Amol Rajan’s questioning failed to get behind the defences of Sundar Pichai’s ‘nice guy’ media image
Last weekend, in what the
BBC clearly regarded as important news, the corporation announced that its media editor, Amol Rajan, had been granted an interview with Sundar Pichai, the current CEO of Alphabet (which basically means Google). It was billed as “the first of a series of interviews with global figures”. If the boss of
Google counts as a global figure, one wonders who else is on the list, the CEO of ExxonMobil?
And the takeaway from watching this encounter? Simply this: Mr Pichai is a nice guy. He comes from a modest background in
India, dropped out of Stanford in the time-honoured manner, has an MBA from Wharton and has worked for Google since 2004. He’s been CEO of Google (and Alphabet, its holding company) since 2015.