October 10, 2024 • 24 mins
Google CEO Sundar Pichai joined the company in 2004 as a product manager. Since then, he's had a meteoric rise through the ranks before becoming CEO of Google in 2015 and then CEO of parent company Alphabet in 2019. During his tenure, he has focused the company on its cloud computing business Google Cloud - as well as made deep investments in artificial intelligence, despite being beat to market by Microsoft partner OpenAI in 2022 with the blockbuster ChatGPT product. In an interview for "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations," Pichai dives into his fundamental belief that artificial intelligence is comparable to fire and electricity in its capacity as a new technology to cut across "every sector, everywhere." Pichai also addresses Google's mounting legal woes, as the company faces multiple antitrust suits from the Department of Justice and elsewhere. This interview was recorded September 20 in New York.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Over the past quarter century, one of the most significant
companies in the world has been Google. It has led
today not by its founders, but by a personal who
started in two thousand and four, rose up the ranks,
and is now the CEO.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
His name is Sundar Pashai.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I sat down with him recently and the Google officers
of New York to talk about the future of Google
and also importance of artificial intelligence to the company. When
you joined Google, the alphabet hadn't yet existed. It was
two thousand and four. The company was started in nineteen
ninety eight, I believe. So how big was the company
in two thousand and four?
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Two thousand and four, we were about just totally one
thousand people, I think, but we are growing pretty fast. Yeah,
we were about thousand people.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So when you why did you come to the company
in two thousand four?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Who attracted you to come here?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
A small, little search engine company?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Search wasn't that big a deal then?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Probably I was using the product from the outside, and
you know, I clearly noticed how much better it was
as a product. And I was a what I call
a power user of the product, right, and I had
a lot of ideas in my head on how the
product could be made better. But more importantly, you know,
I gaining access to technology made a big difference in
(01:13):
my life, and so I always tell the power of
giving access to technology. The thing about Google which appealed
to me was you could be somewhere in rural Indonesia,
or you could be a professor at Stanford, and you
would get access to that information as long as you
had a computer and connectivity.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
With respect to the company today, you obviously have had
some legal challenges. One legal challenge by the federal government.
They charged that your I guess your search engine was
I hate to use the word monopolistic, but I guess
they probably used that word. It's running the company more
complicated because you have this lawsuit you have to deal with.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
With our scale and size, I think scrutiny is inevitable,
and you know we've always engaged very respect fully and
responsibly through these processes. Even in the current current ruling,
I mean, the ruling goes to great length to point
out that we have achieved success by innovating. Our competitors
(02:14):
acknowledge that we had the best searching search engine in
the world. We definitely disagree with the ruling but it'd
been still in the middle of the remedies phase. And
you know, we will appeal and this process will likely
take many years. And you know, I'm confident given that
you know, we are focused on innovating using technology, will
(02:39):
do well in the long run. And just last week
there was a European court ruling which overruled the earlier decision.
But the process had taken you almost ten years, right,
So these things take take a while.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So were you surprised that the US government after they
won that case, they filed another case against you? Were
you surprised that that happened? And you expect that'll go
on for a while too.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
This one is not to do with our advertising on
our search engine. The other one is we provide an
ad platform for publishers to run advertising on their sites,
and so we provide a platform, and so this is
focused on that part of our business.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Part of our business.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Again, we are you know, that case is just getting underway,
so I expected to take take some time. And you know,
but look where we can figure out you know, constructive solutions.
I think we will where we think it really harms
our ability to innovate on behalf of our users or uh,
you know, we are going to be vigorous in defending
(03:41):
ourselves and it's going to take time for it to
play out.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Silicon Valley has been enamored with artificial intelligence AI. Everybody
thinks that they need to have AI starts, attach their
name or or be a leader in it. Chat GBT
got out to the public first, but you've been working
on it for a long time, maybe before open AI did.
Are you going to go more public with what you're
doing in artificial intelligence? And how is artificial intelligence going
(04:06):
to change your company?
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I mean it is. It's been a big focus for
us as a company. One of the first things I
did as CEOs to pivot the company to be focused
on AI AI first. You know, we've developed a lot
of the core underlying technology, a lot of its powers
search today. So part of what has helped us keep
search about everyone else is by incorporating a lot of
(04:31):
AI in how we do search. The current moment around
generator AI is what's captured people's imagination. We are incorporating
that in search in a deep way. So today if
we go to Google and type a query in we
give for many queries, we give something called an AI
overview and you get a nice summary on top which
(04:53):
we are summarizing the top results and giving context around
it using AI. It's been very well just people love it,
and so it's you know, it's one direction in which
we are using AI. Table of our product we have.
