Meet Sundar Pichai, the new head of Android

New Delhi, March 14: Sundar Pichai, an Indian American computer engineer and Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur alumnus, who was the Senior Vice President of Chrome, Google Apps, has been named head of Android.This was announced by CEO Larry Page in a surprise blog post today. Pichai assumes the responsibilities of Andy Rubin, who is stepping down as head of Android to "start a new chapter at Google." The change of guard is an apt indication of how the company intends to address the rise of mobile devices.In a blog post, Larry Page, Google's chief executive and co-founder, credited Rubin for evangelizing Android several years ago and building it into a free, open-source platform that runs on nearly three-quarters of the world's smartphones and is used by the world's largest handset manufacturers, from Samsung Electronics to HTC Corp."Sundar has a talent for creating products that are technically excellent yet easy to use—and he loves a big bet. Take Chrome, for example. In 2008, people asked whether the world really needed another browser. Today Chrome has hundreds of millions of happy users and is growing fast thanks to its speed, simplicity and security," he wrote.Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004 — the same year that Andy Rubin brought Android to Google via acquisition — following a bachelor of technology from India's IIT-Kharagpur, an MS from Stanford, an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's famed Wharton School, a stint at McKinsey & Co. as a management consultant, and work at semiconductor firm Applied Materials.Pichai got recognition when he initiated a toolbar, an add-on that gave browsers a handy Google search box. That modest project eventually led to Google Chrome, now used by 310 million people by Google's tally. The project got Pichai promoted to senior vice president of Chrome and Apps. And it's what led to a very lucrative new source of profit for the company.During early years of his stint with Google, he worked largely behind the scenes as director of product development. In addition to the Toolbar, he was linked to desktop products like Google Gears and Google Pack, a collection of software Page introduced at CES 2006 that was another step in bringing Google's services to the desktop in the pre-Chrome days. Under Pichai's direction, Google was ready to introduce the Chrome browser to the world. At the time of booming smartphone market, Google had a clear idea: to take Chrome into the world of desktop users and then to the mobile users.On July 7, 2009, Google announced the operating system and made it an open source project, called Chromium OS, in November 2009. Chrome OS is targeted initially towards netbooks, super small notebooks designed primarily for Web browsing.Rubin set up Android Inc in 2003 to build a mobile operating system around open source principles but was brought by Google and went on to become the world's most common mobile OS, turning away bulk of Symbian user. The Android OS now enjoys close to a million new activations a day.Since Pichai will continue running all things including Chrome, it remains to be seen just what Rubin will be doing, it appears he's staying at Google. But what exactly this shakeup means? Experts predict that Google is on its way to merge Chrome OS and Android together into a single operating system. This will take time and will require Pichai to integrate two different philosophies. But if the company managed to do it well, then it will have a platform which will be in direct competition with Windows as the biggest mainstream operating system in the world. Given that all the tools are available with Google, the dream for this OS could soon be a reality which will have the potential to become just as dominant as Android itself.As it is well known that PC makers are already producing Chromebooks to test alternative and provide competition to Microsoft. The role of Pichai, who also delivered Google's first self-made hardware, the gorgeous Chromebook Pixel, will be more crucial. Since the latest Samsung Chromebook made its debut, it has sold out on Google Play and in Best Buy stores. It's also been the best-selling laptop on Amazon for more than 140 days.In his new role, Pichai is expected to continue the success which Rubin delivered with Android. Pichai is probably one man most suited to unifying Google's OS strategy for the future. It remains to be seen how soon the company blur the lines between the touch-based Android and Chrome OS, but there's a lot of signs that Google may be getting ready for a unified future.