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Sundar Pichai was born in Madras (now Chennai), India, and showed an early interest in technology. He earned a bachelor’s degree in metallurgy from India Institute of Technology Kharagpur, a master’s in engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
When did Sundar Pichai join Google?
Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004 as the head of product management and development. He worked on the Google Toolbar, which allowed MicrosoftInternet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browser users to easily access Google’s search feature.
What roles has Sundar Pichai held at Google and Alphabet?
Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google in 2015 and CEO of Alphabet in 2019. He has held roles such as vice president of product development, senior vice president, and product chief.
Sundar Pichaiis an Indian-born American executive who was CEO of both Google, Inc. (2015– ), and its holding company, Alphabet, Inc. (2019– ).
Early life
As a boy growing up in Madras (now Chennai), Pichai slept with his brother in the living room of the cramped family home, but his father, an electrical engineer at the British multinational GEC, saw that the boys received a good education. At an early age Pichai displayed an interest in technology and an extraordinary memory, especially for telephone numbers. After earning a bachelor’s degree in metallurgy in 1993 and a silver medal at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, he was awarded a scholarship to study at Stanford University, where he earned a master’s degree in engineering and materials science in 1995. He remained in the United States thereafter, working briefly for Applied Materials (a supplier of semiconductor materials) and then earning an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2002.
Google & Alphabet
Following a short stint at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, Pichai joined Google in 2004 as the head of product management and development. He initially worked on the Google Toolbar, which enabled those using the MicrosoftInternet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox Web browsers to easily access Google’s search engine. Over the next few years, he was directly involved in the development of Google’s own browser, Chrome, which was released to the public in 2008. That same year Pichai was named vice president of product development, and he began to take a more-active public role. By 2012 he was a senior vice president, and two years later he was made product chief over both Google and the Androidsmartphoneoperating system.
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Pichai gives a speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
In 2011 Pichai reportedly was aggressively pursued for employment by microblogging service Twitter, and in 2014 he was touted as a possible CEO for Microsoft, but in both instances he was granted large financial packages to remain with Google. He also was known to have helped negotiate Google’s $3.2 billion deal to acquire Nest Labs in 2014. Therefore, when Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced the creation of Alphabet Inc., in August 2015, it came as no surprise to industry insiders that Pichai was named CEO of Google, which was reorganized as a subsidiary. In December 2019 he also was named CEO of Alphabet, replacing Page, who stepped down.
As CEO, Pichai strongly supported Alphabet’s artificial intelligence initiatives, leading the company to breakthroughs in voice recognition, image processing, self-driving vehicles (Waymo), and the creation of Google’s generative AI chatbotGoogle Gemini. Pichai oversaw numerous other initiatives, including the launch of the Pixel smartphone line; Google Nest (rebranded from Google Home), which includes routers and thermostats; Google Workspace, which includes applications such as Gmail and Google Docs; Google Meet; Wing Aviation, a drone delivery service; and Google Cloud.
