Sundar Pichai

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0:27Over the past quarter century, one of the most significant companies in the world has been Google. It is led today not by its founders, but by a person who started in 2004, rose up the ranks and is now the CEO. His name is Sundar Pashai. I sat down with him recently in the Google offices in 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 2004. The company was started in 1998, I believe. So how big was the company in 2004? 2004, we were about just over a thousand people, I think.

1:03But we were growing pretty fast. Yeah, we were about a thousand people. So when you, why did you come to the company in 2004? Who attracted you to come here? Small little search engine company. Search wasn't that big a deal then, probably. I was using the product from the outside and I clearly noticed how much better it was as a product. And I was 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 my life. And so I always felt the power of giving access to technology.

1:43The 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. 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. Is running the company more complicated because you have this lawsuit you have to deal with? With our scale and size, I think scrutiny is inevitable.

2:21And, you know, we've always engaged very respectfully and responsibly through these processes. Even in the current ruling, I mean, the ruling goes to great length to point out that we have achieved success by innovating. Our competitors acknowledge that we are the best search engine in the world. We definitely disagree with the ruling, but we're still in the middle of the remedies phase, and we will appeal, and this process will likely take many years. And I'm confident, given that we are focused on innovating using technology, we'll do well in the long run. And just last week, there was a European court ruling, which overruled an earlier decision, but the process had taken almost 10 years, right?

3:14So these things take a while. 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? This one is not to do with our advertising on our search engine. The other one is we provide 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.

3:45Again, that case is just getting underway, so I expect it to take some time. But look, where we can figure out constructive solutions, I think we will. Where we think it really harms our ability to innovate on behalf of our users, or we are going to be vigorous in defending ourselves, and it's going to take time for it to play out. Silicon Valley has been enamored with artificial intelligence, AI. Everybody thinks that they need to have AI attached to their name 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 OpenAI did.

4:24So are you going to go more public with what you're doing in artificial intelligence? And how is artificial intelligence going to change your company? I mean, it is. It's been a big focus for us as a company. One of the first things I did as CEO was to pivot the company to be focused on AI, AI first. We've developed a lot of the core underlying technology. A lot of it powers search today. So part of what has helped us keep search above everyone else is by incorporating a lot of AI in how we do search. The current moment around generative AI is what's captured people's imagination. We are incorporating that in search in a deep way.

5:07So today, if you go to Google and type a query in, for many queries, we give something called an AI overview. And you get a nice summary on top, which we are summarizing the top results and giving context around it using AI. It's been very well received. People love it. And so it's one direction in which we are using AI to evolve 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 profound shift in technology we will ever see as humanity. So it's an exciting time. Today, if I want to do a search, let's suppose I look your name up on a search and it'll come up with your bio and so forth.

5:52And 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. But with AI, some 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. So how do you address that issue? Today, we've passed 25 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 web, right? So people are clicking through and going to a lot of sites.

6:32That is important for us. That's what makes this a thriving ecosystem. So even as we are evolving the product with AI, one of our core design principles has been making sure it works that way. 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 we think about it holistically because I think that's what allows people to create great content and create that virtuous cycle. So advertisers, are they concerned that somehow the AI search function you have might get them bypassed? 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.

7:19It's naturally in the user's intent. and when their intent is commercial, advertising turns out to be very, very relevant information. There was a core insight behind how we monetize Google Search that ads are 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. So Google is more or less the search engine part of your company. Alphabet has other parts.

7:57Let me ask you about some of them I could. But 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 to all enterprises. There's YouTube and so on. There's Android and so on. So think of Google as our internet-related businesses. And then we're using technology still, but we have other long-term bets. Waymo 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 treat diseases, etc.

8:48These are longer-term bets, and that's what we call as other bets. Okay. So Waymo is a long-term bet, I assume, but have you been in one of those cars? All the time. I make sure to go periodically and take a ride in Waymo. It's phenomenal. The progress I've seen every six months. the last time I was in the car, the third time I was in it, I was on my phone in the back seat. Once in a while, I have to tell myself, look, I'm in a self-driving car. It's amazing even how people sometimes look in. Some people are curious. Some people are kind of like they're used to it. Do you wear a helmet when you're in there, or you're confident you don't need that?

