Mr. Sundar Pichai is perhaps the worst tech leader of our time. Hard to think of anyone who comes even close, given the scale.
It's interesting to think that Google essentially invented the foundational technology of LLMs (Transformers) back in 2017. Also, it had (and still does), the entire internet, literally in the palm of its hands with Google Search and other consumer products with over 2 Billion monthly active users. Furthermore, it had Google Index - the most effective and continually updated data set of any company to train AI on.
In addition, Google also had (and still has) a cash reserve of over $100 Billion, to be able to acquire possibly anything it ever wanted. Of course, Google's "tech talent" should have probably been able to pull off a level of "innovation" basically incomprehensible for anyone.
But what happened?
Ever since Mr. Pichai became CEO (Oct 2015), Google Search has declined tremendously. It's safe to say that the product has been gamed and maimed by hacky content and ads, so much that people are beginning to use brand new stuff like Perplexity and GPT Search.
Google's own competitor to OpenAI - Gemini - is a total piece of sheeit. Its wokeness is unbearable and despite all the resources that Google might have had, using it is basically a stupid life choice.
Not just for consumers, but even developers have turned to OpenAI APIs just because Google APIs are reportedly very "complicated".
All in all, under Mr. Pichai's reign, Google lost every opportunity to meaningfully innovate and create impact. Despite having an indisputable lead in the tech world, it's now playing catch up.
Now, whenever stuff like this is written, a lot of people quote Innovator's Dilemma. Well, I don't think Google has a chance of going the Kodak way. Times are different, and Big Tech is just too big to fail. Everything will come around, and Google will stay. However, it's without doubt that whatever was the limit to which Google could be foucked, Mr. Pichai safely crossed it.
Compare Mr. Pichai to Mr. Satya Nadella, and the contrast couldn't be clearer.
Mr. Nadella inherited a fundamentally weaker Microsoft. But his moves have basically been unbelievably far sighted. From the acquisition of Linkedin, to Github, to Activision.. it's been extraordinary. And of course - the OpenAI deal was quite something. Then there were also the inward moves to make Azure work better, which are proving to be working quite well. People say Microsoft's devices are also turning incredible very quickly.
An important distinction between the two is that Mr. Sundar Pichai is from IIT KGP, while Mr. Nadella is from Manipal Institute of Technology. And then both flew to US to build their careers. The major question, and perhaps the philosophical insight of the above writing is this:
If both of these people stayed in India, do you think Mr. Nadella would have gotten a level playing field to compete against someone like Mr. Pichai?
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