Sundar Pichai named Google CEO

He will replace Larry Page who will now head Alphabet Inc., a new entity to which Google will belong.

India-born Sundar Pichai has been named the new global chief executive officer (CEO) of Google Inc. in a surprise restructuring at the company. Pichai was earlier handling product and engineering responsibilities for the company's internet businesses as senior vice president, products.

The announcement came following the formation of a new parent company called
Alphabet Inc
which will essentially be a collection of companies of which Google will be the largest. Apart from Google, Alphabet Inc. will comprise companies which are afield from internet products.

Announcing the same in an official post, the company's former CEO, Larry Page states that he will now be running Alphabet Inc. as CEO along with Sergey Brin as president.

"Sergey and I have been super excited about his progress and dedication to the company. And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google. I feel very fortunate to have someone as talented as him is to run the slightly-slimmed-down Google and this frees up time for me to continue to scale our aspirations. I have been spending quite a bit of time with Sundar, helping him and the company in any way I can, and I will of course continue to do that," says Page in a blog post.

Born in Chennai in 1972, Pichai holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur). He holds an MS from Stanford University and an MBA degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

He joined Google in 2004 and led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive. He went on to oversee the development of different apps like Gmail and Google Maps. In 2013, Pichai added Android to the Google products he oversees.