Our models are called Gemini, and people can also talk
to Gemini directly. And I just feel like we're at
very very early stages of what is probably the most
(05:16):
profound shift in technology we will ever see as humanity.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
So it's an exciting time today.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
If I want to do a search, I suppose I
look your name up on a search and it'll come
up with your bio and so forth, and then maybe
articles written about you will appear on this and then
maybe those articles will guide me to let's say, an
advertising site or something.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
But with AI, some.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
People are worried that your AI will basically have all
the information, and therefore they won't they the advertisers won't
have anybody coming to their site any longer.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So how do you address that issue?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Today we've past twenty five years. People come to Google
because they're not only looking for what they want, but
they enjoy the richness and the diversity of what exists
on the bat right, So people are clicking through and
going to a lot of sites. That is important for us.
That's what makes this thriving ecosystem. So even if as
(06:13):
we are evolving the product with AI, one of our
core design principles has been making sure it works that way, right,
and so we are prioritizing approaches which will send traffic
to publishers and in the case of commercial queries, advertisers
will also benefit as well. But that's you know, we
think about it holistically because I think that's what allows
(06:37):
people to create great content and create that virtual cycle.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So advertisers are they concerned that somehow the AI search
function you have might get them bypass.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
The way we think about it is users, when they
come looking for information, there is an aspect of it
where they're looking for commercial information. It's naturally in the
user's intent, and when their intent is commercial, you know,
advertising turns out to be very very relevant information. There
was a core insight behind how we monetize Google Search
(07:08):
that adds a valuable information when users have a commercial intent.
That doesn't change just because there's a new underlying technology. Right,
people are always looking for commercial information and providers of
that information. Merchants, businesses are trying to reach users, and
so that dynamic will continue to exist.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
So Google is more or less the search engine part
of your company. Alphabet has other parts. Let me ask
you about some of them.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
I could, so maybe if I could step back. You know,
Google has many businesses beyond search, right, So you have
Google Search, but think about Google Cloud, where we provide
software at all enterprises. It's YouTube, there is YouTube and
so on. There's Android and so on. So think of
Google as our you know, Internet related businesses. Okay, and
(07:56):
then we're using technology still. But we have other long
term bets. Weimo was a bet on autonomous self driving
cars and that's been a long term bet. We have
Wing which is a drone delivery company. We have Calico,
which is pursuing long term drug discovery for difficult to
(08:22):
treat diseases, etcetera. So these are longer term bets, and
that's what we call as other bets.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Okay, So Waimo is a long term bet, I assume,
But have you been in one of those cars.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
All the time?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
You know?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I make sure to go periodically and take a ride
in Wemo is phenomenal the progress I've seen every six months.
The last time I was in the car, the third
time I was in it. You know, I was on
my phone in the back seat. Once in a while,
I tell myself, you know, look, I'm in a self
driving car. It's amazing even how people sometimes look in
(08:54):
Some people are curious, some people are kind of.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Like they used to it. You wear a helmet when
you're in there. Your confect.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Not at all, you know, quite the contrary. It's it's
pretty relaxing.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
We've been surprised at how much okay, people like the
experience we are now. We've scaled up towe hundred thousand
paid rights every week in the In the US, we
recently announced a partnership with Uber, so you can use
the Uber app, for example in Atlanta to Haila waymocard.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
You have a business, that's the cloud business you mentioned earlier.
I think Amazon got to the cloud first and other
big tech companies got there later. How significant is cloud
to you now? And are you the person kind of
drove the cloud business here?
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I mean it was one of the big areas.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
I bet On, I say, became CEO in twenty fifteen,
and you know, we realized Google was built in the cloud.
Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, everything works. We are a
native cloud company and we are one of the best
cloud infrastructure in the world. So we made it decision
to really provide it to everyone else. And you know,
(10:05):
we brought in CEOs who had real background to do that.
Our current CEO, Thomas Korean, has really helped scale the business.
Last quarter we had over ten billion dollars in revenues.
I think we're probably the number fourth largest software company
in the enterprise now, so it's one of our most
robust businesses. And in fact, I announced in one of
(10:29):
our earnings called recently that we will exit twenty twenty
four in YouTube and cloud at one hundred billion dollars runderrate.
And these were businesses which we've built from scratch over
the past decade.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So we've talked about cloud, which was a novelty ten
years ago or so, and now AI is a bit
of a novelty. What the areas in the future that
you think will be the next great tech interest for
Solicon Valley and other people is quantum computing?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
One of them, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Would view quantum one of those foundational technologies like AI
over time, you know, quantum, you know, you know, it's
fundamentally thinking about how to design different computers than classical computers.
So I would view it as just like aids are
underlying technologies, but these technologies are going to hopefully enable many,
(11:20):
many amazing applications on top of them, you know AI.
You know, that's why compared AI to fire or electricity.
