The Young Achiever At Google
With Sundar Pichai, an Indian, being appointed Google CEO, the natural reaction for the vast majority of Indians was one of pride. While some might demur and claim that Pichai has been an American citizen for the last 25 years or so, and that Indians should calm down, for many, an Indian heading one of the most important Silicon Valley companies is cause for celebration.
Pichai says, “At a high level, I think of what we’re doing in terms of two core things. I really want to work on big problems that solve big problems in users’ lives. The second is our core mission statement, which is to organize our users’ information.” Caesar Sengupta, a longtime colleague says, “I would challenge you to find anyone at Google who doesn’t like Sundar or who thinks Sundar is a jerk”.
The tech industry has seen its share of unusual corporate manoeuvres, but Google’s realignment seems to be among the strangest. The company pulled off a sort of upside-down merger with itself, creating a holding company called Alphabet that runs a mega-profitable company called Google, on the one hand, and a dozen other money-losers and long-odds bets that Google has called “moonshots” on the other. “This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google,” Larry Page wrote in a blog post that surprised the entire industry. “A key part of this is Sundar Pichai.”