9:27Not at all. Quite the contrary. It's pretty relaxing. We've been surprised at how much people like the experience. We are now, we've scaled up to 100 ,000 paid rights every week in the US. We recently announced a partnership with Uber, so you can use the Uber app in, for example, in Atlanta to hail a Waymo car. 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 who kind of drove the cloud business here? I mean, it was one of the big areas I bet on as I became CEO in 2015.

10:12And 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 a decision to really provide it to everyone else. And we brought in CEOs who had real background to do that. Our current CEO, Thomas Kurian, has really helped scale the business. Last quarter, we had over$10 billion in revenues. I think we are 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 our earnings calls recently that we will exit 2024 in YouTube and cloud at$100 billion run rate.

11:02And these were businesses which we built from scratch over the past decade. So we've talked about cloud, which was a novelty 10 years ago or so, and now AI is a bit of a novelty. What are the areas in the future that you think will be the next great tech interest for Silicon Valley and other people? Is quantum computing one of them? You know, I would view quantum as one of those foundational technologies like AI. Over time, quantum is fundamentally thinking about how to design different computers than classical computers. So I would view it as just like AI, these are underlying technologies. But these technologies are going to hopefully enable many, many amazing applications on top of them.

11:48AI, that's why I've compared AI to fire or electricity. It's going to cut across every sector everywhere, and people are going to be able to rethink. Think of AI as you're getting really intelligent decision-making systems to...

12:26real smart in real time? Do that with the all new Adobe Acrobat Studio. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. Deploy everywhere. Let's talk about your background for a moment. So where were you born? I was born in India in a city called Chennai in the south of India. And did you grow up, you know, in middle class kind of family? Yeah, 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 the time. Only the government made phones and this was a rotary phone.

13:03So 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 the few people in our neighborhood to have it. People would come to our homes to make calls to their loved ones. I recall, you know, I would have to, it would be a four hour trip to find the blood 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 showed me the power of technology. So where did you go to college?

13:34I went to a college called the Indian Institute of Technology. It's a set of a few institutions which are primarily focused on engineering. And what did you major in? What's today called material science. And I assume you did okay? I did okay. I had a chance to, I really got interested in computers and semiconductors through my degree. And so I really was motivated by what was happening in Silicon Valley. I literally wanted to be in the place where semiconductors were developed and that's why I had a chance to come to Stanford. You went to Stanford to get a master's degree in engineering? That's right.

14:14And did you get a scholarship or how did you afford that? I mean, I was very fortunate to get a full scholarship. I was a teaching assistant at Stanford. Had you left India before that? Had you ever been out of India? No, I mean, coming to the U.S. was the first time I was ever on a plane. Okay, so you got your master's degree, and then you went to Wharton to get your MBA. I'd only seen the West Coast. I wanted to see more of the U.S. I, through fall, I came to the East Coast. Loved the seasons, so I just wanted to spend time 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.

14:55So a chance to get exposed to other walks of life, how does a business work, get exposed to people from finance, from economics. And so that was all part of what I was looking for. So you got your MBA from Wharton. That's right. Then what did you do? You know, pretty much very soon after that I ended up at Google, but I spent a short time at McKinsey before that, yeah. So are your parents alive? They are. And I see them. They must be pretty proud of you. You're the CEO of Google and Alphabet. Do they call you all the time with advice, or what do they do? Both. I'm fortunate I'm very close to them.

15:28I see them almost every week. But my dad is kind of, it shows me amazingly, he's 82. He relentlessly reads everything about, he's tried to keep up. He's not a software engineer by training, but a few years ago, he wanted to know what an API is and he has learned it. So he tracks news closely and so he just talked to me about it. Well, 82 is young. The President of the United States is 82. Yeah. Still young. There you go. And your mother, you talk to her. I have my mother all the time. I got my love of reading from a very young age from her due to financial circumstances. She was working as a stenographer.