You know, it's going to cut across every sector everywhere,
and people are going to be able to read think
think of AI as you're getting really intelligent decision making
systems to deploy everywhere.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Let's talk about your background for a moment. So where
were you born.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
I was born in India in a city called Chennai
in the south of India.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
And did you grow up you know, in middle class
kind of.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
You know, it was a comfortable middle class life in India,
you know. But one of the things was technology wasn't
always around and we had to wait for a while
before you know, we were on a waiting list. At
that time, only the government made phones and this was
a rotary phone. So it was a five year wait
list to get a phone, right, and so we got
the rotary phone changed our lives we were one of
(12:14):
the few people in our neighborhood to have it. People
would come to our homes to make calls to the
loved ones. I recall, you know, I would have to
it would before our trip to find the black test
results for my mother. Sometimes I would go all the
way to the hospital and they would say, no, it's
not ready, come back tomorrow. And with the phone, I
could call and get that information right away. So it really,
(12:35):
you know, showed me the part of technology.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
So where did you go to college?
Speaker 3 (12:38):
I went to a college called the Indian Institute of Technology.
It's a set of you know, a few institutions which
are primarily focused on engineering. And what did you major in,
you know, what's today called material science?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
And I astribute that, Okay, I did.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Okay, you know I had a chance to you know,
I really got interested in computers and semiconductors through my degree,
and so I really, you know, was motivated by what
was happening in Silicon Valley. I literally wanted to be
in the place where semi connectors were developed, and that's
why I had a chance to come to Stanford.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You went to Stanford get a master's degree in engineering.
That's right, And did you get a scholarship or how
to get you afford that?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I mean, it was very fortunate to get a full scholarship.
You know, I was a teaching assistant.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Had you left the United had you left the India
before that?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Had you ever been.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Out coming to the US was the first time I
was ever on a plane?
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Okay, So you got your master's degree and then you
went to Wharton to get your MBA.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I had only seen the West coast. I wanted to
see more of the US.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
I through fall, I came to the East coast, loved
the seasons, so I just wanted to spend time back
back east and so you know, it was also you know,
my goal with it was to get exposed to you know,
I had a deep engineering and scientific background, so chance
to get exposed to other walks of life out does
(14:02):
a business work, get exposed to people from finance, from economics,
and so that was all part of what I was
looking for.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So you got your MBA from Whorton, that's them.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
What did you do?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
You know?
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Pretty much very soon after that, I ended up at Google,
but I spent a short time at mckinzi before that.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, so are your parents alive.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
They are, and you know, I think they must be
pretty proud of you.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
You're the CEO of Google and Alphabet that they call
you all the time with advice or what do they do?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
You know? Both?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
You know, I'm fortunate. I'm very close to them. I
see them almost every week. But my dad is you know,
kind of it shows me amazingly. He's eighty two. He
relentlessly reads everything about you know, he's tried to keep up.
He's not a software engineered by training. But a few
years ago you wanted to know what a API is,
(14:53):
and he has learned it. So he tracks news closely,
and so he just talked to me about it.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Eighty two is young. The present United States is still young.
There you go and your mother, you talked to her.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
All the time, and you know she's I got my
love of reading from a very young age from from her.
Due to financial circumstances, you know, she she was working
as a stenographer. She stopped working to support the family.
But you know she was a voracious reader, and that's
where I got my love of reading from.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
And so and did you meet your wife at Wharton
Stanford or where?
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Back?
Speaker 3 (15:30):
You know, we both went to I at Indian Industry
of Technology. She was you know, at the time they
were in that many women, So she was she was
a pioneer in her own way of breaking through. And
so I met my wife and undergraduate.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Okay, and so now we're married.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
How long over twenty five years? Five years? And you
have two children? Two children, that's right?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
And do they run around Silicon Valley bragging saying my
father is the CEO of Google or they don't?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Quite the contrary. I think, you know, they're trying to
find their own boys. And you know, we hardly talk
about my role or anything in the context of my family.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Let's say you go at a restaurant Silicon Valley with
your wife. Do people come up with resumes all the
time or ideas for funding things?
Speaker 2 (16:11):
How does that work? Ah? Yeah? People less less that
as part.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
You know, maybe people want to picture or want to
say hello, and so that does happen, particularly in Silicon Valley,
but you know, doesn't always happen. I've kept a reasonably
private life, so that helps.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
I think, how do you avoid being sclerotic when you
have a company that now has one hundred and eighty.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Two thousand employees.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
How do you get innovative ideas to get to the
top without bureaucracy killing it.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Look, I think you have to enable uh, you know,
you have to empower small teams to move fast and
get things done.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
You have your big products, they are constantly improving, and
you have to make sure you're constantly investing in and
innovating on our core products. But you have to allow
in the system away for small teams to build new things,
and sometimes you have to be deliberate about it. Early
on at Google, we had a structure called Google Labs,
(17:09):
and you know, in which you could have small teams
with resources to go build new things. We are doing
that again now and we again have created a new
Google Labs team, And just recently they launched a product
called Google Notebook, in which you can go put a
set of documents and then AI kind of learns it.
