© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, reacts during a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and senior officials and CEOs of American and Indian companies in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., J
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Alphabet (NASDAQ:) CEO Sundar Pichai, who testified on Monday in Washington to defend Google against allegations it broke antitrust law, replaced company co-founder Larry Page as CEO of parent Alphabet in 2019 as regulatory concern about Big Tech was heading toward a fever pitch.
Here are some key facts about Pichai:
* Born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India on June 10, 1972
* An alumnus of Wharton business school, Stanford University and Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
* Worked at McKinsey & Co before Google
* Was hired by Google as a product engineer in April 2004
* Projects included using the URL bar to search as well as scaling up Google’s Chrome browser, which launched in 2008, as a way to attract more queries to Google
* Pichai took over the Android business from that group’s founder, Andy Rubin, managing the market-leading smartphone operating system globally
* He is also credited with the development of some of the company’s most successful cloud-based apps, such as Gmail
* In 2014, then-Chief Executive Page put Pichai, one of his key lieutenants, in charge of the internet company’s search, maps, Google+, commerce, advertising and infrastructure. The move was done to give Page fewer direct reports and product units to oversee.
* Pichai became CEO of Google in 2015 and all of Alphabet in 2019.
* Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has a long list of other businesses. These include maps and Nest smart thermostats. Since Pichai became CEO, it acquired Fitbit (NYSE:) in 2021 and the security company Mandiant in 2022.
* In February, Pichai introduced the artificial intelligence service Bard.
* Pichai’s total compensation was about $226 million in 2022, more than 800 times the median employee’s pay, the company said in a securities filing in April.
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