Google is now in news not for the super smart technology this time but for the huge changes and re-organizing the company structure. Google co-founder Larry Page announced a massive restructuring of the company, instituting Sundar Pichai as CEO and shifting himself and co-founder Sergey Brin to a larger holding company called Alphabet.
Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights. This implies that the Google now would be a slimmer version and is an affiliated company to Alphabet as mentioned by Page, which seems to be the mother of all such ‘Alphabet’ companies.
And that is a bit about Alphabet, coming deep into the story of Sundar becoming the CEO of Google is what interests us. A peek through his journey up the ladder…
Sundar Pichai was born in India, did his schooling in Chennai, Tamilnadu and graduated from IIT Kharagpur in Metallurgical Engineering. Later, pursued his Masters in Stanford University and MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Sundar worked at Applied Materials and McKinsey & Company before joining Google.
Sundar joined Google in 2004, where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google’s client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS, Google Drive. In his journey with Google, he has overseen development of apps like Gmail and Google Maps, Chrome OS and the Chromebook, announced the open-sourcing of the new video codec VP8, introduced the new video format WebM and added Android to the products he oversee. In last October raised to the position of Product Chief by then-CEO Larry Page.
Sundar has been doing really well as a Product Chief and that got him this huge position of CEO. To hear more in the words of Larry…“This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google. A key part of this is Sundar Pichai. Sundar has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now, and I’ve been tremendously enjoying our work together. He has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our internet businesses.“
With Sundar on the top, Google is looking ahead for many new advancements but these two in specific:
1. Solving big problems in user’s life, at scale for everyone
2. Organize users information, making google better in a mobile (trying to get a super computer in everyone’s pocket)
Sundar also says, “Internet in general is a great equalizer and google search works the same way for everyone as long as they have access to a computer and have connectivity, may it be for a rural kid anywhere or for a professor at Stanford/Harvard. And, my aim is to strive to push google to do that, not just build technology for certain segments, as we believe technology as a equalizer, as a enabler for everyone.”
All the billion users of Google congratulates Sundar on his new position. Here are a few from CEO’s of Miscrosoft, Apple Inc and Linkedin –
Congrats @sundarpichai well deserved!
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) August 10, 2015
@sundarpichai Congratulations on your promotion! — Tim Cook (@tim_cook) August 11, 2015
Congrats to @sundarpichai, Google’s new CEO. Larry couldn’t have picked a better person for the role.
— Jeff Weiner (@jeffweiner) August 10, 2015
Satya(Nadella) and Sundar(Pichai) are shining up now, awaiting for a Shiv to form the Trio
(Didn’t ring a bell? Here’s a clue – Satyam-Shivam-Sundaram)
