Sundar Pichai, when he set foot on American soil at the age of 23, thought of all the dreams of elite Indian students: he had finally arrived in the land of Silicon Valley, the ideal world of engineers, managers, and successful technology entrepreneurs; But the difference between his old and new society soon took on a different color.

It wasn’t just that the country, dubbed the Land of Immigrants, was even more advanced than the pictures in magazines and the dreams of its friends; Rather, the first thing that surprised him was the very high cost of living and prices that could not be compared to his native land.

At that time, Pichai never thought that 24 years later he would hold the record for the highest salary among CEOs of American companies. He did not even guess that one day he will become a role model for the youth of India. Join us to review the eventful life of Sundar Pichai, the longest-serving CEO of Google and Alphabet.

Sundar Pichai was born on June 10, 1972, in Mudarai, Tamil Nadu, India, in an educated and intellectual family that was financially in the middle class of society. Back then, “middle class” in India meant living in a small two-bedroom apartment, without the basic amenities such as a television and even a simple refrigerator that are taken for granted today.

Sundar’s mother Lakshmi was a stenographer or stenographer before giving up her career for the sake of her children. His father, Regonata, was an electronic engineer who worked for an English company that manufactures electrical components called General Electric Company (GEC). Father’s stories about the factory and the events that happened there, the tools that were produced, and the obstacles that existed in the industrial world, slowly shaped Sundar’s mentality of the future world.

Sundar completed his high school at Jawaharlal Vidyalaya School in Chennai. Later, his teachers would mention his inquisitive nature and his willingness to delve deeply into subjects that piqued his interest in any way.

One of the high school teachers recognized Sundar’s potential and tried to teach him critical thinking, a methodical approach to solving problems, and striving for excellence. With the support of this teacher, Sundar learned the importance of perseverance and flexibility in life, and his personality and professional ethics were founded from here.

Pichai’s drive to succeed in academia led him to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur; where he obtained his degree in metallurgical engineering and was selected as the top student of the year. His brilliant academic record and distinctive approach to problem solving earned him a scholarship to Stanford University.

Pichai later said in an interview with Bloomberg about his childhood and adolescence:

Many families like ours have experienced the digital divide and inequality of access to technology in developing societies. This flow makes me more committed to the development of global solutions for connections and internet communication.

As a teenager, Pichai loved football, cricket (India’s most popular sport), and also chess, and wrote his first computer program for playing chess.

Pichai was going to get his PhD from Stanford University, but then he gave up and after getting his master’s degree, he went to Silicon Valley to try his luck for a career at a prestigious company.

He later said: “I think I disappointed my father by abandoning my doctorate.” But there were many issues. First, I went to Silicon Valley for Silicon! This was where semiconductors were manufactured and I wanted to put what I had learned into practice. Of course, my financial situation was not unaffected by this decision. “I had to find a suitable job.”

Pichai worked throughout his studies and sent some of his earnings to his family in India.

In April 2004, Pichai participated in a Google job interview. This day coincided exactly with the day that Gmail service was introduced to the world. Sundar, like most people, thought the idea of ​​a free email service was Google’s April fool.

Pichai successfully passed the interview and started working in this company as the product manager of the “Google Search Bar” department. The goal of the project was to make it easier for users to access the Google search engine, without having to open the web page every time. Pichai’s success in delivering the final results paved the way for his next two consecutive projects: Google Gears and Google Pack.

Google was a six-year-old company in 2004, setting its sights on developing “search-centric” products. At that time, Google Chrome didn’t exist yet, and one of Pichai’s bold actions was to propose a browser that could replace Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google at the time, did not agree with this; Because he thought that Google was still too young to enter the web browser market.

Google’s board of directors appointed a team of experts led by Sundar Pichai to develop a new browser called Google Chrome. In 2008, Pichai was promoted to the position of vice president of Google, and Chrome was introduced to the world in the same year. Eric Schmidt later admitted that although he was an early opponent of the development of the new browser, he was very excited when he saw Pichai’s first design.

Chrome quickly gained acceptance among users that few expected. A few years later, there were few people who did not prefer this browser to its Microsoft counterpart. A year after the introduction of the browser, Pichai also introduced the Chrome operating system, which, of course, remained at the level of Chromebook educational laptops, but made Pichai one of the main members of the Google company.

