Why Investors Want Sundar Pichai Fired

SUNDAR PICHAI: Sundar Pichai is in trouble. In fact, notable

investors

think it's only a matter of time until Sundar is

fired

or forced to resign. But wait a minute, wasn't Sundar Google's golden child, making hundreds of millions a year, growing the company from a successful Internet company to a tech giant and nearly quintupling its stock price? Well, yes, Sundar did all that, but when it comes to technology and high-growth companies in general, you are not judged by past performance. He is judged on future expectations and future expectations for Sundar Pichai are at the bottom. Google's core products are slowly losing market share, their workforce is more bloated than ever despite layoffs, and most importantly, they are completely dropping the ball when it comes to AI.

And to make matters worse for Sundar, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, unexpectedly came out of retirement. After completely disappearing from the face of the planet in 2015 and handing the reins to Sundar, Sergey made a surprise entry in mid-2023 to work on AI. More recently, Sergey made a rare public appearance only to admit what a poor job Google had done with Gemini. So naturally, speculation about Sergey replacing Sundar has run wild, as we've seen time and time again with other stumbling companies like Apple, Dell, Starbucks, Disney, and Twitter. But how do we get here? How did things get so bad so fast for Google?

And will Sundar Pichai really be

fired

? Well, let's find out. SUNDAR breaks in: To understand how we got here, we must first take a look at how Sundar became CEO in the first place. If you read Sundar's Wikipedia page or his trade publications, you will be shown a rosy story about a man who worked his way up from the bottom. The story goes that Sundar was born into a humble middle-class family in India in June 1972. And through sheer determination and hard work, he was able to become one of the most competitive universities in the world (IIT).

For those who don't know, IIT has an acceptance rate of only 2.5%. For perspective, even Stanford and Harvard have acceptance rates twice as high: 5%. And the funny thing is that Sundar also made it to Stanford, where he earned a master's degree in engineering before going to UPenn and earning an MBA. So, little to say, Sundar had an extremely rich academic background, and in 2004 he would end up joining Google as vice president of product management for the Google bar. From there, he would correctly identify that toolbars as a whole were going extinct and convince Sergey and Larry to look into an in-house browser that would become a huge success.

And it was thanks to this brilliant foresight that Sundar ended up being named CEO of Google, or at least that's how the story goes. Now, let me first say that there is nothing fundamentally inaccurate about this story. And nothing I'm going to say is intended to take anything away from Sundar. Obviously, Sundar is one of the most successful people in the entire tech period, and you can't really argue against that whether he remains CEO of Google or not. But, having said that, the problem with this story is that it is only told from one perspective: Sundar's perspective.

He worked hard, studied hard, achieved great things, and was rewarded. But the reality is that much of Sundar becoming CEO had nothing to do with anything he had control over. In fact, it can be argued that he was just a big cog in an even bigger machine and this goes back to the day he was hired. When Sundar was hired, Google's CEO was a man named Eric Schmidt. This guy was neither one of the founders nor one of the first employees of Google. In reality, he was an outside executive hired by shareholders to keep Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in check.

Larry and Sergey got along well with Eric, but at the same time, they naturally felt like they knew what was best for Google and were constantly trying to prove it. In fact, they were trying to do exactly that on the literal day Sundar was interviewed. As you may know, Sundar was interviewed on the same day Google launched Gmail. And Gmail was one of Larry and Sergey's first attempts to show Eric and the world at large that Google could be much bigger than just search. The same thing happened with the Android acquisition, the YouTube acquisition, and the Google Maps acquisition.

Often, Larry and Sergey didn't even tell Eric about these acquisitions until after the fact. He talks about great executive dynamics. But anyway, while these acquisitions were great, Larry and Sergey felt strongly that the real opportunity was in the browser market. Eric, however, was strongly opposed to this idea. He felt that taking on Microsoft was too big of a challenge and essentially banned Larry and Sergey from pursuing the idea for 6 full years. So it's not like Larry and Sergey got into chrome because Sundar gave them the idea. They had the idea for years. They simply didn't have the authority or the right man for the job.

However, when Sundar approached them with a similar idea, they accepted it. Basically, they just told Sundar to form a team and develop Chrome without Eric knowing. And here's Eric describing how exactly that played out. Honestly, it's pretty funny in retrospect, but unfortunately for Eric, this was the end of the road. Larry and Sergey had brought several successful products to market, including one that Eric opposed for years. So, this naturally called Eric's judgment into question and cemented the founders as the true geniuses behind Google, allowing Larry to regain the CEO position in 2011. This evolution made Sundar part of the trusted inner circle, but in no way was he in the running for CEO.

