentum -- in terms of new phones and new tablets -- is breathtaking. I see huge opportunity, because it is just shocking how much of the world doesn't have access to computing," he said. "Getting great low-cost computing devices at scale to the developing world is especially meaningful to me."
Pichai went on to be promoted again to take on the role of product chief in October 2014. At one point rumoured he was to be a candidate for Microsoft's new CEO, but at Google he remained. He had enjoyed a meteoric rise through Google, moving from middle management to Page's second in command in a matter of six years -- Page clearly saw something he liked in the quiet, analytical man from Tamil Nadu.
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Even back in the 2013 interview, it seems Pichai was thinking similarly to Page in terms of his ambitions for Google as a company. "Larry wants to make sure we are driving innovation and doing amazing things for users and developers. That's what I want too. So there's a melding of minds -- his marching orders are, "please go and do Google-scale things," he told WIRED.
Page too had good things to say about Pichai. "Sundar has a talent for creating products that are technically excellent yet easy to use--and he loves a big bet. Take Chrome, for example. In 2008, people asked whether the world really needed another browser. Today Chrome has hundreds of millions of happy users and is growing fast thanks to its speed, simplicity and security."
A reporter for Fortune who observed Page and Pichai together back in 2012 described them as having "a warm, easygoing rapport". All sources seem to suggest that Pichai is thought of by those who know and work with him as a nice guy who creates consensus, not conflict. Perhaps then, he is the ideal man to embody Google's "don't be evil" corporate strategy and to uphold Google's legacy in Page's place.
Source - The Wired and Verge
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