Who is the face behind Google?

Most people are already aware of the name Sundar Pichai- The face behind Google. Sundar Pichai, full name Pichai Sundararajan, is an Indian origin American executive, CEO, and computer scientist. He is CEO of both Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google. He joined Google in 2004 and has been a major part of the growth & development of this tech giant. He is a sharp-minded person who has taken innovative steps in the direction of the company’s development by bringing forward Google Chrome and Chrome OS.

Pc: South China Morning Post

Qualification

Pichai was born in Madurai, a town of Madras (now known as Kerala), India. He is a graduate in metallurgical engineering from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Kharagpur. He came from a middle-class background but with sheer efforts, he made his place at Stanford University, US. He pursued his M.S. in materials science and engineering. Further, he completed his MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he was crowned as a Siebel and Palmer Scholar.

Career

At the beginning of his career, Pichai was a materials engineer. Later, in 2004 he joined Google. After being a part of Google he led Google suite’s client software products management and innovation efforts, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS. Pichai was a huge part of Google Drive as well. 

Pichai was always a multi-tasker. He began to oversee other applications development such as Gmail and Google Maps. Pichai was active in the new upcoming technology and trends. In 2010 an open-sourcing of codec VP8- a new video by Google was announced by Pichai and the new video format named WebM was introduced. In 2012, Chromebook was released. Android was added to the Google products list, managed by Pichai in 2013. He was also the director of Jive software in 2013 from April 2011 to July 30.

Finally arrived the big day, which wasn’t a surprise after his extensive contribution to Google, Pichai was announced as the CEO of Google on August 10, 2015. He was previously appointed as the product chief CEO by Larry page- Founder of Google. The new holding company of Google named Alphabet Inc. was formed in the year 2015 on October 24. On the completion of this company, Pichai was given a new role as the CEO of this holding company as well.

Pc: Firstpost

Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020 also included Pichai.

Have you heard about these reports too?

We have gathered information about Pichai being considered as a contender for the CEO of Microsoft in 2014. Nonetheless, the position was later given to Satya Nadella while Sundar continued with Google. Pichai was also aggressively pursued by Twitter- a microblogging service for employment in 2011.  

Pc: Wired

It was heard that Pichai was all set to leave Google to join Twitter in 2011 when Google wasn’t ready to let him go. Therefore, they took a major step and offered Sundar a humongous $50 million in stocks and retained him.

Problems faced by Pichai

We have heard all about the success of Sundar Pichai but only a few know about the struggles he had to face in between his career. 

A lot of bad publicity revolved around Pichai for the case of employee firing. In August 2017, an employee wrote a 10-page manifesto criticizing the company for its diversity policies. He argued that “distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and … these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership”. This opened a gateway for huge debates and issues around Google, that are still under diverse public opinions. In a memo Pichai said, “to suggest a group of our colleagues has traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK”.

Did you know Pichai was called upon by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee? 

Pichai was called upon before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on December 11, 2018, to explain a wide range of issues revolving around Google related to alleged, potential political bias on Google’s platforms, the company’s alleged plans for a “censored search app” in China, and its privacy practices. 

He had to clear himself of all the accusations encircling the reputation of the company. The response stated no role of Google employees in influencing the search results of its users. Along with this, the users of Google are given a voluntary choice to opt-out of data collection. He stated “there are no current plans for a censored search engine” in China. However, this issue is still in debate. Many people were left in shock with the massive amount of data handed Directly to Google by their privacy policy “Accept” button. 

Pc: Variety

Pichai’s appearance was described by Wired’s Issie Lapowsky (writer) before the committee as “one major missed opportunity”.  She also stated that the members “staked out opposite sides of a partisan battle,” which led to the presentation of another side to the public which in her words is “a foreboding reminder of Congress’s continued technological ignorance.” It turned out to be a big question mark on the reputation of the company raising many trust issues in public. 

Recent happenings

Sundar Pichai was bestowed with the country’s third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan award in San Francisco by Taranjit Singh Sandhu, the Ambassador of India to the United States. While receiving the award, the CEO said, “India is a part of me and I carry it with me wherever I go.”

He also said, “I am deeply grateful to the Indian government and the people of India for this immense honour. It is incredibly meaningful to be honoured in this way by the country that shaped me.”

Delighted to hand over Padma Bhushan to Google CEO Sundar Pichai in San Francisco. His inspirational journey from Madurai to Mountain View, strengthening India-America economic & tech. ties, reaffirms Indian talent’s contribution to global innovation: Ambassador Taranjit S Sandhu pic.twitter.com/fxiSouYrIk

— ANI (@ANI) December 3, 2022

Family and personal life

Pichai married his classmate Anjali Pichai. He met her at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Even after the long distance between them, their love helped them stay connected. Anjali Pichai is a chemical engineer from Kota, Rajasthan. The couple is blessed with two children – daughter Kavya Pichai and son Kiran Pichai.

