NEW YORK: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and other technology executives today congratulated India-born Sundar Pichai on his “well deserved” elevation as the new CEO of the search giant.
Mr Pichai, 43, was named CEO of a newly organised Google, becoming only the third chief executive of the company after Mr Schmidt and cofounder Larry Page.
“Really excited about the vision and brilliance of Sundar… he’s going to be a great CEO,” Mr Schmidt commented on Twitter as well as on Mr Page’s blog post announcing the surprise re-organisation of the company and the formation of Google’s new parent company Alphabet.
Mr Schmidt said the new name for the parent company ‘Alphabet’ is “awesome”.
Mr Nadella also tweeted on Mr Pichai’s elevation at the company, writing in the micro-blogging site “Congrats @sundarpichai well deserved.”
Bret Taylor, co-creator of Google Maps, ex-CTO of Facebook and Co-Founder of technology Quip also congratulated Mr Pichai, the first non-white CEO, on Twitter.
“Congrats to @sundarpichai on his well deserved promotion to CEO of @Google. One of the most capable technology leaders I have worked with,” Mr 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 organizational 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 Mr Pichai received a B.Tech from the IIT-Kharagpur, a MS from Stanford University, and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania.
PTI