Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, will take charge of parent company Alphabet as co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin step down from their top roles. Pichai, who has been Google's CEO for over four years will manage both companies, while Page and Brin will remain members of the company's board. Pichai’s elevation was announced on December 3 in the US, with Page giving up his role as Alphabet CEO and Brin quitting as president.
“While it has been a tremendous privilege to be deeply involved in the day-to-day management of the company for so long, we believe it’s time to assume the role of proud parents - offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!” Page and Brin wrote in a letter bidding adieu to active management roles. Pichai, the 47-year-old IIT Kharagpur graduate, who has spent 15 years at Google, rose to prominence while leading the development of Google’s Chrome browser. He later led product development and engineering across all of Google’s services for a year before bagging the CEO position and oversight of Google’s advertising and cloud computing business.
Pichai, is taking charge Alphabet at a challenging time, as it faces increased regulatory scrutiny of large digital companies and employee unrest, while battling to stay at the forefront of technological changes. Alphabet was created after the company restructured its business in 2015, separating the highly profitable advertising and search business Google from over a dozen moonshot projects under units like autonomous driving unit Waymo and biotech research arm Calico, which lose money.
Google sits on a cash pile of $128 billion, second only to Microsoft’s $137 billion, as per Factset. But Brin and Page, who are each worth over $50 billion, have stayed away from most of the day-to-day management and public appearances, including internal all-hands meetings, for the last few years. The move is driven to “simplify our management structure”, they wrote, adding that “Sundar brings humility and a deep passion for technology to our users, partners and our employees every day...There is no one that we have relied on more since Alphabet was founded, and no better person to lead Google and Alphabet into the future.”
Pichai tweeted that he was “excited about his new role". He also wrote to employees, “In my 15+ years with Google, the only constant I’ve seen is change….. I first met Larry and Sergey back in 2004 and have been benefiting from their guidance and insights ever since. The good news is I’ll continue to work with them - although in different roles for them and me.” Pichai, an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, who also holds an MS from Stanford and MBA from Wharton, joined Google in 2004 and worked on the development of the Chrome browser, Gmail and Google Maps. In 2013 he started overseeing Android, the operating system for smartphones which has been key to Google’s continued success from desktops to the mobile era. Over 85% of smartphones shipped globally use Android.