You can ask questions, you can even tell it to
(17:31):
summarize it as a podcast, conversational podcast back to you, right,
and you know it's breadtaking if you use it. So,
but these are entirely new product built from scratch. And
so Google Photos was a product built from scratch too,
So you have to empower small teams to move the
velocity of a startup and cut through the processes you
(17:53):
have in a large company.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Let's talk about the company today.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
So, as I mentioned earlier, you have I think it's
one hundred and eighty three one thousand employees, and the
company has a market capitalization today of about two and
a half trillion or something.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, it's over two trillion dollars. Yeah, over two trillion dollars.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
So the market capitalization is doubled since you've been the CEO,
and the stock prices more than doubled since you've been
the CEO. So do you tell the founders, look, you've
done a great job, and maybe they should give you
a big piece of the company or something.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I'm very fortunate to be compensated. Well, look, I think
for me, Look, as a technologist, you know, I feel
like I'm at the front friend, drow Of, you know,
dreamt about things like AI for a long time. To
actually see it getting built now and to see this
(18:44):
transition play out in front of us, to me, you know,
that's the most motivating thing I could ask for.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I also know that Google in the early days had
a policy of free food for its employees, and I
sampled some of your free food at lunch today.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
It was very good. You obviously have to spend a
lot of money.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
You've got one hundred and eighty two thousand employees, so
giving them lunch or breakfast or dinner every day, or
for many of them every day, you must have a calculation, says,
are we spending this much on food? We're getting this
much higher productivity? And how do you assess that? And
why do you think other companies don't give away food
as much as you do?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Look quite the contrar I think in technology, if you
go to the Bay Area, I think a set of
things which Google has done as part of now standard
modern workplaces in the area. But you know, people value
in person collaboration to us. You know, I can recalled
several times, you know, when I was working at Google
(19:40):
early on, being in cafes, meeting someone else, talking, getting
excited about something, and.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
So it sparks creativity, It creates a.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Community, and I think the benefit that comes out of it,
you know, far dwarfs.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
The costs associate with it.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Google is regularly considered be one of the most favorable
places to work for employees, always high end surveys, and
so I assume you've got lots of people who always
want to come here. How many people a year try
to apply for jobs at Google?
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Is?
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I assume it's a million people or something more than that.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
What I'm proud of is the metric I look at
is when we make an offer, what percentage of people
accept the offer?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
And you know it is percentages. It's almost close to
ninety percent, right.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So typically, if somebody wants to get a job, somebody's
watching this and says, I want to work at Google,
what are you looking for? High IQs, high work quotient?
And it used to be said that you had a
very complicated interview process. I don't know if you still
have that. But what's the best way to get a
job here for an entry level person?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Look, we are you know, it depends on whether you're
an engineering or something else, but you know we are.
You know, if you're an engineering, we are looking for
really good programmers, people who understand computer science well and
you know, can be dynamically, you know, are willing to
learn and grow up themselves into new situations and do well.
(21:03):
But we are really looking for you know, you know,
superstar software engineers.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Right, So, when.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
You're doing a search yourself, I suppose you want to
get information. Do you ever have frustrations that you can't
get what you want? I mean, sometimes I can't find
what I want, But I'm not the CEO of Google,
so I assume you can have better access to the
search than I can.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
No, there are one of the reasons I'm so excited
about AI improving searches. You know, we're constantly people don't
always formulate the right queries. You know, we are constantly
working to make search easier to use. So for example,
you can now you know, speak with search as well
as take pictures and ask search questions. In many countries,
(21:46):
for example, in places like India, a large volume of
our queries actually come by people just talking to search.
And you know, because people get phone not everyone is
comfortable typing in these phones. They just talk talk to Google.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Similarly, what we call visual search.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
We have a product called Google Lens and you can
take a picture and ask questions. We get billions of
queries through visual search. Humans interact with the world in
very natural ways. We see things, we hear things, we speak,
and so that's an example of how we can search,
make search better, and AI can play it all. I
constantly am challenging our product find things we could be
(22:23):
doing better than I'm emailing my teams.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
So, leaving the US government aside, what do you see
as the biggest challenge to Google an alphabet going forward?
Is it competitors coming along, is it a new technology
that you're not in yet coming along and being very important,
or just keeping your organization efficient and not bureaucratic.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
What do you see as the biggest challenges?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Look, one of the things I would say, because we've
always been a foundational technology company and we are working
on these technologies which can apply across many things. I
think one of the things which is unique to Google
and Alphabet is, you know, we have a chance to
go do many things, but being disciplined doing a few
(23:07):
things and doing them well and doing it with the
relentless focus on innovation and doing it as efficiently as possible.
