‘Sundar’ly done, Google! – The rise of Sundar Pichai!

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cupertino, Silicon Valley, Seattle. All these aforementioned companies/locales are connected by quite a few variables and links. While it seems obvious that they’re all either behemoths of the global Tech industry or home to some of them, I refer to a less in-your-face and indirect, though not any less important, link means of binding them all together – Indians.

We Indians are now synonymous with just about any and every top-notch company in the industry – ranging from Microsoft, Facebook to Apple and Google. The fact that we are present in ever-increasing numbers is a tribute to the amazing talent and potential that our citizens have. One only needs to look at the current crop of leaders like Satya Nadella, the recently appointed CEO at Microsoft; Rashmi Sinha, the Founder and CEO at SlideShare.com; Vinod Khosla, the world renowned founder of Khosla Ventures; or Ruchi Sanghvi, the ex- VP(Operations) at Dropbox, in order to gauge just how successful we Indians can be abroad.

Or we can simply look at our very own Sundar Pichai – the newly anointed Second-in-Charge to CEO Larry Page at Google Inc.

This battle-hardened veteran has survived at Google for a bit over a  decade now – a true achievement if one considers the global trends in such big companies. Like a few of his fellow compatriots (such as Nadella), he completed his initial education in one of the premier Indian institutes (IIT-Kharagpur) before pursuing a M.Sc. at Stanford and an MBA at the Wharton School. By the time he joined Google in 2004, he’d already worked at the world-renowned consultancy firm, McKinsey & Company, Inc.

Having said that, at Google, at least initially, he was amidst peers who proved to be just as brilliant and talented as him. Thus, his silent, affable and dedicated demeanor helped him climb up the corporate ladder at Google as well.

One of his first chance encounters at Google, which helped shine the spotlight on him was his work in the Google Search Team. Right up till 2008, there were 2 predominantly prevalent browsers – Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and Mozilla Firefox. Due to the advantage of being a Microsoft product, IE was loaded by default on just about every Windows PC, globally. This gave IE a major monopoly in the market despite having Mozilla breathing down their necks. Pichai turned to be Google’s shining knight in armor in this era by leading the charge for the difficult Google Toolbar project for IE.

Anybody who had used the toolbar in IE will remember it as being the aesthetically unappealing little rectangular box on the top right, which served as the shortcut to Google anything. While it may not have been pleasing to the eye, it served a major purpose of furthering and securing Google’s financial interests at the time, as Microsoft was unwilling to help Google extend their dominance in the extremely profitable search industry. The biggest advantage of the Toolbox, for Google, was that it made Google the de facto search engine on both, IE as well as Mozilla Firefox.

Following the success of the Search Toolbar, Sundar Pichai was deputed to work under the command of the charismatic and brilliant Marissa Mayer (the current CEO of Yahoo, Inc.) while leading the Google Chrome team. Chrome was Google’s attempt to break away from Microsoft’s intimidating tactics and help preserve itself, financially. The team under such able leadership, had a simple motto in mind – improve a user’s experience while they browse the web. They thereby also ensured the user would keep searching on Google. The term ‘runaway success’ would be an understatement for the manner in which Chrome was adopted by users, globally!

Having established his competence as Director of Product Management with the Google Toolbar, Pichai’s prominence in the Googleplex received another boost by leading the development of the ambitious Chrome project. An excerpt from a story, titled The Dawn of the Chrome Age, in Fortune corroborates the same.

Chrome had another, less public mission: to defend the search engine that accounts for most of Google’s $59.8 billion in 2013 revenues and $12.9 billion in profits. Since 2000, Google had distributed a browser toolbar that made its search engine the default on IE and Firefox (The toolbar also allowed Google to track users’ surfing habits). The toolbar — as geeky and benign as it sounds — was a key locus of Google’s combat with Microsoft. Pichai was the group’s leader, and by the mid-aughts he worried that Microsoft would modify IE to make it more difficult, or even impossible, for users to install the toolbar. In a series of sometimes tense conversations with top brass around the time of a major update to IE in October 2006, Pichai argued that Microsoft could threaten a sizable chunk of Google’s business, according to two executives who were there. “It was a doomsday-like scenario,” one of the executives says. Shortly after, Google execs gave Chrome the green light.

Today, Google Chrome is the most used browser worldwide and, ironically, has more than twice the market share than than of the once-mighty IE. Going by recent reports, Google leads the pack while Firefox is the second most used browser. Having said that, Chrome also proved to be the precursor for a host of other products from Google’s stable like Google Chrome Cast, Chrome OS and the Chromebooks. The outright success of Chrome and the Chrome engine also translated into a huge boost for its team. The most apt demonstration of the same was Pichai’s promotion to Vice President and, subsequently,  Senior Vice President (Chrome & Google Apps).

Come March, 2013 and Sundar Pichai got his Christmas gift a li’l bit too early – Page and Co. added the plum Android assignment to Sundar’s portfolio! Andy Rubin decided to relinquish his hold over his brainchild and move onto managing the Robotics division within Google. This catapulted Sundar Pichai into the global spotlight as the race between Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iOS was heating up to unprecedented levels. There’s been no turning back since then. To further cement his position as a global tech leader, he was even rumored to be one of the top contenders to step into Steve Ballmer’s shoes as Microsoft’s CEO. Fortunately or unfortunately, Microsoft chose to support its own home-grown talent, in the form of Satya Nadella, instead.

All this pressure did not, in any manner, seem to get under Sundar Pichai’s skin; though he appeared more tired than previously seen, all the departments reporting to him managed to churn out even better work, if possible.

Further, he has managed to help Google break many a deadlock by navigating the company through treacherous waters – whether they be Korean (Samsung) or others. Moreover, he has helped bring a host of other startups and companies (like Nest) under Google’s impressively extensive ambit whilst also negotiating with titans and SMEs.

Thus, his recent promotion comes as no surprise. A major top management shuffle at Google this week resulted in Larry Page, CEO at Google Inc, entrusting Pichai with the keys to most of his fiefdom by giving him responsibility over almost all of Google’s products whilst he takes a step back to focus on the “bigger picture”. Herein, Pichai will become the one-stop shop for the numerous other Senior VPs leading the crux of Google’s product portfolio. Thus, Search, Maps, Google+, Commerce, Ads and Infrastructure teams will also report to Pichai, along with his current teams at Android, Chrome and Google Apps. Since these departments SVPs reported to Page himself before this management rejig, Sundar Pichai will now act as the intermediary between Page and the numerous SVPs – thereby allowing Page more time to work on projects he deems important.

As a result, almost all of Google’s product divisions will report to Pichai with the exceptions of certain acquisitions/departments like YouTube, Nest, Google X and Calico.

Having read up on all this, I can only conclude that while he’s certainly been in the perfect place at the perfect time, Sundar Pichai also appears to be an extremely affable, talented and dedicated person who thrives in challenging situations and uses them to come out triumphant. Whilst only time will tell as to how Mr Pichai will be in his new capacity as second-in-charge to the ingenious and uber-cool Larry Page, I certainly wish him all the best for this unenviable job. On a signing off note, do check out what former Google product manager  Chris Beckmann, thought of him as is detailed in his post for three things Pichai did better than his peers.