Sundar Pichai, who was serving as the senior vice president of products for Google Inc, will be the CEO of the search engine giant, the company announced Monday.
Born in Chennai, 43-year-old Pichai has contributed to many products of Google, including Chrome browser and Android mobile software.
Pichai was appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer as Google is creating a holding company, Alphabet, which will be run by Google co-founder Larry Page, who is impressed with Pichai's "progress and dedication to the company".
"I feel very fortunate to have someone as talented as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google and this frees up time for me to continue to scale our aspirations," Page wrote in a blog post, AP reports.
"I have been spending quite a bit of time with Sundar, helping him and the company in any way I can, and I will of course continue to do that," he wrote further.
As the CEO of Google, Pichai will oversee some of the important products of the company, including its search engine, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and the Android system.
In October last year, when Pichai was handed over additional responsibilities to oversee products such as search, maps, Google+, commerce, advertising and infrastructure, IBTimes India had predicted that Pichai will soon be promoted as the CEO of the search engine giant.
Pichai's life and career
Pichai (aka Pichai Sundararajan) was born in the capital city of Tamil Nadu, Chennai, in 1972. He did his bachelors in metallurgical engineering from IIT-Kharagpur. He went on to pursue his M.Sc from Stanford University and later completed his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was awarded the titles of Siebel Scholar and Palmer Scholar.
Pichai started his career as an engineer working for manufacturer Applied Materials, after which he joined McKinsey & Company where he worked in management consulting.
Pichai, who is reportedly soft-spoken, joined Google Inc in 2004. He oversaw product management and later, led the team working on the development of apps such as Gmail and Google Maps.
He headed the team that worked on the Chrome browser, which was launched in 2008, and also worked on several search products, including Google Toolbar, Desktop Search, Gadgets and Google Gears. He also oversaw the development of Computer Operating System.
Previously, Pichai served as the Senior Vice President of Android, Chrome & Apps at Google Inc. He was also the Member of Board of Advisors at Ruba. He also served as a Director of Jive Software Inc. from March 2011 to 30 July, 2013, according to Bloomberg.
In September 2014, Pichai launched his pet-project Android One in India, aiming to provide affordable computing to all households.
Pichai is married to Anjali Pichai and has a daughter and a son.
