Sundar Pichai

Over the past quarter century, one of the most significant companies in the world has been Google. It has led today not by its founders, but by a personal who started in two thousand and four, rose up the ranks, and is now the CEO.

His name is Sundar Pashai.

I sat down with him recently and the Google officers of New York to talk about the future of Google and also importance of artificial intelligence to the company. When you joined Google, the alphabet hadn't yet existed. It was two thousand and four. The company was started in nineteen ninety eight, I believe. So how big was the company in two thousand and four?

Two thousand and four, we were about just totally one thousand people, I think, but we are growing pretty fast. Yeah, we were about thousand people.

So when you why did you come to the company in two thousand four?

Who attracted you to come here?

A small, little search engine company?

Search wasn't that big a deal then?

Probably I was using the product from the outside, and you know, I clearly noticed how much better it was as a product. And I was a what I call a power user of the product, right, and I had a lot of ideas in my head on how the product could be made better. But more importantly, you know, I gaining access to technology made a big difference in my life, and so I always tell the power of

With respect to the company today, you obviously have had some legal challenges. One legal challenge by the federal government. They charged that your I guess your search engine was I hate to use the word monopolistic, but I guess they probably used that word. It's running the company more complicated because you have this lawsuit you have to deal with.

With our scale and size, I think scrutiny is inevitable, and you know we've always engaged very respect fully and responsibly through these processes. Even in the current current ruling, I mean, the ruling goes to great length to point out that we have achieved success by innovating. Our competitors acknowledge that we had the best searching search engine in the world. We definitely disagree with the ruling but it'd

So were you surprised that the US government after they won that case, they filed another case against you? Were you surprised that that happened? And you expect that'll go on for a while too.

This one is not to do with our advertising on our search engine. The other one is we provide an ad platform for publishers to run advertising on their sites, and so we provide a platform, and so this is focused on that part of our business.

Part of our business.

Again, we are you know, that case is just getting underway, so I expected to take take some time. And you know, but look where we can figure out you know, constructive solutions. I think we will where we think it really harms our ability to innovate on behalf of our users or uh, you know, we are going to be vigorous in defending ourselves and it's going to take time for it to play out.

Silicon Valley has been enamored with artificial intelligence AI. Everybody thinks that they need to have AI starts, attach their name or or be a leader in it. Chat GBT got out to the public first, but you've been working on it for a long time, maybe before open AI did. Are you going to go more public with what you're doing in artificial intelligence? And how is artificial intelligence going to change your company?

I mean it is. It's been a big focus for us as a company. One of the first things I did as CEOs to pivot the company to be focused on AI AI first. You know, we've developed a lot of the core underlying technology, a lot of its powers search today. So part of what has helped us keep search about everyone else is by incorporating a lot of AI in how we do search. The current moment around generator AI is what's captured people's imagination. We are incorporating

So it's an exciting time today.

If I want to do a search, I suppose I look your name up on a search and it'll come up with your bio and so forth, and then maybe articles written about you will appear on this and then maybe those articles will guide me to let's say, an advertising site or something.

But with AI, some.

People are worried that your AI will basically have all the information, and therefore they won't they the advertisers won't have anybody coming to their site any longer.

So how do you address that issue?

Today we've past twenty five years. People come to Google because they're not only looking for what they want, but they enjoy the richness and the diversity of what exists on the bat right, So people are clicking through and going to a lot of sites. That is important for us.

So advertisers are they concerned that somehow the AI search function you have might get them bypass.

The way we think about it is users, when they come looking for information, there is an aspect of it where they're looking for commercial information. It's naturally in the user's intent, and when their intent is commercial, you know, advertising turns out to be very very relevant information. There was a core insight behind how we monetize Google Search that adds a valuable information when users have a commercial intent.

So Google is more or less the search engine part of your company. Alphabet has other parts. Let me ask you about some of them.

I could, so maybe if I could step back. You know, Google has many businesses beyond search, right, So you have Google Search, but think about Google Cloud, where we provide software at all enterprises. It's YouTube, there is YouTube and so on. There's Android and so on. So think of Google as our you know, Internet related businesses. Okay, and then we're using technology still. But we have other long term bets. Weimo was a bet on autonomous self driving

Okay, So Waimo is a long term bet, I assume, But have you been in one of those cars.

All the time?

You know?

I make sure to go periodically and take a ride in Wemo is phenomenal the progress I've seen every six months. The last time I was in the car, the third time I was in it. You know, I was on my phone in the back seat. Once in a while, I tell myself, you know, look, I'm in a self driving car. It's amazing even how people sometimes look in Some people are curious, some people are kind of.

Like they used to it. You wear a helmet when you're in there. Your confect.

