Google’s new CEO : Sundar Pichai

Pichai Sundararajan,( better known asSundar Pichai, is a technology executive who is Product Chief at Google Inc . Pichai was announced as the next Chief executive officer of Google on 10 August 2015.

Pichai was born in Chennai, India in 1972 to tamil speaking parents Lakshmi & Regunatha Pichai.His father Regunatha Pichai was a senior electrical engineer for the British conglomerate General Electric Company (GEC) and managed a factory that made electrical components.Sundar grew up in a two-room apartment on 46th street, 7th avenue, in Chennai’s Ashok Nagar locality. He is married and has a daughter.

Educational background

Sundar studied in Jawahar Vidyalaya till Std X and then in Vana Vani Matriculation Higher Secondary School. Pichai earned his degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT KGP) in Metallurgical Engineering.Sundar’s professors at IIT recommended he pursue a PhD at Stanford University, but he decided to pursue MS and MBA degrees instead. He holds an MS fromStanford University in Material Sciences and Engineering and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania,where he was named a Siebel Scholar and a Palmer Scholar.

Pichai worked in engineering and product management atApplied Materials and in management consulting atMcKinsey & Company.

Google

Pichai joined Google in 2004, where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google’s client software products, including Google Chrome andChrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive. He went on to oversee the development of different apps like Gmail and Google Maps.On 19 November 2009, Pichai gave a demonstration of Chrome OS and theChromebook was released for trial and testing in 2011 and released in public in 2012 . On 20 May 2010, he announced the open-sourcing of the new video codec VP8 by Google, and introduced the new video format WebM.

On 13 March 2013, Pichai added Android to the Google products he oversees. Android was formerly managed byAndy Rubin. He was rumored to be one of the contenders for the CEO position of Microsoft in 2014.

He was a Director of Jive Software from April 2011 to 30 July 2013.

Pichai was announced as the CEO of Google on 10 August 2015 after previously being appointed Product Chief by current CEO Larry Page on 24 October 2014.  He will step into the new position upon the completion of the formation of Alphabet Inc., the new conglomerate for the Google company family.