As a company with discipline, you know what leads to
long term success. And so so I think that's what
I think about, right, you know, where all can we
do it ourselves as a company? Where do we partner
(23:27):
and enable others? That's why Google Cloud has been a
big part of our focus because there are many sectors
in which the best way we can help the world
and have a good business doing so is by providing
our technology and solutions to others, and so you know,
it's getting that balance.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Druck.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
wherever you listen.
Over the past quarter century, one of the most significant
companies in the world has been Google. It has led
today not by its founders, but by a personal who
started in two thousand and four, rose up the ranks,
and is now the CEO.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
His name is Sundar Pashai.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I sat down with him recently and the Google officers
of New York to talk about the future of Google
and also importance of artificial intelligence to the company. When
you joined Google, the alphabet hadn't yet existed. It was
two thousand and four. The company was started in nineteen
ninety eight, I believe. So how big was the company
in two thousand and four?
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Two thousand and four, we were about just totally one
thousand people, I think, but we are growing pretty fast. Yeah,
we were about thousand people.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So when you why did you come to the company
in two thousand four?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Who attracted you to come here?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
A small, little search engine company?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Search wasn't that big a deal then?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Probably I was using the product from the outside, and
you know, I clearly noticed how much better it was
as a product. And I was a what I call
a power user of the product, right, and I had
a lot of ideas in my head on how the
product could be made better. But more importantly, you know,
I gaining access to technology made a big difference in
(01:13):
my life, and so I always tell the power of
giving access to technology. The thing about Google which appealed
to me was you could be somewhere in rural Indonesia,
or you could be a professor at Stanford, and you
would get access to that information as long as you
had a computer and connectivity.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
With respect to the company today, you obviously have had
some legal challenges. One legal challenge by the federal government.
They charged that your I guess your search engine was
I hate to use the word monopolistic, but I guess
they probably used that word. It's running the company more
complicated because you have this lawsuit you have to deal with.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
With our scale and size, I think scrutiny is inevitable,
and you know we've always engaged very respect fully and
responsibly through these processes. Even in the current current ruling,
I mean, the ruling goes to great length to point
out that we have achieved success by innovating. Our competitors
(02:14):
acknowledge that we had the best searching search engine in
the world. We definitely disagree with the ruling but it'd
been still in the middle of the remedies phase. And
you know, we will appeal and this process will likely
take many years. And you know, I'm confident given that
you know, we are focused on innovating using technology, will
(02:39):
do well in the long run. And just last week
there was a European court ruling which overruled the earlier decision.
But the process had taken you almost ten years, right,
So these things take take a while.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So were you surprised that the US government after they
won that case, they filed another case against you? Were
you surprised that that happened? And you expect that'll go
on for a while too.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
This one is not to do with our advertising on
our search engine. The other one is we provide an
ad platform for publishers to run advertising on their sites,
and so we provide a platform, and so this is
focused on that part of our business.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Part of our business.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Again, we are you know, that case is just getting underway,
so I expected to take take some time. And you know,
but look where we can figure out you know, constructive solutions.
I think we will where we think it really harms
our ability to innovate on behalf of our users or uh,
you know, we are going to be vigorous in defending
(03:41):
ourselves and it's going to take time for it to
play out.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Silicon Valley has been enamored with artificial intelligence AI. Everybody
thinks that they need to have AI starts, attach their
name or or be a leader in it. Chat GBT
got out to the public first, but you've been working
on it for a long time, maybe before open AI did.
Are you going to go more public with what you're
doing in artificial intelligence? And how is artificial intelligence going
(04:06):
to change your company?
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I mean it is. It's been a big focus for
us as a company. One of the first things I
did as CEOs to pivot the company to be focused
on AI AI first. You know, we've developed a lot
of the core underlying technology, a lot of its powers
search today. So part of what has helped us keep
search about everyone else is by incorporating a lot of
(04:31):
AI in how we do search. The current moment around
generator AI is what's captured people's imagination. We are incorporating
that in search in a deep way. So today if
we go to Google and type a query in we
give for many queries, we give something called an AI
overview and you get a nice summary on top which
(04:53):
we are summarizing the top results and giving context around
it using AI. It's been very well just people love it,
and so it's you know, it's one direction in which
we are using AI. Table of our product we have.
Our models are called Gemini, and people can also talk
to Gemini directly. And I just feel like we're at
very very early stages of what is probably the most
(05:16):
profound shift in technology we will ever see as humanity.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
So it's an exciting time today.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
If I want to do a search, I suppose I
look your name up on a search and it'll come
up with your bio and so forth, and then maybe
articles written about you will appear on this and then
maybe those articles will guide me to let's say, an
advertising site or something.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
But with AI, some.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
People are worried that your AI will basically have all
the information, and therefore they won't they the advertisers won't
have anybody coming to their site any longer.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So how do you address that issue?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Today we've past twenty five years. People come to Google
because they're not only looking for what they want, but
they enjoy the richness and the diversity of what exists
on the bat right, So people are clicking through and
going to a lot of sites. That is important for us.