Not at all, you know, quite the contrary. It's it's pretty relaxing.

You know.

We've been surprised at how much okay, people like the experience we are now. We've scaled up towe hundred thousand paid rights every week in the In the US, we recently announced a partnership with Uber, so you can use the Uber app, for example in Atlanta to Haila waymocard.

You have a business, that's the cloud business you mentioned earlier. I think Amazon got to the cloud first and other big tech companies got there later. How significant is cloud to you now? And are you the person kind of drove the cloud business here?

I mean it was one of the big areas.

You know.

I bet On, I say, became CEO in twenty fifteen, and you know, we realized Google was built in the cloud. Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, everything works. We are a native cloud company and we are one of the best cloud infrastructure in the world. So we made it decision to really provide it to everyone else. And you know, we brought in CEOs who had real background to do that. Our current CEO, Thomas Korean, has really helped scale the business.

So we've talked about cloud, which was a novelty ten years ago or so, and now AI is a bit of a novelty. What the areas in the future that you think will be the next great tech interest for Solicon Valley and other people is quantum computing?

One of them, you know.

Would view quantum one of those foundational technologies like AI over time, you know, quantum, you know, you know, it's fundamentally thinking about how to design different computers than classical computers. So I would view it as just like aids are underlying technologies, but these technologies are going to hopefully enable many, many amazing applications on top of them, you know AI. You know, that's why compared AI to fire or electricity.

Let's talk about your background for a moment. So where were you born.

I was born in India in a city called Chennai in the south of India.

And did you grow up you know, in middle class kind of.

You know, it was a comfortable middle class life in India, you know. But one of the things was technology wasn't always around and we had to wait for a while before you know, we were on a waiting list. At that time, only the government made phones and this was a rotary phone. So it was a five year wait list to get a phone, right, and so we got the rotary phone changed our lives we were one of the few people in our neighborhood to have it. People would come to our homes to make calls to the

So where did you go to college?

I went to a college called the Indian Institute of Technology. It's a set of you know, a few institutions which are primarily focused on engineering. And what did you major in, you know, what's today called material science?

And I astribute that, Okay, I did.

Okay, you know I had a chance to you know, I really got interested in computers and semiconductors through my degree, and so I really, you know, was motivated by what was happening in Silicon Valley. I literally wanted to be in the place where semi connectors were developed, and that's why I had a chance to come to Stanford.

You went to Stanford get a master's degree in engineering. That's right, And did you get a scholarship or how to get you afford that?

I mean, it was very fortunate to get a full scholarship. You know, I was a teaching assistant.

Had you left the United had you left the India before that?

Had you ever been.

Out coming to the US was the first time I was ever on a plane?

Okay, So you got your master's degree and then you went to Wharton to get your MBA.

I had only seen the West coast. I wanted to see more of the US.

I through fall, I came to the East coast, loved the seasons, so I just wanted to spend time back back east and so you know, it was also you know, my goal with it was to get exposed to you know, I had a deep engineering and scientific background, so chance to get exposed to other walks of life out does a business work, get exposed to people from finance, from economics, and so that was all part of what I was looking for.

So you got your MBA from Whorton, that's them.

What did you do?

You know?

Pretty much very soon after that, I ended up at Google, but I spent a short time at mckinzi before that.

Yeah, so are your parents alive.

They are, and you know, I think they must be pretty proud of you.

You're the CEO of Google and Alphabet that they call you all the time with advice or what do they do?

You know? Both?

You know, I'm fortunate. I'm very close to them. I see them almost every week. But my dad is you know, kind of it shows me amazingly. He's eighty two. He relentlessly reads everything about you know, he's tried to keep up. He's not a software engineered by training. But a few years ago you wanted to know what a API is, and he has learned it. So he tracks news closely, and so he just talked to me about it.

Eighty two is young. The present United States is still young. There you go and your mother, you talked to her.

All the time, and you know she's I got my love of reading from a very young age from from her. Due to financial circumstances, you know, she she was working as a stenographer. She stopped working to support the family. But you know she was a voracious reader, and that's where I got my love of reading from.

And so and did you meet your wife at Wharton Stanford or where?

Back?

You know, we both went to I at Indian Industry of Technology. She was you know, at the time they were in that many women, So she was she was a pioneer in her own way of breaking through. And so I met my wife and undergraduate.

Okay, and so now we're married.

How long over twenty five years? Five years? And you have two children? Two children, that's right?

And do they run around Silicon Valley bragging saying my father is the CEO of Google or they don't?

Quite the contrary. I think, you know, they're trying to find their own boys. And you know, we hardly talk about my role or anything in the context of my family.

Let's say you go at a restaurant Silicon Valley with your wife. Do people come up with resumes all the time or ideas for funding things?

