Compiler/Woodcutter
On July 13, Beijing time, it was reported that Google It will be fined 500 million euros (about 593 million dollars) by the French antitrust authorities. Just the day before, Google CEO Sundar Pichai (also known as "Brother Chopper") received an in-depth interview from the BBC, in which he talked about many controversial issues involving tax, privacy and antitrust.
Not only as CEO, but also as a moral model
Pichai was born into a middle class family in Tamil Nadu, southern India. He is low-key, gentle, and seldom puts on airs. For example, people will not see the video of him standing on the electric surfboard like Zuckerberg holding the American flag on Instagram on Independence Day.
According to the BBC, he doesn't eat meat Tesla ； He admired Alan Turing and hoped that he would have the opportunity to meet Stephen Hawking; Besides, he's jealous Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has the opportunity to fly into space.
At Google, he has won the support of engineers and software developers. Pichai himself is an excellent engineer, which is very helpful to his management work. But even so, it is not easy to work in practice. Silicon Valley is full of talents, and there are not a few conceited people, but they all respect Pichai more.
People around said that Pichai was a kind and considerate leader. All those who knew him said that he sincerely hoped to establish himself as a moral model.
When talking about the impact of technology on improving living standards, he seemed very ideal Doctrine, it all comes from his achievements Long and Work experience. Many technologies have had a significant impact on him, from the dial phone that they look forward to day and night to the scooter that is crowded on it for dinner every month.
In addition, his public performance tends to be relaxed and relaxed, and the results achieved by him surprised the executives of other large technology companies. His testimony in Congress rarely caused Google's share price to fall. His gentle attitude and his grasp of details can always help him to survive.
Some people believe that under the leadership of its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google always has pioneering spirit and entrepreneurial enthusiasm and has the courage to take risks. But after that, there really should be a low-key, steady and prudent leader like him to ease public anxiety and win the favor of government officials.
Figure: Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin Look forward to AI and quantum computing in the future
In the past 23 years, Google has made great contributions to the formation of today's free and open Internet.
It can be said that Google is one of the most complex, important and richest enterprises in the world. As its leader, Pichai is the most effective, popular and respected product manager in Google's history, so he stands out from the crowd.
He is not only the boss of Google and its parent company Alphabet, but also the ultimate leader of artificial intelligence pioneers such as Waze, FitBit and DeepMind. At Google alone, he is responsible for Gmail, Chrome browser, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Docs, Google Photo Album, Android operating system and many other products.
Among them, although neither the Chrome browser nor the Android mobile operating system was originally created by Pichai (Android was once led by Andy Rubin), it has become popular all over the world under his leadership.
However, so far, Google's most well-known product is still Google Search. As "Google" penetrates into daily life, "Google" even becomes a verb.
But Pichai said that in the next 25 years, the other two developments will further change the world, that is, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
"I think this is the most profound technology ever developed and researched by human beings," he said. "It is estimated that you will think of fire, electricity or the Internet, probably similar to these. But I think artificial intelligence is more profound than these."
In essence, AI is an attempt to replicate human intelligence in machines. Various AI systems are already better than humans at solving certain types of problems.
Quantum computing is another completely different technology. Ordinary computers are based on the binary state of matter, that is, 0 or 1. There is nothing in between. These positions are called "bits".
But at the quantum or subatomic level, the behavior mode of matter is different: it can be 0 or 1 at the same time, or other states in between. The quantum computer is built on the quantum bit, which will take into account the possible states of matter. This technology is difficult to understand, but it can really change the world.
Pichai and other science and technology experts found that the possibilities contained therein were exciting. He said: "(Quantum) doesn't apply to everything. Some things are better with our current computing model, but quantum computing will open up new solutions for some things."
In a sense, Pichai's current task is to deal with the infinite challenges of artificial intelligence and quantum computing from the product management level.
Wise leaders also have potential pitfalls in management
In addition, under the management and leadership of Pichai, the share price of Google is even more commendable. Throughout history, few CEOs have created a market value of $1 trillion for the company.
However, according to former Google employees and many other close observers, some traits have helped Pichai become a wise countercyclical leader, but also brought him potential pitfalls. They reached consensus on the following issues.
