https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/googles-sundar-pichai-is-a-really-nice-guy-is-that-enough-11599848504 As Google CEO, Mr. Pichai’s purview now included all of Google’s online advertising business, a colossus that takes up nearly a third of the $130 billion U.S. digital ad market and accounts for nearly all of the company’s profits. This includes ads that run on Google’s flagship search engine, as well as others that run on external websites but are placed by Google. Again, Mr. Pichai took an incremental approach. Around the 2016 presidential election, Google’s top advertising executives presented him with a proposal to end political advertising on search. They pointed out that political advertising amounted to minimal revenues, with a disproportionate headache. Mr. Pichai overruled them, in part to avoid making political waves, people briefed say. Google continues to take political ads this election. Firestorm Mr. Pichai couldn’t avoid politics in August 2017, when an internal memo kicked up a firestorm among the company’s typically left-leaning workforce. In it, Google engineer James Damore suggested that men might be better suited for tech jobs than women. Playing against type, Mr. Pichai moved quickly. Though some of his deputies urged him to let the incident blow over, he fired Mr. Damore within a week. The move made Google a renewed public enemy for conservative critics, and led to a lawsuit from Mr. Damore, later settled. A willingness to bend to employee criticism soon damaged Mr. Pichai’s relationship with one of his top deputies, Diane Greene, an Alphabet board member and head of Google’s cloud computing division. Ms. Greene had discussed with Mr. Pichai the company’s bidding to renew Project Maven, a Department of Defense project to better integrate artificial intelligence into its computer systems. When employees found out in 2018, however, thousands signed a petition objecting to the work. Ms. Greene, believing she had Mr. Pichai’s backing, defended the work, and was dismayed to be instructed to publicly reverse course due to the outcry. The incident helped force her departure from Google in early 2019, people briefed say. John Giannandrea, now head of artificial intelligence at Apple, resigned from Google a few months earlier for similar reasons, the people say.
It was sad to see he only provided one feedback on Google Nest prototype. Add a selfie mode. In fact that feedback came from his kids. Sad state of affairs at Google. I know he is a busy guy but c’mon... no feedback?
Sundar Pichai is a joke. Nowadays Google is spending more time extinguishing fires than building new forests. Every Googler who's disappointed at Google's stock performance would agree with me.
Here’s a Googler who isn’t and doesn’t.
Everyone knows Google started low balling candidates since he took over.
I don’t know why the post say - firing Mr. Damore wasn’t great idea but come on - if an employee is commenting on gender discrimination, I support what pichai did the best! That he shows dedication towards equality rather than the incident blowing over!
Damore’s post wasn’t discriminating. He was stating his observation why most women are not interested in technology and it may have something to do with biology. It was a mistake firing him.
It is a mature company now. Employees and shareholders should recognize this fact. A goliath whose engineering driven culture may never shift to product driven culture to kick start the growth engine. To make those culture changes very tough decisions must be taken, and Sundar is too nice a person to take those decisions and stick to it even if it means significant pushback from the engineers.
What the hell are Larry and Sergey doing?
One of them has a rare vocal paralysis condition. They are enjoying their billions like eccentric founders do. Google is too mundane for them. Hence the mundane CEO who does their bidding.
He's a liar disguised as a nice guy. He'll say or do anything to do business in China. Think of the movie Jason Bourne and you'll know exactly what cloth he'a cut from
Yes, his emotional intelligence is outstanding. Anybody thinking that’s all you need to become CEO of Google is beyond naive.