Google’s announcement on Monday that it would be subsumed within a new parent company called Alphabet had a bonus for people of Indian-origin world over: the company’s head of Products and Engineering, Chennai-born Pichai Sundararajan, was anointed the CEO of the new, “slimmed down” Google.
Underscoring his confidence in the man known as Sundar Pichai (43), Google boss Larry Page said of the restructuring in the company he co-founded with Sergey Brin, “A key part of this is Sundar Pichai.”
Mr. Pichai, who is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur and Stanford University, had “really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our Internet businesses,” Mr. Page said in a blog post, adding that he and Mr. Brin were “super excited about his progress and dedication to the company.”
They may well have reason to feel fortunate that Mr. Pichai is the man to head their $66-billion revenue, $16-billion profit, company– by most accounts he combines a deep passion for engineering excellence with a rare managerial quality of attracting the best talent into the teams he works with.