First, Google is more cautious than ever before.
Second, Google has launched a bunch of products that lack a lot of originality. In a sense, it ordered its own engineers to improve these inventions after seeing that other enterprises had made great inventions.
Third, many of the projects that Pichai made a big bet on failed, including Google Glass, Google+, Google Wave and Project Loon. Google can reasonably refute that these experiments and failures are valuable. Moreover, this conflicts with the first point above.
Fourth, Google seems to have lost its ambition to solve major problems for mankind. In the narrow strip south of San Francisco, there are the largest number of computer science doctors in the world. So someone will surely ask: shouldn't Google, with so many talented people, start to solve the problem of climate change or try to cure cancer? This criticism seems to be out of keeping with Pichai's past record, but it is very common.
Finally, he deserves great sympathy, because in the era of cultural war, it is almost impossible to manage a large, stubborn, demanding and idealistic workforce like Google. Today, Google often appears in the news. Sometimes it strikes because of employees' desire for diversity or fair pay, and sometimes it causes disputes because of the identity of key people.
However, the BBC reporter believes that Google has more than 100000 employees, many of whom are self righteous and even show the nature of activists, and such people simply cannot be controlled. On the one hand, Google's global employees have different views, fully reflecting cognitive diversity; On the other hand, people hope that it can stand up as a company on specific issues. There is a contradiction between the two.
Reputation risk caused by suspected antitrust and tax avoidance
At present, the most "headache" of Pichai should be the growing anti trust agitation in various countries. At this time, Google is encountering a series of reviews and criticisms every day, the most prominent of which are taxes, privacy and the so-called monopoly position.
Google takes defensive measures on tax related issues. Over the years, Google has spent huge sums of money hiring accountants and lawyers to help them legally avoid taxes.
For example, Google transferred more than 20 billion dollars to Bermuda through a Dutch shell company in 2017, which is also part of its strategy of "double Ireland, Dutch sandwich".
When the BBC reporter mentioned this in the interview, Pichai said that Google would not implement this plan. As one of the largest taxpayers in the world, Google will comply with local tax laws in all countries/regions it is involved in.
But when the reporter suggested that Pichai make a commitment and let Google withdraw from all tax havens immediately, he did not accept the proposal.
But he did make it clear that "he is encouraged by the dialogue around the lowest corporate tax in the world".
This shows that Google is working with policy makers to find ways to make taxation easier and more efficient. Most of Google's R&D and revenue are in the United States, which is also its main tax place.
In addition, Google's effective tax rate in the past decade has reached 20%, higher than many companies. Nevertheless, when the world raises and pays trillions of dollars in anti epidemic funds by taxing ordinary people, the use of tax havens inevitably brings risks to the company's reputation.
In addition, Google is also facing continuous and even intensified scrutiny in other fields, including data, privacy and whether it has obtained a de facto monopoly position in the search industry - as we all know, it has indeed occupied a dominant position in the search market.
In response, Pichai said that Google's products are free and users can easily switch to other platforms.
Facebook The same argument is also held: Facebook was strongly endorsed by Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. last month - he rejected a series of anti-monopoly lawsuits against the social media giant at that time, on the grounds that these cases do not meet the current definition of monopoly (that is, "the ability to raise prices or exclude competitors for profit") 。
But most regulators don't think so. Relevant institutions have said that new regulations should be introduced to strengthen the review of this new type of enterprise giant. Judge Bosberg's ruling on Facebook confirms this need. Lina Khan, the 32 year old new chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), also said earlier that in the new era of "winner takes all" for technology giants, the definition of monopoly should be expanded according to the times.
Where will Google go in the future?
Some technology industry practitioners are worried about Google's future development, and they hope that Google can accelerate its development. But in polarized western countries, many voters hope that technology giants can slow down.
However, this situation is obviously impossible. It is normal for the company to accelerate its development, and the wheel of history will only turn faster and faster.
In addition, western legislators and regulators are slow, inefficient and easy to lobby, while the outbreak of the epidemic occupies a large amount of network bandwidth. So western countries now largely wait for people like Sandal Pichai to decide what direction to go, although Pichai believes that he should not take this responsibility.
