At Google I/O last year, I called Sundar the most underrated executive and CEO material via a tweet. Glad that the world has finally start to recognize Sundar. BusinessWeek magazine's Brad Stone profiles Sundar Pichai, who is apparently Google CEO Larry Page's goto guy and the second most important executive at the company. Sundar is going to be center stage at Google I/O keynote tomorrow and will outline his vision of Android OS and it's various mutations.
Over past few years, I have had an opportunity to interview Sundar on a handful of occasions — always at Gigaom events. In addition I have had some conversations with him about ChromeOS at various Google events. Though I don't claim to know him well, I think Brad has done a good job of capturing the essence of Sundar, at least from a professional perspective. I don't think we ever get to learn about the real personal side of executives.
Sundar, has a couple of things that are sorely missing in Google founders — empathy and a sense of humanity that the company will need as it starts to embed itself into personal lives of people. Whether it is being privy to our private video moments (via Dropcam) or knowing about when we come and go (Nest) from our homes to where we go (via Android OS), Google is going to become a fearful presence in our lives, world's first surveillance giant.