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But the top job at Alphabet also comes with increased public and internal scrutiny.
In 2018, the House Judiciary Committee grilled Google’s CEO over its data privacy practices and plans with China.
Two years later, Pichai again testified before Congress, citing antitrust concerns. Subsequently, he had two other major Google lawsuits filed by the US government over Google’s alleged monopolistic tactics.
Google is also dealing with internal turmoil after firing one of its top AI ethicists.
In December 2020, Google fired Timnit Gebru. Her departure comes weeks after she was asked to retract a paper on the dangers of large-scale language models and voiced her opposition to the company’s treatment of minority employees.
Google employees were “genuinely angry” about how the firings were handled, one person told BI at the time, adding that Gebru said Pichai and other managers created a “hostile work environment.” He said that he contributed to the creation of
Pichai ultimately apologized for the company’s response.
“I would like to say that I am truly sorry about this and accept my responsibility to work to restore your trust,” he wrote.
Pichai was also at the forefront of Google’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Under his leadership, Google begins efforts To help searchers find accurate and helpful information about the coronavirus.
And like many big tech companies, Alphabet hired quickly in the early days of the pandemic. Alphabet added approximately 37,000 new jobs in the 12 months ending in October 2022.
But starting in late 2022, Pichai has had to oversee an era of cost-cutting at the company.
It culminated in job losses in January 2023, with Google’s layoffs affecting 12,000 employees, or 6% of its global workforce. “I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” Pichai said.
More than 1,400 Google employees wrote an open letter to Pichai about his response to the layoffs.
It says, “Do no evil,” a reference to the company’s original motto.
Google employees also criticized Mr. Pichai’s large salary in the face of layoffs, accusing him of “destroying morale and culture” at Google.
Google also laid off hundreds more employees in its central engineering department and hardware teams in early 2024.
Pichai also had to deal with regulatory issues in Europe. French regulators fined Google nearly $270 million in March 2024 for using press articles to train its Gemini AI model.