The article comes from WeChat public account: Sina Technology (ID: techsina) , author: cat t in Silicon Valley, from the title figure: Oriental IC
“Since we founded Google, no one has been more reassuring than him, and no one is better suited to lead Google and Alphabet than him.” In a public email announcing the resignation, Google and the two co-founders In this way, they evaluated the new family member Sandal Pichai (Sundar Pichai) .
The praise is so beautiful, there is no way to add it. Google ’s parent company Alphabet announced last week that the two co-founders Larry Page (Larry Page) and Brin (Sergey Brin) resigned as CEO and CEO of Alphabet, but continued to stay on the company’s board of directors; while Google CEO Sandal Pichai also served as CEO of Alphabet.
In 2012 and 2013, I interviewed Pichai twice at the Google I / O Conference, and had a direct experience of face-to-face communication. He has been engaged in technology media for ten years and interviewed many executives of industry giants, but his first impression is very special.
He is thin, tall and slender. (Maybe it’s related to being vegetarian) , his voice is very soft, and it’s a bit slow; in the face of the media, his expression is even somewhat Shy, without the deliberate vitality and grand voice of other professional managers. The picture above is from Pichai in 2012.
Why is the second child retired?
This personnel change also means the end of a founder’s era. In 1998, two Stanford students Page and Brin co-founded Google, an Internet search engine.
In the following two decades, Google ’s territory has gradually expanded from a simple Internet search engine to almost all Internet services. Today, it controls 88% of the global search share, 85% of mobile platform share, and annual revenue. More than 136 billion U.S. dollars, with a market value of 930 billion U.S. dollars.
The former “second Google” has also become middle-aged, and their net worth exceeds 110 billion US dollars. Now the 46-year-olds decided to retreat in advance and fully delivered Alphabet’s huge business portfolio to 47-year-old Pichai, including Google, Android, Chrome, Youtube, Waymo, Fiber, Loon and many other businesses.
Pichai’s role is just super steward. Google’s final say remains firmly in the hands of Page and Brin. With the setting of super voting rights, although Page and Brin only hold 11% of Google’s shares, they control up to 51% of the voting rights. This means, As long as the two of them are willing, they can go over the board to decide everything about Google.
In fact, Page and Brin were semi-retired years agoThe shift is also within market expectations. Although the two are firmly in control of Google’s right to speak, they are not the perfect management enthusiasts who control all details like Jobs; on the contrary, Page and Brin are not particularly keen on daily management and are even reluctant to show up for the company.
In 2001, Page and Brin approached the former Novell chairman and CEO Schmidt as CEO of Google at the suggestion of investors, giving Schmidt the management job for ten years. Although Page re-appointed Google’s CEO in 2011, he rarely appears in the public eye, because he has repeatedly missed Google I / O conferences for physical reasons. And Brin’s work interest is more on the future technology of Google X Labs.
In 2015, they restructured Google and established Alphabet, the controlling parent company. Pichai was responsible for the most critical Internet business, and the two of them faded out of their daily management duties. It can be seen that the two founders are satisfied with Pichai’s work performance in the past four years, and they can rest assured that he has entrusted the entire Alphabet to him.
In the past two years, Page not only declined the interview with President Trump ’s Internet business leaders, but also rejected the subpoena of the US House of Representatives. He did not attend the online supervision hearing, which allowed Pichai to accept a person for nearly four hours The cross-examination caused strong dissatisfaction in the American political circle. The House even deliberately left an empty chair to humiliate Page, who should have been there. Google is facing heavy antitrust regulatory pressure, but after the two retired, they don’t need to bother to show up for this.
In the words of (Greenstein) , a Harvard Business School professor who has studied Google for a long time, described Page and Brin as inadvertent. Successful entrepreneurs even wanted to sell Google early. Their personality may be more willing to be a university professor and work in the laboratory (rather than managing a business giant company) .
Following the shift from Pichai, Stanford computer doctors Page and Brin in 1995 suddenly visited the Stanford University campus, knocked on the doors of the classrooms where they had studied in the past, and exchanged cordially with their teachers and brothers who were more than 20 years apart. Maybe this is the life they long for.
Unexpected takeover of the Android department
If Pecs and Brin are retiring in desperation, but for Pichai, an Indian immigrant, this is the pinnacle of his career. Beginning in 2013, Pichai, who has entered a year of no doubt, has gradually ushered in the heyday of his career. Starting from an unobtrusive departmental executive at Google, he has gradually taken over the internet with a market value of more than $ 900 billion Empire Google.
It is worth mentioning that in 2014 and 2015, Satya Nadella (Satya Nadella) and Pichai Indian immigrants have taken over the world’s two largest Internet giants Microsoft and Google. Under the operation of the two, the market value of the two giants has tripled, and the combined market value has now exceeded US $ 2 trillion.
Pichai entered Google’s core executive level in 2011. In 2011, after regaining Google ’s CEO, Page made major adjustments to Google’s management, divided into seven business units, and Pichai became senior vice president of Chrome business. Marshal Meyer, the beauty executive who was in charge of the search business previously, was marginalized in this reorganization He left the post as Yahoo CEO and laid a foreshadowing.
The heads of the other six departments are: Andy Lu, the head of the Android department.Guest (Andy Rubin) , Susan Wotsky, head of advertising department (Susan Wojcicki, later in charge of YouTube) , search business leader Alan Eustace (Alan Eustace) , social business Vic Gondola (Vic Gundotra) and Youtube leader Saraka Kamanga (Salar Kamangar) , head of the business department Jeff Huobo (Jeff Huber) .
