Here's how Sundar Pichai will lead Google as its new CEO

New Delhi: The long-anticipated rise of India-born Sundar Pichai, the SVP of products at Google, to the role of CEO came this week when now-former Google chief Larry Page announced the search giant’s parent company Alphabet.

Alphabet, which Page describes in his Google blog, is mostly a collection of companies of which Google will be the largest part but a bit ‘slimmed down’.

Pichai, 43, who joined Google in 2004 is credited with the company’s successful Chrome browser and Android operating system. He was named overall chief of Google products last fall and had been viewed as the potential successor to Page.

As CEO of the new Google, Pichai will overlook the core Google business and related products including the search engine, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and the Android system. He will continue to focus on Google’s core aims of working on making technology easier for end users and organising users’ information.

Being the new chief, Google’s advancements in machine learning will also be under Pichai’s leadership and bring the power of supercomputers into smartphones.

In a bid to connect the next billion users to Android, a lot of Google’s future and running projects, including Android One, Project Loon, and affordable Chromebooks, will continue their focus on bringing affordable technology and connectivity to the masses.

While Pichai will continue to stream the Google ship towards the transition to mobile and bringing more connectivity, Page will run the new umbrella company Alphabet that will house projects like Calico for health research; Nest based on the IoT; Fiber for high-speed broadband networks in several cities; Google X, the research lab behind Google’s self-driving car venture and the Internet-connected eyewear Glass; and Wing for drone delivery.

Chennai-born Pichai is an IIT Kharagpur alumnus and has attained his degrees as Master of Science from Stanford University and Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Before joining Google, Pichai worked as an engineer at manufacturer Applied Materials, followed by a stint in management consulting at McKinsey & Company.