How does that work? Ah? Yeah? People less less that as part.

You know, maybe people want to picture or want to say hello, and so that does happen, particularly in Silicon Valley, but you know, doesn't always happen. I've kept a reasonably private life, so that helps.

I think, how do you avoid being sclerotic when you have a company that now has one hundred and eighty.

Two thousand employees.

How do you get innovative ideas to get to the top without bureaucracy killing it.

Look, I think you have to enable uh, you know, you have to empower small teams to move fast and get things done.

Right.

You have your big products, they are constantly improving, and you have to make sure you're constantly investing in and innovating on our core products. But you have to allow in the system away for small teams to build new things, and sometimes you have to be deliberate about it. Early on at Google, we had a structure called Google Labs, and you know, in which you could have small teams

Let's talk about the company today.

So, as I mentioned earlier, you have I think it's one hundred and eighty three one thousand employees, and the company has a market capitalization today of about two and a half trillion or something.

Yeah, it's over two trillion dollars. Yeah, over two trillion dollars.

So the market capitalization is doubled since you've been the CEO, and the stock prices more than doubled since you've been the CEO. So do you tell the founders, look, you've done a great job, and maybe they should give you a big piece of the company or something.

I'm very fortunate to be compensated. Well, look, I think for me, Look, as a technologist, you know, I feel like I'm at the front friend, drow Of, you know, dreamt about things like AI for a long time. To actually see it getting built now and to see this transition play out in front of us, to me, you know, that's the most motivating thing I could ask for.

I also know that Google in the early days had a policy of free food for its employees, and I sampled some of your free food at lunch today.

It was very good. You obviously have to spend a lot of money.

You've got one hundred and eighty two thousand employees, so giving them lunch or breakfast or dinner every day, or for many of them every day, you must have a calculation, says, are we spending this much on food? We're getting this much higher productivity? And how do you assess that? And why do you think other companies don't give away food as much as you do?

Look quite the contrar I think in technology, if you go to the Bay Area, I think a set of things which Google has done as part of now standard modern workplaces in the area. But you know, people value in person collaboration to us. You know, I can recalled several times, you know, when I was working at Google early on, being in cafes, meeting someone else, talking, getting excited about something, and.

So it sparks creativity, It creates a.

Community, and I think the benefit that comes out of it, you know, far dwarfs.

The costs associate with it.

Google is regularly considered be one of the most favorable places to work for employees, always high end surveys, and so I assume you've got lots of people who always want to come here. How many people a year try to apply for jobs at Google?

Is?

I assume it's a million people or something more than that.

What I'm proud of is the metric I look at is when we make an offer, what percentage of people accept the offer?

And you know it is percentages. It's almost close to ninety percent, right.

So typically, if somebody wants to get a job, somebody's watching this and says, I want to work at Google, what are you looking for? High IQs, high work quotient? And it used to be said that you had a very complicated interview process. I don't know if you still have that. But what's the best way to get a job here for an entry level person?

Look, we are you know, it depends on whether you're an engineering or something else, but you know we are. You know, if you're an engineering, we are looking for really good programmers, people who understand computer science well and you know, can be dynamically, you know, are willing to learn and grow up themselves into new situations and do well. But we are really looking for you know, you know, superstar software engineers.

Right, So, when.

You're doing a search yourself, I suppose you want to get information. Do you ever have frustrations that you can't get what you want? I mean, sometimes I can't find what I want, But I'm not the CEO of Google, so I assume you can have better access to the search than I can.

No, there are one of the reasons I'm so excited about AI improving searches. You know, we're constantly people don't always formulate the right queries. You know, we are constantly working to make search easier to use. So for example, you can now you know, speak with search as well as take pictures and ask search questions. In many countries, for example, in places like India, a large volume of our queries actually come by people just talking to search.

Similarly, what we call visual search.

We have a product called Google Lens and you can take a picture and ask questions. We get billions of queries through visual search. Humans interact with the world in very natural ways. We see things, we hear things, we speak, and so that's an example of how we can search, make search better, and AI can play it all. I constantly am challenging our product find things we could be doing better than I'm emailing my teams.

So, leaving the US government aside, what do you see as the biggest challenge to Google an alphabet going forward? Is it competitors coming along, is it a new technology that you're not in yet coming along and being very important, or just keeping your organization efficient and not bureaucratic.

What do you see as the biggest challenges?

Look, one of the things I would say, because we've always been a foundational technology company and we are working on these technologies which can apply across many things. I think one of the things which is unique to Google and Alphabet is, you know, we have a chance to go do many things, but being disciplined doing a few things and doing them well and doing it with the relentless focus on innovation and doing it as efficiently as possible. As a company with discipline, you know what leads to

Druck.

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