Bringing laurels to the country, India born Kharagpur IITian Sundar Pichai is all set to lead Google’s Android, the most used mobile operating system in the world. Google CEO Larry Page confirmed the news in an official blog post. Pichai will replace Andy Rubin, who was the key architect of Android and will take on leading Android in addition to his existing duties spearheading efforts with Chrome and Apps.
Sundar Pichai or P Sundarajan is an Indian American computer engineer from Tamil Nadu. He graduated with metallurgical and materials engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 1993. There he not only topped in his subject, but also won the Institute Silver Medal for excellence in academics.
Afterward, Pichai completed his Masters Degree in Engineering and Materials Science from the Stanford University in the U.S. and then also did his Masters in Business Administration from the Wharton School of Business.
Pichai joined Google in 2004 as Vice President of product management to take care of the search and consumer products such as iGoogle, Google Toolbar, Desktop Search and Gadgets, Google Pack, and Gears. In 2011, he became senior vice president of Google Chrome and Apps, which includes the Chrome browser and operating system, Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Drive. The engineer made the Chrome browser a huge success surpassing Internet Explorer and Firefox.
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After this big achievement, Pichai joins the list of famous alumni of IIT Kharagpur like Arun Sarin, the former CEO of Vodafone Group and Vinod Gupta, Chairman of Everest Group, a US-based venture capital and private equity firm, to hold a high ranking post in a global firm.
Pichai led the development of Chrome at a time when many felt that an extra browser was not needed. But to the astonishment of all, currently Chrome is the leading browser and is also the key to the cloud-based Chrome OS that Google is pushing as an alternative to Microsoft’s Windows.
“Sundar has a talent for creating products that are technically excellent yet easy to use — and he loves a big bet. Take Chrome, for example. In 2008, people asked whether the world really needed another browser. Today Chrome has hundreds of millions of happy users and is growing fast thanks to its speed, simplicity and security.”
“So while Andy’s a really hard act to follow, I know Sundar will do a tremendous job doubling down on Android as we work to push the ecosystem forward,” Page said in the company blog post.
This is definitely a great achievement for India to see the Chennai born super engineer in a post at the zenith of Google, the World’s leading search engine company.