[mountainriver]

Pichai has been a terrible CEO, he almost lost the AI race before it started because he was too focused on Google’s consumer products.

I was shocked they kept him around. He’s very much just a money manager like Tim Cook or Steve Ballmer.

Those types are great in the short term but risk the entire company’s future long term

[nilkn]

I'm surprised people still think this. Google has the strongest position of any company in the world on AI. They have expertise and capability across the entire stack from chips to data centers to fundamental research to frontier models. Just because they weren't first-to-market with a chatbot doesn't mean they almost lost or made some terrible durable blunder.

That's about Google, though. The picture about Sundar specifically is harder to evaluate. The pessimistic take is that Google had that position already and Sundar failed to proactively lead through a fundamental product shift, forcing the company onto the defensive for some time. The optimistic take is that Sundar, having occupied the top spot since 2015, prioritized investments in the company's overall technology development, then successfully executed a rapid product pivot when the market changed, securing a dominant position in both research and product that nobody else can compete with long-term.

[loudmax]

All of Google's advantages in AI are despite Sundar Pichai's leadership, not because of it.

[nilkn]

That's not clear to me. He's been in charge for over a decade, and the company he's in charge of has the most dominant position in AI in the world.

[mountainriver]

People give him way too many breaks, he's a money manager. He was asleep at the wheel when OpenAI absolutely steamrolled them, even though they very easily could have won that race.