Pichai remained as CEO until 2012 and was responsible for the development of Chrome and its applications. After a decade of fruitful and profitable activity, another turning point in his professional life came, which caught the eye of all technology activists: Pichai was recognized as the most influential man of the year in the world of technology and as Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android operating system, Responsible for managing and monitoring all Android products.

Android upgrade entered a new phase with the introduction of Android 1.0. At the same time, Sundar Pichai was the senior supervisor of Google Maps, Google Drive, and Gmail projects.

What made me stay at Google all these years was that our products worked everywhere. It didn’t matter if you were a child in an Indonesian village or a student of the best university in the world. Google Maps, Gmail, and YouTube work the same for everyone. At Google, we were all thinking about scalability. To be able to communicate with all people and make technology available to them. This is what I wanted to do in my life.

Google became a fully organized company under the management of Sundar Pichai. Android developed alongside iOS and took root in the smartphone industry. Google’s search engine algorithms continued to improve, and the company made its way into the fields of machine learning, augmented reality, and e-commerce.

Pichai played a key role in the development of Google’s cloud computing services. Many Silicon Valley experts thought he was putting too much energy into the infrastructure of artificial intelligence services and that products like Google Assistant would soon expire. But again, the value of Pichai’s foresight in this field became clear several years later: when the artificial intelligence renaissance took the technology market by storm.

As Pichai’s first major achievement, Chrome became the undisputed king of the crowded web browser market, but Pichai’s trajectory continued to be unpredictable.

“He recruited, mentored and retained a great team,” says former Google product manager Chris Beckman. Sundar Pichai’s team was made up of the best people and achieved a reputation similar to that of Google’s search engine engineering team.

Pichai focused primarily on investing in and developing self-driving cars, biodiversity, and sustainable technologies. Then he adjusted the company’s revenue generation and profitability strategies and expanded the artificial intelligence department at the same time. According to Forbes, at the end of 2019, with a total income and bonus of 280.6 million dollars, he was ranked first in the list of the highest-paid executives of American companies.

Pichai has been subpoenaed several times by US government officials to clarify Alphabet’s policies. Of course, earlier in 2018, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee had criticized Sundar Pichai as the highest executive of Google regarding the company’s plans in the field of protecting user privacy and relations with China.

Two years later, Pichai appeared before Congress as an Alphabet executive to testify about corporate antitrust concerns. The flow of US government surveillance and complaints surrounding Google’s monopolistic tactics continues to this day.

Many employees at the company were upset by Gebro’s firing, and Gebro said in an interview that Sundar Pichai and other Google executives had created a hostile work environment. Pichai finally apologized for the way the company treated Gabru and wrote to his employees:

The continuation of the year 2023 was devoted to the development of artificial intelligence chatbots, and after that, Jumnai and dealing with their challenges. Sundar Pichai said in 2016 that Google will one day become the leading company in the field of artificial intelligence; But with competitors such as OpenAI and Microsoft, it will not be easy to make such a wish come true.

Google announced that it will add its artificial intelligence to all Google Workspace tools, including search, Gmail, Docs, and other products.

One of the most important barriers that stand in the way of the development of large language models of Google and other artificial intelligence companies is the copyright issue of the resources that are used to train these models.

On the other hand, Google Jamna had other problems. In early 2024, Pichai was forced to put the instrument’s image-generating capability on hold after people complained that the model produced inaccurate historical photos of US presidents.

Pichai sent a memo to his staff confirming Jamnai’s objections. He also said to the users:

Although Sundar Pichai is not the only Indian-born CEO of the world’s biggest tech companies, the people of this country consider him a true hero. Pichai has repeatedly reminded me that the two main priorities of his professional life are Google and India. Since he was appointed CEO of Google, he has traveled to his home country almost every year and met with government officials, students, and entrepreneurs.

At his conferences in India, Pichai usually talks about India’s digital transformation and economic development, the importance of promoting entrepreneurship and the opportunities and challenges of technology, as well as ways to realize a digital workforce in the country.