Sundar Pichai now has a lot of control over Google products

Oct 25, 2014 09:59 GMT  ·  By

Sundar Pichai already had a pretty important role at Google, where he is a Senior Vice President overseeing Android, Chrome, and Google Apps, as well as a whole bunch of other products. Now, thanks to the latest restructuring, the businessman is getting even more power inside the world’s biggest Internet company.

According to Re/code, in a significant reorganization of Google Management, CEO Larry Page has decided to transfer leadership of core Google products to Pichai. A memo has already been sent to the staff about this, explaining the changes.

Pichai will now have control over research, search, maps, Google+, commerce, and ad products, as well as infrastructure, on top of the responsibility he has over Android, Chrome, and Google Apps.

The six execs that control these domains used to report directly to Page, but now they’ll have to go through Pichai instead.

Page seems to continue to be concerned about the fact that Google will no longer be innovative as the time goes by. He notes in the memo he sent to the staff that the new changes should help create less of a bottleneck, while also aiding him in focusing his attention on existing and new products. Larry Page will continue to have direct control over business and operations, including access and energy, Nest, Google X, Calico, and so on.

It’s understandable that, with so many things on his plate, Page wants to delegate some of his responsibilities to people he trusts. After all, as he puts it, he can’t focus on “the bigger picture” with so many things to handle at once, especially considering the many areas that Google is involved in and the countless products it is working on, both that we know of and that are secret.

Re/code points out that YouTube is left out of the discussion, mostly because it has a relatively new CEO, Susan Wojcicki, who will continue to report to Page.

Who is Sundar Pichai?

Pichai is growing into his position at Google and adding more and more to his plate, to the point that he’s become a key member of the management team. He was even considered for taking over the job of Microsoft CEO following Steve Ballmer’s departure, but he chose to stay on with Google instead. Twitter also tried to recruit him several years ago, but he passed on that too.

Sundar Pichai started out by managing Google’s web browser, Chrome, and then, later on, the Operating System with the same name and the line of netbooks that it works on. Later, in 2012, he took on Google Apps after the previous chief left to handle his own startup.

A year later, Android chief Andy Rubin stepped down from the job and left room for Pichai to take over this job too. Now he has effectively become the Senior Vice President of all Google products, although he won’t be getting a title change for now, even though he may very well deserve it.