Amol Rajan talks to Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, at his Silicon Valley HQ, in an in-depth, hard-hitting and personally revealing encounter.
In the course of their hour-long interview, which is as much about the man as the politics and controversies around Google itself, they tackle a range of topical issues, from the company’s hotly debated privacy practice and tax policies to its pioneering development in AI and quantum computing. We also learn about Pichai’s stratospheric rise from a modest middle-class upbringing in south east India to his appointment as the $1.6 trillion tech giant’s CEO, aged 47, with an annual pay packet ranging from $7 million to $281 million.
Rajan and Pichai bond over their shared Tamil Nadu family background and their mutual love of cricket - both had hoped to become professional cricketers. Their encounter ends with them bowling each other a few friendly rounds. But Rajan does not shy away from levelling some uncomfortable questions at Pichai, such as "has Google become too big?" He also probes him about recent anti-trust attacks from Republicans and Democrats and concern from regulators around the world, and pushes Pichai to counter criticisms of “surveillance capitalism” and from those who claim Google’s new Privacy Sandbox will undermine competition in digital advertising and entrench Google’s market power. He quotes some mind-boggling figures, including the company’s net profits, which doubled to $17.9 billion in just three months. Is it morally right, he asks, that Alphabet is now worth $1.6 trillion, making it richer than Australia, Saudi Arabia or Switzerland?
Series Producer Elizabeth Needham-Bennett Studio Manager Graham Puddifoot