Google woke up last week to a new CEO serving within a new corporate structure, one that makes the search-engine business a subsidiary of a holding company called Alphabet.
Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will now take on leadership of the parent company, leaving Google itself in the hands of 43-year-old Sundar Pichai.
Who is Pichai? Why was he chosen to lead Alphabet’s most important division? Here’s everything you need to know about the search giant’s Indian-born leader.
• You know how Google is the default search engine for many Web browsers? That was Pichai’s work.
This probably doesn’t sound like an exciting development, but making Google the default search engine in Internet Explorer and Firefox was critical in increasing Google’s ubiquity. As Miguel Heft wrote in a 2014 piece on Pichai for Fortune, Pichai’s dogged work on that product helped cement his reputation as a hard worker with the company’s best interests in mind.
Pichai also helped make the case for Google’s own Chrome browser when, in 2006, an update to Internet Explorer reportedly threatened to undercut Google’s position in the browser field. The result was Chrome, a new platform where Google would never have to worry about playing second fiddle to anyone.
• So is everything that happens on Android?
Since then, Pichai has gone on to manage other well-known Google applications, such as Gmail and Maps. It’s his most recent work overseeing Android that really put him on the tech world’s radar.
After taking over the unit in 2013, Pichai has rolled out three new versions of the mobile operating system: Jelly Bean, Kit Kat and Lollipop. Android accounts for 65 percent of the U.S. smartphone market alone.
At a developer conference this year, Pichai announced a slew of new operating systems aimed at everything from cars to thermostats.
“We are taking computing beyond mobile,” he said at the time.
• Now this “nice guy” will be overseeing even more.
Analysts seem to be welcoming Pichai’s ascent to CEO. He seems to have intimate knowledge of seemingly every piece of Google. His affable, soft-spoken manner is a big contrast from some of the eccentric, hard-charging personalities that populate Silicon Valley.
Here’s what Om Malik, the founder of Giga Om, had to say on Twitter about Pichai when he got promoted to senior vice president of products last year:
“So @sundarpichai got a promotion to @google product czar. Congrats & proof nice guys can win. Though rapid reduction of odds of our dinner!”
That promotion has already given us a small glimpse into what Pichai’s Google could look like — one that’s very user-focused. During the keynote at this summer’s Google I/O developers conference, Pichai focused heavily on Google’s potential to connect consumers in emerging technology markets and provide every person on Earth the opportunity to connect with smart devices.
“When we say ‘Be together, not the same,’ that is precisely what we mean,” Pichai said, in front of a world map of Android users. “We want to make sure we leave no one behind. We want to provide Android for users the way they like it, so that it works for them.”
With word of the promotion, more kudos poured in — including from his competitors Nadella and Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as from Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
