In a major overhaul at Google’s top management, Sundar Pichai, previously the VP of Google’s Chrome, Android and ChromeOS has been promoted to head all the Google products except YouTube. Google CEO, Larry Page has been promoting the Google loyalist for a long time and has voiced serious backing for India born Pichai since long.
Pichai will now directly under him have research, search, Maps, Google+, infrastructure and commerce and ad products. Instead of reporting to Page, all the department executives will be directly reporting to Pichai. The only entity from the portfolio that has been left out is YouTube.
YouTube is headed by Susan Wojcicki, whose garage was used by Sergey Brin and Larry Page to start the search engine in 1998. Wojcicki – sister of Anne Wojcicki, ex wife of Sergey Brin – still reports to Page.
Page now wants to concentrate on the bigger picture and was unable to do with all departments falling under him after Brin who discontinued his daily management in the company to work on ‘Google X’, company’s secret project to develop next level technology like Google Smart Lens, Google’s self driving car, etc.
Pichai joined Google in 2004 as a Product Manager for their search toolbar on the right corner of the web browser. He along with his team launched Chrome browser in 2008 and then there was no looking back. In 2011, he was promoted to Senior VP position where he headed the Gmail and Google Docs department.
There have been speculations that Pichai will be next in line to Page and with this news coming in, the rumour mills are running wild. Interestingly, he was also approached by Twitter to be their product head and also was one of the possible names to be the Microsoft CEO.