Who is Sundar Pichai, the millionaire behind Google Chrome and the new CEO of parent company Alphabet?
India-born Sundar Pichai once convinced Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to build a browser – it became Google Chrome – this week they gave him the keys to the Alphabet castle
Sundar Pichai first took the helm at Google in 2015. This week, Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced that Pichai would be taking over as Alphabet CEO, as both Page and Brin are stepping down from their leadership roles at the company.
Until December 2, Larry Page was still CEO of Google's parent company, Alphabet, and Pichai had the incredibly important job of making sure that the company's core businesses and cash cow – Google Search – stayed strong. Now, he's CEO of both Google and Alphabet.
Page and Brin co-founded Google in 1998. They announced the change in a letter, dated December 3, saying that Alphabet and Google “no longer need two CEOs and a president.”
So who is Pichai and how did he scale the ranks to get one of the most important jobs at one of the most important companies in the world?
It is always good to work with people who make you feel insecure about yourself. That way, you will constantly keep pushing your limits
Pichai, whose full name is actually Pichai Sundararajan, grew up in Chennai, India. His father was as an electrical engineer and his mother a stenographer before he and his younger brother were born. The family wasn't wealthy, and the boys slept together in the living room of their two-room apartment.
The making of a tech titan
Early on, Pichai had a talent for remembering numbers, which his family realised when he could recall every phone number he had ever dialled on their rotary phone. He will still sometimes show off his memorisation skills at meetings.
After becoming interested in computers – the first software program he wrote was a chess game – Pichai studied metallurgical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. His success there won him a scholarship to Stanford.
Moving to California was a huge leap. “I always loved technology and while growing up I had dreams of Silicon Valley,” Pichai said in a recent interview. “I used to read about it, hear stories from my uncle.”
When Pichai got to America in 1993, he couldn’t believe how expensive everything was (a backpack cost US$60!). He also missed his girlfriend, Anjali. The two eventually got married, and now have a son, Kiran, and daughter, Kavya.