Fate, however, had a completely different idea. SUNDAR BECOMES CEO: Now that Larry and Sergey were back in full control of the company, they would really lean into the lunar projects that inspired them. Things like Google's self-driving car and Google Glass. In fact, Larry

want

ed to turn Google into an island of mad scientists who were constantly working on the next big thing. But

investors

were not so enthusiastic about this idea. Those visions simply painted Larry as an out-of-touch billionaire founder who lacked clarity and focus. To make matters worse, Larry's voice was literally failing. You see, Larry was struggling with voice problems due to vocal cord paralysis since the early 2000s, and this would get especially worse in the 2010s.

If you've never heard Larry speak, this is what he sounds like. A clear testament to the idea that no amount of money can solve certain problems. Anyway, Larry was starting to miss shareholder meetings and presentations because he simply couldn't talk, which naturally made investors nervous. Google was not only run by a seemingly out-of-touch billionaire, but also by a person who struggled to even communicate his thoughts and vision. The good news is that Google was founded by two people, so Sergey could step up, right? Well, no. In fact, Sergey would become caught up in an affair that not only ruined his marriage and tarnished his reputation, but also destroyed his relationship with Larry.

Apparently, Larry stopped talking to Sergey completely after the matter came to light. Okay, so Sergey was no longer in the running, but there must be some other visionary executive at Google who can take the reins, right? Well, there was: Andy Rubin, the founder of Android. Oh wait, never mind, Andy was caught up in some serious misconduct allegations and was paid $90 million to leave Google as soon as possible. So, there was an executive who missed Chrome and many other things, a founder who was paralyzed and disengaged, a founder with an affair, and an executive with serious accusations.

Talk about an inspiring executive team. At this point, it was clear that what Google needed was not a revolutionary but someone who was not controversial. And that's how Sundar became CEO. Of course, he worked very hard and accomplished great things, but what really toppled the domino in his favor was circumstances. The four people who were actually competing for the CEO position: Eric, Larry, Sergey and Andy were humiliatingly forced out of the race. And the only person left in the inner circle was the trusted ally who brought Chrome to market. And with that, Sundar Pichai would become CEO of Google on August 11, 2015.

A few years later, he would be promoted to CEO of Alphabet as a whole, which would bring us to his lackluster performance. SUNDAR LEAVES THE BALL: Ironically, Sundar cannot be blamed for anything he has done or not done over the last decade. The reality is that he did exactly what he was hired to do: lead Google in the most uncontroversial way possible and maximize revenue and profits. Since he took over, Google's revenue has quadrupled, its net income has quintupled, and its stock has risen to the moon. The only problem is that that's all Google has achieved.

I mean, can you even name a major product launch Google has had since Sundar took over? The biggest launch I can think of is the Google Pixel, which is a phenomenal phone in terms of value, but not so great in terms of sales and market share. In fact, the Pixel does not control even 1% of the global smartphone market. However, investors never had a problem with this lack of innovation while Google was still the market leader, but this all changed on November 30, 2022 when ChatGPT was launched. Suddenly, investors

want

ed Google to be able to innovate with OpenAI, which was now also backed by Microsoft.

For obvious reasons, this was basically an impossible task, especially when the time constraint was as soon as possible. However, Sundar would try to deliver and launched Google Bard just a couple of months later in March 2023. Now, perhaps, you could argue that Bard was technically better than ChatGPT because it was connected to the Internet or something, but the The reality was that no one really cared. Just look at this graph comparing ChatGPT interest to Google Bard interest, it's almost non-existent. Whether Bard was actually a copy of ChatGPT or not, that's how the general public saw it and they had no interest in using another Google product.

This was only made worse by the fact that Google would botch the launch of Bard. One of the first Bard ads would show Bard giving factually incorrect information, which is not surprising given the rush they were in to get Bard to market. This mistake not only humiliated Bard and Google, but also caused the company's market value to drop by $100 billion. This was strike 1 for Sundar. Now it was up to him to fix Bard and that's what Google Gemini was supposed to be about. It was supposed to be Google's AI redemption, but Gemini would end up dropping the ball even worse than Bard.

If you haven't seen the social media memes yet, Gemini basically had an extreme "woke" bias. According to Gemini, this is George Washington, these are popes, and these are British royalty. Yes, this mistake not only made Gemini the laughingstock of the Internet and lost the company another $96 billion in market capitalization, but it also removed all shareholder confidence that Sundar can really take Google to the age of AI. Combine this with the fact that Sergey is back and his love drama has had time to calm down and it's not looking very good for Sundar. Historically, Sergey has always been in Larry's shadow, so it's entirely possible that this time he'll be interested in being the main character.

This doesn't necessarily mean Sundar will be fired, but it's entirely possible that he will have to take on a role beneath Sergey if he isn't ousted entirely. So how exactly did Sundar get to this position? Well, despite his enormous achievements, Sundar was always a cog in an even bigger machine. This is how we obtained the title of CEO. And as CEO, he gave the shareholders exactly what they asked for, and the shareholders just realized that that wasn't actually what they wanted, and that's why they wanted Sundar fired. AI is not the only area where Google is reaching a dead end.

They also have to address the increasingly worrying issue of market saturation. Watch this video to learn more.