Satya Nadella, Eric Schmidt congratulate new Google CEO

“Really excited about the vision and brilliance of Sundar... he’s going to be a great CEO,” Schmidt commented on Twitter as well as on Page’s blog post announcing the surprise re-organisation of the company and the formation of Google’s new parent company Alphabet.

Schmidt said the new name for the parent company ‘Alphabet’ is “awesome”. Nadella also tweeted on Pichai’s elevation at the company, writing in the micro-blogging site “Congrats @sundarpichai well deserved.” (sic) Bret Taylor, co-creator of Google Maps, ex-CTO of Facebook and Co-Founder of technology Quip also congratulated Pichai, the first non-white CEO, on Twitter. “Congrats to @sundarpichai on his well deserved <g data-gr-id="45">promotion</g> to CEO of @Google. One of the most capable technology leaders I have worked with,” Taylor tweeted to which Pichai replied “thanks”. He also replied “thanks” to another Tweet by Founding Editor of digital news daily Marketing Land, Danny Sullivan who posted “Wow.Google gets its third CEO, @sundarpichai congrats!”  

In a filing with federal regulator Securities and Exchange Commission, Google informed about its organisational restructuring. “Concurrently upon completion of the Alphabet Merger, Sundar Pichai, age 43, will become the new CEO of Google Inc. Sundar is currently the Senior Vice President of Products at Google and?oversees product management, engineering, and research efforts for Google’s products and platforms. “Since joining Google in 2004, Sundar has led a number of key consumer products which are now used by hundreds of millions of people and, prior to his current role, served as Google’s SVP of Android, Chrome and Apps,” the company said in the filing in which it also noted that Pichai received a B.Tech from the IIT-Kharagpur, <g data-gr-id="40">a MS</g> from Stanford University, and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Pichai joins a gradually growing list of Indian-origin technology and business executives working their way up to head <g data-gr-id="34">multiple-billion</g> dollar worth American giants. In February last year, Nadella was named Microsoft CEO, becoming the technology giant’s only third chief executive after Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates in its 40-year history.

PepsiCo’s CEO is also India-born Indra Nooyi and MasterCard is headed by Ajay Banga. Hyderabad-born Shantanu Narayen was appointed Adobe CEO in 2007. India-born Nikesh Arora, Google’s former Chief Business Officer, was appointed <g data-gr-id="36">president</g> of Japan’s SoftBank Corp in May this year.