 |
| A YouTube video grab of India-born Google CEO of Sundar Pichai (Video below) |
Staff correspondent, August 10, 2015, NewsCrunch
Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin have kicked themselves upstairs to run Alphabet and vacated their Google seats for the Indian-born Sundar Pichai.
The elevation of Sundar Pichai as the new Google CEO has come as a surprise to nobody. He joined Google's product division in 2004 and grew steadily delivering hit after hit, finally emerging as the head of the division in a decade flat.
The 2015 annual developer conference Google I/O where the company explains its priorities for the coming year was another clue. Sundar Pichai was officially in-charge of the show for the first time and he went on to lay down the agenda.
In a video that was shot by The Verge after the I/O, Sundar Pichai explains his vision for Google. - the company has great DNA and he would stick to it though under changed circumstances.
Google's core mission - to organise users information - has a new context: mobile. Sundar Pichai says the handset is deluged with information and Google will innovate on new tools to manage it better.
You can expect more focus on products like Google Now to make it a super-smart personal assistant to everyone.
Internet of things - pushing software to makes devices smart - is in his focus as is Google's futuristic projects and digital divide.
Internet is a great equaliser; Google search works the same if you are you rural boy anywhere or a Stanford professor, he says.
That is the Google DNA, Sundar Pichai would like to stick to.
Born in India, Sundar Pichai did his schooling from Chennai at Jawahar Vidyalaya and VanaVani.
A talented cricket player, he graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur) in Metallurgical Engineering and then went to the US for an M.S. from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Sundar Pichai worked at Applied Materials and McKinsey & Company before joining Google.