That's what makes this thriving ecosystem. So even if as
(06:13):
we are evolving the product with AI, one of our
core design principles has been making sure it works that way, right,
and so we are prioritizing approaches which will send traffic
to publishers and in the case of commercial queries, advertisers
will also benefit as well. But that's you know, we
think about it holistically because I think that's what allows
(06:37):
people to create great content and create that virtual cycle.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So advertisers are they concerned that somehow the AI search
function you have might get them bypass.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
The way we think about it is users, when they
come looking for information, there is an aspect of it
where they're looking for commercial information. It's naturally in the
user's intent, and when their intent is commercial, you know,
advertising turns out to be very very relevant information. There
was a core insight behind how we monetize Google Search
(07:08):
that adds a valuable information when users have a commercial intent.
That doesn't change just because there's a new underlying technology. Right,
people are always looking for commercial information and providers of
that information. Merchants, businesses are trying to reach users, and
so that dynamic will continue to exist.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
So Google is more or less the search engine part
of your company. Alphabet has other parts. Let me ask
you about some of them.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
I could, so maybe if I could step back. You know,
Google has many businesses beyond search, right, So you have
Google Search, but think about Google Cloud, where we provide
software at all enterprises. It's YouTube, there is YouTube and
so on. There's Android and so on. So think of
Google as our you know, Internet related businesses. Okay, and
(07:56):
then we're using technology still. But we have other long
term bets. Weimo was a bet on autonomous self driving
cars and that's been a long term bet. We have
Wing which is a drone delivery company. We have Calico,
which is pursuing long term drug discovery for difficult to
(08:22):
treat diseases, etcetera. So these are longer term bets, and
that's what we call as other bets.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Okay, So Waimo is a long term bet, I assume,
But have you been in one of those cars.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
All the time?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
You know?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I make sure to go periodically and take a ride
in Wemo is phenomenal the progress I've seen every six months.
The last time I was in the car, the third
time I was in it. You know, I was on
my phone in the back seat. Once in a while,
I tell myself, you know, look, I'm in a self
driving car. It's amazing even how people sometimes look in
(08:54):
Some people are curious, some people are kind of.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Like they used to it. You wear a helmet when
you're in there. Your confect.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Not at all, you know, quite the contrary. It's it's
pretty relaxing.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
We've been surprised at how much okay, people like the
experience we are now. We've scaled up towe hundred thousand
paid rights every week in the In the US, we
recently announced a partnership with Uber, so you can use
the Uber app, for example in Atlanta to Haila waymocard.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
You have a business, that's the cloud business you mentioned earlier.
I think Amazon got to the cloud first and other
big tech companies got there later. How significant is cloud
to you now? And are you the person kind of
drove the cloud business here?
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I mean it was one of the big areas.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
I bet On, I say, became CEO in twenty fifteen,
and you know, we realized Google was built in the cloud.
Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, everything works. We are a
native cloud company and we are one of the best
cloud infrastructure in the world. So we made it decision
to really provide it to everyone else. And you know,
(10:05):
we brought in CEOs who had real background to do that.
Our current CEO, Thomas Korean, has really helped scale the business.
Last quarter we had over ten billion dollars in revenues.
I think we're probably the number fourth largest software company
in the enterprise now, so it's one of our most
robust businesses. And in fact, I announced in one of
(10:29):
our earnings called recently that we will exit twenty twenty
four in YouTube and cloud at one hundred billion dollars runderrate.
And these were businesses which we've built from scratch over
the past decade.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So we've talked about cloud, which was a novelty ten
years ago or so, and now AI is a bit
of a novelty. What the areas in the future that
you think will be the next great tech interest for
Solicon Valley and other people is quantum computing?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
One of them, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Would view quantum one of those foundational technologies like AI
over time, you know, quantum, you know, you know, it's
fundamentally thinking about how to design different computers than classical computers.
So I would view it as just like aids are
underlying technologies, but these technologies are going to hopefully enable many,
(11:20):
many amazing applications on top of them, you know AI.
You know, that's why compared AI to fire or electricity.
You know, it's going to cut across every sector everywhere,
and people are going to be able to read think
think of AI as you're getting really intelligent decision making
systems to deploy everywhere.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Let's talk about your background for a moment. So where
were you born.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
I was born in India in a city called Chennai
in the south of India.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
And did you grow up you know, in middle class
kind of.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
You know, it was a comfortable middle class life in India,
you know. But one of the things was technology wasn't
always around and we had to wait for a while
before you know, we were on a waiting list. At
that time, only the government made phones and this was
a rotary phone. So it was a five year wait
list to get a phone, right, and so we got
the rotary phone changed our lives we were one of
(12:14):
the few people in our neighborhood to have it. People
would come to our homes to make calls to the
loved ones. I recall, you know, I would have to
it would before our trip to find the black test
results for my mother. Sometimes I would go all the
way to the hospital and they would say, no, it's
not ready, come back tomorrow. And with the phone, I
could call and get that information right away. So it really,
(12:35):
you know, showed me the part of technology.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
So where did you go to college?
