Sundar Pichai Joins Alphabet Board Of Directors

Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., has its 13th board of director, Google CEO Sundar Pichai! Pichai will be the 5th insider and the 2nd Google executive to join the board after the head of Google’s cloud division Diane Greene. This announcement was made before the announcement of their second quarter earnings.

Sundar Pichai has worked with Google for more than a decade before he became the CEO of the company. In 2015, Google was reorganized into a unit of its parent company Alphabet with Pichai as the CEO after Eric Schmidt. The creation of Alphabet split a bunch of businesses into quasi independent companies, separate from Google.

Alphabet CEO and cofounder of Google Larry Page said, “Sundar has been doing a great job as Google’s CEO, driving strong growth, partnerships and tremendous product innovation.” This move represents a vote of confidence in Pichai, who has helped raise shares by more than 50% in his tenure. It’s not clear what Pichai’s salary will be after joining the board. His total compensation package for the year 2016 was $ 200 million.

Pichai, who has stuck with Google’s commitment to artificial intelligence and machine learning, has led the company through a period of sustained growth. Alphabet is the second most valuable company in the United States, with Google accounting for a vast majority of their revenue. Alphabet’s financial results for the second quarter was $ 265 billion, which is up by 26% versus their second quarter results of 2016.

Along with Sundar Pichai, the Alphabet board also includes the cofounders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin, executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt and Diane Greene. In comparison, Alphabet has the most number of insiders on their board of directors. Both Apple and Amazon only have 1 insider, their respective CEOs Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos, while Microsoft has 3 on its 12 person board. Facebook also has a higher insider count, with 3 out of their 8 board members working for the company.

Predominantly, a majority of the companies have fewer insiders as the board of directors are meant to represent the interests of shareholders in cases of conflict with company leadership. A higher number of directors directly affiliated with the company may become a conflict of interest during a crisis. 

Watch how Sundar Pichai, in mere 10 years, became the CEO of one of the world’s biggest companies, Google!