America
S is for Sundar as Google becomes Alphabet
By
By Arun Kumar Washington, Aug 11
Chennai born, IIT
Kharagpur-educated Sundar Pichai has become the head of a "slightly
slimmed down Google", with the search giant in a major corporate
restructuring forming an umbrella company called Alphabet.
Taking
over the operational management of Google's search, YouTube and
financial-services units, Pichai, 43, becomes only the third chief
executive of the company after Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and
co-founder Larry Page.
With the change, the company's founders Sergey Brin and Page will run Alphabet -- Page as CEO and Brin as president.
Many
other companies will operate under Alphabet acting as the parent
holding company, including Google, a company focused on health efforts
called Life Sciences, and a company focused on longevity called Calico.
"This
new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the
extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google," said Google chief
executive Page in a blog post titled "G is for Google" on Monday.
"A key part of this is Sundar Pichai," he said.
"Sundar
has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!)
for quite some time now, and I've been tremendously enjoying our work
together."
"He has really stepped up since October of last year,
when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our internet
businesses," Page wrote.
Pichai, who came to the US in 1993 after
getting a BTech from IIT-Kharagpur, earned an MS from Stanford
University and an MBA from Wharton School of Business.
He has
worked at Google -- which was founded in 1998 -- since it went public in
2004, most recently as the senior vice president of product.
He
is the second person of Indian origin to head a major IT company after
Hyderabad-born Satya Nadella who became CEO of software giant Microsoft
in February 2014, succeeding Steve Ballmer.
With his elevation,
Pichai joins the big league of Indian-origin CEOs in at least half a
dozen Fortune 500 companies, including Indra Nooyi at Pepsi, Ajay Banga
at Mastercard, and Sanjay Mehrotra at SanDisk.
Pichai will lead
Google with users in mind, said a report in the New York Times
suggesting he "owes his new job to his success in making Google products
easier to use and thus more popular".
He "made a name for himself early as a product manager, working on high-profile efforts like Chrome, the company's web browser".
"Chrome
grew like a weed, exploding from a single-digit percentage of market
share to become the most widely used browser across desktops and mobile
devices in the world," it said citing StatCounter.
Google will continue to focus on internet products. Android, YouTube, search and ads will remain part of Google Inc.
Other
departments spinning off into their own sub-companies include the
Google X lab working on driverless cars, Google Glass and drone
delivery.
Google Ventures and Google Capital will also become independent Alphabet companies.
The
Alphabet companies will retain their current leadership. Nest will be
led by Tony Fadell, Sidewalk Labs by Dan Doctoroff, and Calico by Arthur
Levinson. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki will now report to Pichai.
Brin
will continue to head up Google X in addition to his role as president
of Alphabet. Eric Schmidt will become Alphabet's executive chairman.
"We
are not intending for this to be a big consumer brand with related
products-the whole point is that Alphabet companies should have
independence and develop their own brands," said Page.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])