Pichai’s interests lie in football and cricket.

Pc: Pinterest

 Some lesser-known facts

• Pichai is the third CEO of Google.
• He is the first non-white CEO of Google.
• Pichai is a die-hard fan of football team FC Barcelona and never misses a single match.
• Sundar was announced to receive a loaded package of $240 million in performance-based stock awards on 22 December 2019 for the next three years. This record-breaking amount is given to him as the highest performance awards package offered to any executive of Google ever. This is the second-highest package ever in the world of tech. The first place still stays with Apple’s Tim Cook.

Personal moment

Pichai recently shared one of his heartfelt moments while addressing students in a virtual graduation ceremony on June 8, 2020. He revealed that it took a year of his father’s salary to afford a plane ticket to the United States when he had to leave India for Standard University.

“My father spent the equivalent of a year’s salary on my plane ticket to the U.S.  so I could attend Stanford. It was my first time on a plane.”

Where does Sundar Pichai live?

Sundar lives in a modest house and believes in a simple way of living. It might come as a shock to many but he returns to a simple home at Los Altos Hills where he lives with his wife and two kids. In an interview, he said he never tests any new Google prototypes at his home. 

Pc: Mansion Global

While talking about his childhood home in Chennai Pichai told in an interview with The New York Times

“We lived in a kind of modest house, shared with tenants. We would sleep on the living room floor. There was a drought when I was growing up, and we had anxiety. Even now, I can never sleep without a bottle of water beside my bed. Other houses had refrigerators, and then we finally got one. It was a big deal”

Salary/ Net worth of Sundar

Pichai’s net worth is a staggering 1.31 Billion dollars. His annual salary is 2 million dollars on top of which he draws a stock package of 240 million dollars annually. Out of which stock of 90 million dollars is tied to Alphabet’s performance. Pichai also received two stock grants, of 120 million dollars and 30 million dollars, that are not tied to his performance but subject to his continued employment.

Pichai is CEO of the following companies

• ABOUT ALPHABET INC.

Alphabet Inc. is a multinational conglomerate company that was created by the founders of Google that took over everything which was run by Google. It was created in 2015 after Google wished to focus on things related to its mission. It wanted to make its activities “cleaner and more accountable.”

After Alphabet was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, many businesses that were previously owned by Google became subsidiaries of Alphabet. Google also became the subsidiary of Alphabet. Alphabet being the parent company allowed its subsidiary Google to expand logically into domains outside of internet search and advertising. Its founders, Larry and Sergey knew the great potential that technology has. They wanted to evolve Google from a one-trick pony to a big conglomerate. 

Pc: Vc of tech

• Alphabets role

Alphabet competes with different companies that provide online platforms for connecting people with information, digital content, and more. It makes revenue through Google Play, Google Cloud, Chrome Browser, YouTube, and Google Search Engine. It also sells brand advertising, which aims to increase users’ awareness of brands and products.

Furthermore, Alphabet sometimes faces antitrust investigations by different agencies of the government. It is already facing antitrust investigations by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and state attorneys general. 

In the contemporary scenario, Alphabet is a tech giant with nearly $1 trillion worth that makes it the 4th most valuable company by the market in the entire globe. 

• ABOUT GOOGLE

Since its establishment, Google is everywhere. Founded in 1998, this American search engine company is the gift of Sergey Brin and Larry Page to the entire nation. Google lives in the heart of most internet users. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, it offers more than 50 Internet services and products, ranging from mobile phones and computers to email and online document creation. 

Since its foundation, Google has spent large sums of money to secure Internet marketing advantages. In 2003, it spent $102 million to acquire Applied Semantics and $102 million in 2006 for web advertisement business, dMarc Broadcasting.

Pc: Wikipedia

• Some facts about Google

Surprising to note, the first workspace of Google was Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park, California. To another surprise, Wojcicki is now the CEO of YouTube. 

Google today supports more than 100 languages and can translate 37 languages via pictures, 32 via voice, and 27 via real-time video. Voice and video should be in “conversation” and “augmented reality mode” respectively. 

Google made another prolific achievement by entering into the home assistant wars with its Artificial intelligence-powered Google home device. It launched a phone called the Pixel, the first-ever phone made by the company. 2018 was the year when Google completed its 20 years, and Google recorded $100 billion annual sales in its entire history. 

According to Larry and Sergey, the name Google represents the immense amount of information that a search engine has to sift through. Undoubtedly, Google has been successful in serving its users with extensive data and information wherever and whenever possible.

Conclusion

A warm personality and humble mind took Pichai to heights, along with sheer intelligence. It’s like a dream story everyone wants to be the lead-in. The face of Google and Alphabet Sundar Pichai is indeed a powerful personality.