12 August,2015 09:23 AM IST | | PTI
India-born Sundar Pichai, who has been named the new CEO of Google, has said that he hopes to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi soon as he thanked the Indian leader for his wishes on being named the chief of the re-organised technology giant
New York: India-born Sundar Pichai, who has been named the new CEO of Google, has said that he hopes to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi soon as he thanked the Indian leader for his wishes on being named the chief of the re-organised technology giant.
"@narendramodi @google Thanks for the warm wishes and hope to have the opportunity to meet you soon," Pichai, 43, replied to a tweet by Modi in which the premier had congratulated him on his new role. "Congratulations @sundarpichai.
My best wishes for the new role at @google," Modi had tweeted following the announcement that Pichai will head a new and slimmer Google, which will come under a new parent company Alphabet. It is noteworthy that Pichai's appointment comes just over a month before Modi is scheduled to visit Silicon Valley in September and is expected to meet heads of various technology giants based there.
Sundar Pichai. Pic/AFP
Silicon Valley's big names took to the micro-blogging site to congratulate Pichai on his elevation in the company he had joined in 2004. Pichai thanked Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Apple Chief Tim Cook and others who congratulated him on his promotion.
Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt wrote on Twitter, "Really excited about the vision and brilliance of Sundar.. he's going to be a great CEO." Pichai becomes only the third chief executive of the company after Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page. Bret Taylor, co-creator of Google Maps, ex-CTO of Facebook and Co-Founder of technology Quip also congratulated Pichai, the first non-white CEO, on Twitter.
In a surprise and significant re-organisation, Page announced the formation of a new parent company Alphabet Inc which will replace Google as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights.
Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet, which will have Page as CEO and co-founder Sergey Brin as President. Pichai, who was previously in-charge of product and engineering for Google's Internet businesses, will be the CEO of the "slightly slimmed down" Google.