Speaker 3 (12:38):
I went to a college called the Indian Institute of Technology.
It's a set of you know, a few institutions which
are primarily focused on engineering. And what did you major in,
you know, what's today called material science?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
And I astribute that, Okay, I did.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Okay, you know I had a chance to you know,
I really got interested in computers and semiconductors through my degree,
and so I really, you know, was motivated by what
was happening in Silicon Valley. I literally wanted to be
in the place where semi connectors were developed, and that's
why I had a chance to come to Stanford.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You went to Stanford get a master's degree in engineering.
That's right, And did you get a scholarship or how
to get you afford that?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I mean, it was very fortunate to get a full scholarship.
You know, I was a teaching assistant.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Had you left the United had you left the India
before that?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Had you ever been.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Out coming to the US was the first time I
was ever on a plane?
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Okay, So you got your master's degree and then you
went to Wharton to get your MBA.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I had only seen the West coast. I wanted to
see more of the US.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
I through fall, I came to the East coast, loved
the seasons, so I just wanted to spend time back
back east and so you know, it was also you know,
my goal with it was to get exposed to you know,
I had a deep engineering and scientific background, so chance
to get exposed to other walks of life out does
(14:02):
a business work, get exposed to people from finance, from economics,
and so that was all part of what I was
looking for.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So you got your MBA from Whorton, that's them.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
What did you do?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
You know?
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Pretty much very soon after that, I ended up at Google,
but I spent a short time at mckinzi before that.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, so are your parents alive.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
They are, and you know, I think they must be
pretty proud of you.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
You're the CEO of Google and Alphabet that they call
you all the time with advice or what do they do?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
You know? Both?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
You know, I'm fortunate. I'm very close to them. I
see them almost every week. But my dad is you know,
kind of it shows me amazingly. He's eighty two. He
relentlessly reads everything about you know, he's tried to keep up.
He's not a software engineered by training. But a few
years ago you wanted to know what a API is,
(14:53):
and he has learned it. So he tracks news closely,
and so he just talked to me about it.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Eighty two is young. The present United States is still young.
There you go and your mother, you talked to her.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
All the time, and you know she's I got my
love of reading from a very young age from from her.
Due to financial circumstances, you know, she she was working
as a stenographer. She stopped working to support the family.
But you know she was a voracious reader, and that's
where I got my love of reading from.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
And so and did you meet your wife at Wharton
Stanford or where?
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Back?
Speaker 3 (15:30):
You know, we both went to I at Indian Industry
of Technology. She was you know, at the time they
were in that many women, So she was she was
a pioneer in her own way of breaking through. And
so I met my wife and undergraduate.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Okay, and so now we're married.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
How long over twenty five years? Five years? And you
have two children? Two children, that's right?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
And do they run around Silicon Valley bragging saying my
father is the CEO of Google or they don't?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Quite the contrary. I think, you know, they're trying to
find their own boys. And you know, we hardly talk
about my role or anything in the context of my family.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Let's say you go at a restaurant Silicon Valley with
your wife. Do people come up with resumes all the
time or ideas for funding things?
Speaker 2 (16:11):
How does that work? Ah? Yeah? People less less that
as part.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
You know, maybe people want to picture or want to
say hello, and so that does happen, particularly in Silicon Valley,
but you know, doesn't always happen. I've kept a reasonably
private life, so that helps.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
I think, how do you avoid being sclerotic when you
have a company that now has one hundred and eighty.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Two thousand employees.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
How do you get innovative ideas to get to the
top without bureaucracy killing it.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Look, I think you have to enable uh, you know,
you have to empower small teams to move fast and
get things done.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
You have your big products, they are constantly improving, and
you have to make sure you're constantly investing in and
innovating on our core products. But you have to allow
in the system away for small teams to build new things,
and sometimes you have to be deliberate about it. Early
on at Google, we had a structure called Google Labs,
(17:09):
and you know, in which you could have small teams
with resources to go build new things. We are doing
that again now and we again have created a new
Google Labs team, And just recently they launched a product
called Google Notebook, in which you can go put a
set of documents and then AI kind of learns it.
