Google's Sundar Pichai Becomes the Highest Paid CEO in the U.S.

By siliconindia | Wednesday, 10 February 2016, 06:04 Hrs

Pichai, born in Chennai and alumni of IIT Kharagpur, pursued his Master’s in Material Science at Stanford University and later earned his MBA at Wharton. He joined Google in 2004 as a Product Manager, where he handled the Google Toolbar of the then popular web browsers, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. He was the architect of one of the most significant products in Google’s history–the Chrome, launched in 2008, and now has a market share of more than 32 percent. Android, the world’s most popular mobile OS, was under Pichai’s watch from 2013 replacing Andy Rubin, founder of Android. Larry Page, Co-founder of Google said of Pichai, “He has a talent for creating products that are technically excellent yet easy to use– and he loves a big bet.”

Pichai was appointed as CEO last year following its reorganization into a holding company, Alphabet. Google sensed that Pichai might be priced away from their company as he had a lot of suitors including Microsoft and Twitter. Pichai’s name was considered during Microsoft’s search for a new CEO in 2014. Twitter also tried to steal him away from Google in 2011 to replace Jason Goldman as Head of Product.