16:11She stopped working to support the family. But, you know, she was a oracious reader. And that's where I got my love of reading from. And so... And did you meet your wife at Wharton, Stanford, or where? Back, you know, we both went to IIT, Indian Institute of Technology. She was, you know, at that time there weren't that many women. So she was a pioneer in her own way of breaking through. And so I met my wife in undergraduate. Okay, and so you've now been married how long? Over 25 years. 25 years, and you have two children? Two children, that's right. And do they run around Silicon Valley bragging, saying, my father is the CEO of Google, or they don't do that?

16:53Quite the contrary. I think, you know, they're trying to find their own voice, and, you know, we hardly talk about my role or anything in the context of my family. Let's say you go to a restaurant in Silicon Valley with your wife. Do people come up with resumes all the time or ideas for funding things? How does that work? Ah, yeah. People, less the resume part, you know, maybe people want a picture or want to say hello. And so that does happen, particularly in Silicon Valley. But, you know, it doesn't always happen. I've kept a reasonably private life, so that helps, I think. How do you avoid being sclerotic when you have a company that now has 182 ,000 employees?

17:32How do you get innovative ideas to get to the top without bureaucracy killing it? Look, I think you have to enable, you know, you have to empower small teams to move fast and get things done, right? You have your big products, they're 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 a way 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, in which you could have small teams with resources to go build new things.

18:10We 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 summarize it as a podcast, a conversational podcast back to you, right? And it's breathtaking if you use it. But it's an 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 at the velocity of a startup and cut through the processes you have in a large company.

18:51Let's talk about the company today. So as I mentioned earlier, you have, I think it's 182 ,000 employees. and the company has market capitalization today of about two and a half trillion or something? Yeah, it's over two trillion dollars. Over two trillion dollars. So the market capitalization has doubled since you've been the CEO, and the stock price has 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? Look, I'm very fortunate to be compensated well. Look, I think for me, look, as a technologist, I feel like I'm at the front row of, you know, dreamt about things like AI for a long time.

19:36To actually see it getting built now and to see this transition play out in front of us, to me, you know, that's the most motivating thing I could ask for. 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. It was very good. You obviously have to spend a lot of money. You've got 182 ,000 employees. So giving them lunch or breakfast or dinner every day, or for many of them, every day, you must have a calculation that says, are we spending this much on food? We're getting this much higher productivity? And how do you assess that?

20:11And why do you think other companies don't give away food as much as you do? KUNAL KHANNAVARANI, Quite the contrary. 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 Bay Area. But people value in-person collaboration. To us, I can recall several times when I was working at Google early on, being in cafes, meeting someone else, talking, getting excited about something. And so it sparks creativity. It creates a community. And I think the benefit that comes out of it that far dwarfs the costs associated with it.

20:52Google is regularly considered to be one of the most favorable places to work for employees, always high in 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? I assume it's a million people or something more than that. What I'm proud of is the metric I look at is when we make an offer, what percentage of people accept the offer? And, you know, it is almost close to 90%, right? 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.

21:29And it used to be said that you had 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? Look, it depends on whether you're in engineering or something else. But, you know, we are, you know, if you're in 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, apply themselves into new situations and do well. But we are really looking for, you know, superstar software engineers, right? So when you're doing a search yourself, I suppose you want to get information.

22:09Do 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. No, there are. One of the reasons I'm so excited about AI improving search is, 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, for example, in places like India, a large volume of our queries actually come by people just talking to search.

22:49And because people get phone, not everyone is comfortable typing in these phones. They just talk to Google. Similarly, what we call visual search, 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 make search better and AI can play a role. I constantly am challenging our product, find things we could be doing better, and I'm emailing my teams. So leaving the U.S. government aside, what do you see as the biggest challenge to Google and Alphabet going forward?

23:28Is it competitors coming along? Is it new technology that you're not in yet coming along and being very important? or just keeping your organization efficient and not bureaucratic? What do you see as the biggest challenges? 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 things and doing them well, and doing it with a relentless focus on innovation, and doing it as efficiently as possible as a company with discipline, is what leads to long-term success.

24:14And so I think that's what I think about, right? Where all can we do it ourselves as a company? Where do we partner 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 right. Thanks for listening. To hear more of my interviews, you can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.