You can ask questions, you can even tell it to
(17:31):
summarize it as a podcast, conversational podcast back to you, right,
and you know it's breadtaking if you use it. So,
but these are entirely new product built from scratch. And
so Google Photos was a product built from scratch too,
So you have to empower small teams to move the
velocity of a startup and cut through the processes you
(17:53):
have in a large company.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Let's talk about the company today.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
So, as I mentioned earlier, you have I think it's
one hundred and eighty three one thousand employees, and the
company has a market capitalization today of about two and
a half trillion or something.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, it's over two trillion dollars. Yeah, over two trillion dollars.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
So the market capitalization is doubled since you've been the CEO,
and the stock prices more than doubled since you've been
the CEO. So do you tell the founders, look, you've
done a great job, and maybe they should give you
a big piece of the company or something.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I'm very fortunate to be compensated. Well, look, I think
for me, Look, as a technologist, you know, I feel
like I'm at the front friend, drow Of, you know,
dreamt about things like AI for a long time. To
actually see it getting built now and to see this
(18:44):
transition play out in front of us, to me, you know,
that's the most motivating thing I could ask for.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I also know that Google in the early days had
a policy of free food for its employees, and I
sampled some of your free food at lunch today.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
It was very good. You obviously have to spend a
lot of money.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
You've got one hundred and eighty two thousand employees, so
giving them lunch or breakfast or dinner every day, or
for many of them every day, you must have a calculation, says,
are we spending this much on food? We're getting this
much higher productivity? And how do you assess that? And
why do you think other companies don't give away food
as much as you do?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Look quite the contrar I think in technology, if you
go to the Bay Area, I think a set of
things which Google has done as part of now standard
modern workplaces in the area. But you know, people value
in person collaboration to us. You know, I can recalled
several times, you know, when I was working at Google
(19:40):
early on, being in cafes, meeting someone else, talking, getting
excited about something, and.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
So it sparks creativity, It creates a.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Community, and I think the benefit that comes out of it,
you know, far dwarfs.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
The costs associate with it.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Google is regularly considered be one of the most favorable
places to work for employees, always high end surveys, and
so I assume you've got lots of people who always
want to come here. How many people a year try
to apply for jobs at Google?
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Is?
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I assume it's a million people or something more than that.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
What I'm proud of is the metric I look at
is when we make an offer, what percentage of people
accept the offer?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
And you know it is percentages. It's almost close to
ninety percent, right.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So typically, if somebody wants to get a job, somebody's
watching this and says, I want to work at Google,
what are you looking for? High IQs, high work quotient?
And it used to be said that you had a
very complicated interview process. I don't know if you still
have that. But what's the best way to get a
job here for an entry level person?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Look, we are you know, it depends on whether you're
an engineering or something else, but you know we are.
You know, if you're an engineering, we are looking for
really good programmers, people who understand computer science well and
you know, can be dynamically, you know, are willing to
learn and grow up themselves into new situations and do well.
(21:03):
But we are really looking for you know, you know,
superstar software engineers.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Right, So, when.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
You're doing a search yourself, I suppose you want to
get information. Do you ever have frustrations that you can't
get what you want? I mean, sometimes I can't find
what I want, But I'm not the CEO of Google,
so I assume you can have better access to the
search than I can.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
No, there are one of the reasons I'm so excited
about AI improving searches. You know, we're constantly people don't
always formulate the right queries. You know, we are constantly
working to make search easier to use. So for example,
you can now you know, speak with search as well
as take pictures and ask search questions. In many countries,
(21:46):
for example, in places like India, a large volume of
our queries actually come by people just talking to search.
And you know, because people get phone not everyone is
comfortable typing in these phones. They just talk talk to Google.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Similarly, what we call visual search.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
We have a product called Google Lens and you can
take a picture and ask questions. We get billions of
queries through visual search. Humans interact with the world in
very natural ways. We see things, we hear things, we speak,
and so that's an example of how we can search,
make search better, and AI can play it all. I
constantly am challenging our product find things we could be
(22:23):
doing better than I'm emailing my teams.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
So, leaving the US government aside, what do you see
as the biggest challenge to Google an alphabet going forward?
Is it competitors coming along, is it a new technology
that you're not in yet coming along and being very important,
or just keeping your organization efficient and not bureaucratic.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
What do you see as the biggest challenges?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Look, one of the things I would say, because we've
always been a foundational technology company and we are working
on these technologies which can apply across many things. I
think one of the things which is unique to Google
and Alphabet is, you know, we have a chance to
go do many things, but being disciplined doing a few
(23:07):
things and doing them well and doing it with the
relentless focus on innovation and doing it as efficiently as possible.
As a company with discipline, you know what leads to
long term success. And so so I think that's what
I think about, right, you know, where all can we
do it ourselves as a company? Where do we partner
(23:27):
and enable others? That's why Google Cloud has been a
big part of our focus because there are many sectors
in which the best way we can help the world
and have a good business doing so is by providing
our technology and solutions to others, and so you know,
it's getting that balance.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Druck.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
wherever you listen.
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