Google announces Indian-born Sundar Pichai as its next CEO

In a surprise move Google on Monday announced the appointment of Sundar Pichai as its new CEO. 43 years old Mr. Pichai will become Chief Executive of Google Inc., who will operate under the Alphabet Inc., Google’s newly formed holding company.

In a letter to shareholders, Google’s current CEO Larry Page named Sundar Pichai who will look after Google’s search, advertising and mobile unit. The newly incorporated company Alphabet Inc., to be run by the two co-founders, Lary Page as CEO and Sergey Brin as its President, overseeing company’s every division.

Born in 1972 in Tamil Nadu, Sundar Pichai grew up the son of an electrical engineer. He was fascinated by his father’s career and by gadgets in general and later joined IIT Kharagpur as a Metallurgical Engineering student.

He also holds an M.S. from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, joined Google in 2004. In Google, he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google’s client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS, as well as Google Drive.

He was the main driving force behind Chrome OS and the Chromebook which was released for trial in 2011 and released in public in 2012. Later in 2013 he became the head of Android division which earlier managed by Andy Rubin, co-founder of the company.

On Sundar Pichai’s appointment as the CEO of Google Inc, Lary Page writes, “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.”

His rise within Google tracks closely with another Indian Americans in the IT industry — Hyderabad-born Satya Nadella who became CEO of Microsoft in 2014.