We’re Indians. We love it when Indians are elevated to top positions. That’s a good thing. The elevation of Sundar Pichai as the CEO of ‘Google’ is a great example of how we’re excited at the emergence of India. As soon as the news was out, social media was all about Sundar Pichai and his years growing up.
Many Indians spent a good amount of time pondering over what the Indian education system, the Indian dream, Indian talent and Indian ambition can accomplish. There is no dearth of Indians who have made their mark internationally. Among some of the relevant ones are Arun Sarin, who helped scale Vodafone into a global leader. Turns out, he’s from IIT Kharagpur as well! How many know Ajay Bhatt who created the USB standard? Or Vinod Dham the father of the Pentium chip. There quite a few names listed out in an article in the Guardian that highlight prominent Indians in technology.
Sure, the elevation of Sundar Pichai is something we all are happy about. Despite competing in several areas, even Satya Nadella is! The masses have been excited at this elevation. The industry has been as well. But what makes the announcement more significant is all that is happening around it – with Alphabet. So now that we’re done celebrating the rise of a South Indian in Silicon Valley, we would like to focus on precisely what has happened.
Very little is know about Alphabet. Other than a blog post by Larry Page. But, what’s more intriguing is that Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt are looking at bigger, better things to do than Google. It is precisely creating a holding company. They trust Sundar Pichai enough to handover their creation to him. And he’s risen up through the years and considers it his own. The blog by Larry Page did shed light on some of the interesting things, but as is required by every successful co-founder, there comes a time when you need to give up to scale up.
Google’s Sergey Brin gestures after riding a Driverless car. AP
Why would Google want to scale up, one may ask! That’s quite a valid question. Yahoo is a great example. eBay is another. And so is MySpace. Obsolescence is rather quick in technology. There is always someone else who will come along and do something more interesting!
This transition from Google to Alphabet, might just be the biggest push for innovation in every area that Google has been operating in. A CEO for each business unit now means there would be a conscious effort to build each brand and product into a viable business. X Labs will have a new CEO. That means drone delivery will have better focus. Clubbed with Google Wallet, it might just mean Google’s foray into ecommerce.
Nest Labs is another exciting unit at Alphabet. Among its portfolio of devices are smoke alarms, cameras, thermostats that are aligned towards the connected home. If you thought Xiaomi was the only company that made interesting and exciting products in these areas, you might just have to wait a bit to see what Google has been up to over the past few years.
Until now, Google was known for its Search, Advertising and email services. But the plethora of services that exist makes it all the more exciting in terms of becoming a global giant in every sense possible. Across geographies, across industries. That’s how we could learn the Alphabet! We hope it can be accomplished, without doing any evil – Google’s core motto in all these years.
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