At the time, among Google ’s top seven business executives, Pichai’s qualifications and fame were not the highest, and media exposure was also the lowest. However, this low-key executive overwhelmed several other senior and even founding veterans, and became the successor of the two Google founders. Of the other six leaders, only two remain at Google, and the others have already left.
Actually, Pichai took over the Android division was an accident. In 2013, Rubin, known as the father of Android, was forced to resign due to a scandal that sexually assaulted a female subordinate. In order not to affect Google’s reputation, Page reduced the scandal and apparently allowed Rubin to take charge of Google’s new business. In fact, he gave him a decent opportunity to leave, and he also provided up to $ 90 million in termination compensation.
That’s it, Pichai managed both Android and C in 2013hrome two departments. In 2014, Pichai became the operation leader of all Google’s Internet products, taking over the core product teams of search, YouTube, Chrome, Android, and maps. In 2015, after Page reorganized Alphabet, Pichai officially became the CEO of the subsidiary Google, overseeing all Internet business. In three years, Pichai became Google ’s housekeeper.
Obviously, Pichai’s performance satisfies Page and Brin, at least the performance and stock price are visible. In 2014, Google ’s revenue was only 66 billion U.S. dollars, and in 2018 it was 136 billion U.S. dollars. When Pichai was named Google ’s CEO in 2015, Alphabet ’s market value was still 300 billion U.S. dollars. Four years later, Alphabet ’s market value had reached 930 billion U.S. dollars. US dollars.
As he becomes CEO of Google ’s parent company Alphabet, other new business units will also report to him, including self-driving car Waymo, cutting-edge technology laboratory Google X, smart home Nest, fiber optic business Fiber, Investment business GV, life sciences business Calico, balloon network business Loon and so on. In just six years, Pichai took over the entire Google Internet Empire.
Why among so many senior executives and founding veterans, Page and Brin chose Pichai, the lowest-key personality, to take over Google? He’s not an exaggerated person. The reason why he has been promoted to the highest level all along is his actual performance.
Microsoft Raid Verifies Peggy’s Eyes
First, briefly review Pichai’s growth experience.
Pichai was born in Madurai, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, southern India in 1972. He belongs to the noble Brahmin of the Indian caste (Brahmin, Nadella is also Brahmin) ; yes, Pichai is as vegetarian as orthodox Brahmins. But Pichai’s family is not rich, and he did n’t have it at home Refrigerator; his father is an electrical engineer, and his mother is a stenographer.
After acquiring a degree in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and his future wife, Pichai came to Stanford University to study mathematics and semiconductor physics. In 1997, Pichai, a 25-year-old Stanford graduate, joined Applied Materials as a product manager at a semiconductor company. And won two honors representing excellent students: (Siebel Scholar and Palmer Scholar) .
In 2002, Pichai, who graduated from business school, joined McKinsey, a top consulting company, to manage management consulting. On April Fool’s Day in 2004, the same day that Google released Gmail, Pichai joined Google as a product manager. His first project is to continue to develop the Google Toolbar Toolbar (launched at the end of 2000) , providing a convenient search tool in Microsoft Internet Explorer .
Picchai ’s success has gradually attracted the attention of Google executives, but the event that really earned him high-level appreciation occurred in 2006. Pichai reported to the then CEO Schmidt, requesting the development of a Google exclusive browser, but Schmidt took into account that Microsoft and Mozilla already have absolute advantages in this field, and whether Google can successfully hold in this field Skeptical.
Pichai went directly to Page and Brin and explained to them what the exclusive browser means to Google. In his view, Microsoft’s intention to enter the Internet business is already very obvious. If Google does not have its own browser, it can easily be set by Microsoft through the browser.I was caught off guard.
In April 2006, the two founders agreed to give Pichai resources to lead the browser team. Although Schmidt is the CEO, the people who really make the decision are the two founders. In 2005, Page and Brin bought the startup Android for $ 50 million and decided to build a mobile platform. Schmidt learned of the news only after a trading decision.
On October 18, 2006, a major industry news verified Pichai’s forward-looking vision, and even made Pecs and Brin look at Pichai. That day, in the newly released IE 7 browser, Microsoft suddenly changed the default search engine from Google to its own Windows Live Search. Microsoft began planning to enter the Internet search business, and Nadella was the head of the search business at the time.
Microsoft just changed the default setting and completely let Google know completely. Former Google engineer who worked on the Chrome project from 2006 to 2008, Jeffrey Nelson (Jeffrey Nelson) recalls that Google internally took this day Called Doomday (End Day) . As a direct source, he denied Fortune Magazine’s previous report that Pichai asked for the development of the Chrome browser after the Microsoft raid. In fact, the Chrome browser was approved in April of that year.
How big is it against Google? The impact is greater than Apple’s replacement of Google Maps with Apple Maps in iOS 6. In 2006, Google had roughly 400 million users, and 65% of its traffic came from Internet Explorer. The absence of a default engine identity means that Google may lose nearly 300 million potential users.
Pichai’s core role is undoubtedly revealed at this time. He was in charge of two major software, Google Toolbar and Google Desktop, which were pre-installed to interface with OEMs; these two originally inconspicuous software became the cornerstone of Google’s fight against Microsoft. Google popped out of the window through these software and asked users to change the default search engine back to Google.
The end of the world has become a false alarm. In this regard, I would like to thank Netscape for its previous sacrifice. After encountering antitrust lawsuits, Microsoft could not directly and arbitrarily destroy its competitors through its dominant position in desktop systems as it did nine years ago. On the other hand, Microsoft’s Windows Live Sear 2006