In what is being considered as a major restructuring inside the search giant’s hierarchy, helping them to separate the primary business from the ambitious research divisions, and launch the Alphabet parent company.
However the major change and the moment of pride for the Indians, comes with the revelation that Sundar Pichai has been appointed the CEO of Google. The other changes that the restructuring process will bring about, will be Larry Page moving on to become the chief executive of Alphabet, and Sergey Brin becoming the president. The reins of the executive chairman will now be taken over by Eric Schmidt.
Previously, Sundar Pichai’s job profile involved overseeing many of the core products of the search giant. Now being the CEO, his job will incorporate web advertising, search, YouTube, Gmail, and Android. Larry Page stated that Mr Pichai was the obvious choice after his exceptional performance since the October of the last year, when he took on engineering and product responsibility for the Internet division of Google. He further stated that he and Sergey were quite excited about the way Sundar dedicated himself to the company that was evident from his progress and that the whole board felt that it was time for Sundar to become the CEO of Google.
Larry Page feels that he is very fortunate to have the reins of the slightly slimmed Google being handled by Pichai, as it will free up time for him to focus on other aspirations. According to Page, Alphabet will mostly be a collection of companies, with the model requiring each business being run by a powerful CEO.
Sundar Pichai’s Timeline
Pichai was born and brought up in Chennai, studied engineering at IIT-Kharagpur and then went to Stanford US, and completed his MBA from Wharton School of Business.
He joined Google in the year 2004, the year the search engine giant launched Gmail. He was appointed as the in-charge of product and engineering for the internet businesses of the company. His first year at Google gave the defunct toolbar, which enabled to have Google as the default search engine for Mozilla Firefox and Chrome users.
The next few years saw him take over Chrome, the web browser introduced by google. The whole world was baffled when he introduced Chrome in 2008, not sure about how it would compete with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. However, Chrome put all the critics at bay as it became one of the most popular web browsers and went on to become a successful operating system for mostly schools-based notebooks.
He eventually became the President, followed by Vice President after he bagged Android in his portfolio. Last year, he became the product chief at Google. He is running Google Wallet, Google+, Android Pay and the apps services of Google for businesses. He is also conducting the I/O conferences, where he is the public face for Google and updates the eager audience on what the new versions of Android and Chrome will be all about. He also announces the biggest and the latest products and services of the company.
As the new CEO of Google, he adds one more star to his shoulder and now has additional products like search, maps, ads, apps, Android Chrome, and YouTube all under his kitty.
Reports state that Mr Pichai was approached by Twitter that is also looking for a CEO, and in order to not to lose him, he was promoted.
Mr. Page further stated that Pichai will carry on the legacy of driving innovations to stretch the boundaries and also ensure that the company takes big leaps, with the core mission of organizing the world information.
*Image Courtesy: Wikipedia
