What is pichai's claim to fame? It's very hard to figure out what exactly he has done to suddenly rise up to the top. Just a very likable person? I am yet to see anything visionary from him.
Re:This year’s Founders' Letter
by sievebrain on Friday April 29, 2016 @10:06AM
(#11595773)
Being a competent manager. Sort of like Tim Cook. He managed Chrome well, and then Chrome and Android, and now Google as a whole.
Visionaries are quite rare and unfortunately sometimes their visions aren't actually that great. See: VicG and Google+. Vic was a visionary who had unconditional support from the top, but in the end it wasn't enough to have a big impact.
I think Google Toolbar was his idea.
Per Wikipedia, Toolbar was launched in 2000 but Pichai joined in 2004.
I'm actually worried about short term issues in Google search. After the introduction of "AI" in to search, the keywords are far more frequently being ignored and results are astonishingly less relevant than about a year ago in my experience. There also isn't any easy way to force the keyword in queries because "+" operator has been reassigned to Google+.
(disclaimer: former Google employee here)