Latest / The David Rubenstein Show / Sundar Pichai

Transcript

Sundar Pichai · The David Rubenstein Show

0:03
Speaker 1: Over the past quarter century, one of the most significant
0:05
Speaker 1: companies in the world has been Google. It has led
0:07
Speaker 1: today not by its founders, but by a personal who
0:10
Speaker 1: started in two thousand and four, rose up the ranks,
0:12
Speaker 1: and is now the CEO.
0:13
Speaker 2: His name is Sundar Pashai.
0:15
Speaker 1: I sat down with him recently and the Google officers
0:18
Speaker 1: of New York to talk about the future of Google
0:20
Speaker 1: and also importance of artificial intelligence to the company. When
0:23
Speaker 1: you joined Google, the alphabet hadn't yet existed. It was
0:28
Speaker 1: two thousand and four. The company was started in nineteen
0:31
Speaker 1: ninety eight, I believe. So how big was the company
0:34
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four?
0:35
Speaker 3: Two thousand and four, we were about just totally one
0:37
Speaker 3: thousand people, I think, but we are growing pretty fast. Yeah,
0:40
Speaker 3: we were about thousand people.
0:42
Speaker 1: So when you why did you come to the company
0:45
Speaker 1: in two thousand four?
0:45
Speaker 2: Who attracted you to come here?
0:47
Speaker 1: A small, little search engine company?
0:49
Speaker 2: Search wasn't that big a deal then?
0:50
Speaker 3: Probably I was using the product from the outside, and
0:54
Speaker 3: you know, I clearly noticed how much better it was
0:58
Speaker 3: as a product. And I was a what I call
1:00
Speaker 3: a power user of the product, right, and I had
1:02
Speaker 3: a lot of ideas in my head on how the
1:04
Speaker 3: product could be made better. But more importantly, you know,
1:09
Speaker 3: I gaining access to technology made a big difference in
1:13
Speaker 3: my life, and so I always tell the power of
1:16
Speaker 3: giving access to technology. The thing about Google which appealed
1:20
Speaker 3: to me was you could be somewhere in rural Indonesia,
1:23
Speaker 3: or you could be a professor at Stanford, and you
1:27
Speaker 3: would get access to that information as long as you
1:29
Speaker 3: had a computer and connectivity.
1:31
Speaker 1: With respect to the company today, you obviously have had
1:36
Speaker 1: some legal challenges. One legal challenge by the federal government.
1:40
Speaker 1: They charged that your I guess your search engine was
1:44
Speaker 1: I hate to use the word monopolistic, but I guess
1:46
Speaker 1: they probably used that word. It's running the company more
1:49
Speaker 1: complicated because you have this lawsuit you have to deal with.
1:53
Speaker 3: With our scale and size, I think scrutiny is inevitable,
1:56
Speaker 3: and you know we've always engaged very respect fully and
2:00
Speaker 3: responsibly through these processes. Even in the current current ruling,
2:05
Speaker 3: I mean, the ruling goes to great length to point
2:08
Speaker 3: out that we have achieved success by innovating. Our competitors
2:14
Speaker 3: acknowledge that we had the best searching search engine in
2:18
Speaker 3: the world. We definitely disagree with the ruling but it'd
2:21
Speaker 3: been still in the middle of the remedies phase. And
2:25
Speaker 3: you know, we will appeal and this process will likely
2:28
Speaker 3: take many years. And you know, I'm confident given that
2:33
Speaker 3: you know, we are focused on innovating using technology, will
2:39
Speaker 3: do well in the long run. And just last week
2:41
Speaker 3: there was a European court ruling which overruled the earlier decision.
2:46
Speaker 3: But the process had taken you almost ten years, right,
2:49
Speaker 3: So these things take take a while.
2:50
Speaker 1: So were you surprised that the US government after they
2:53
Speaker 1: won that case, they filed another case against you? Were
2:57
Speaker 1: you surprised that that happened? And you expect that'll go
2:59
Speaker 1: on for a while too.
3:00
Speaker 3: This one is not to do with our advertising on
3:02
Speaker 3: our search engine. The other one is we provide an
3:06
Speaker 3: ad platform for publishers to run advertising on their sites,
3:13
Speaker 3: and so we provide a platform, and so this is
3:16
Speaker 3: focused on that part of our business.
3:19
Speaker 2: Part of our business.
3:20
Speaker 3: Again, we are you know, that case is just getting underway,
3:23
Speaker 3: so I expected to take take some time. And you know,
3:26
Speaker 3: but look where we can figure out you know, constructive solutions.
3:32
Speaker 3: I think we will where we think it really harms
3:35
Speaker 3: our ability to innovate on behalf of our users or uh,
3:39
Speaker 3: you know, we are going to be vigorous in defending
3:41
Speaker 3: ourselves and it's going to take time for it to
3:43
Speaker 3: play out.
3:44
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley has been enamored with artificial intelligence AI. Everybody
3:49
Speaker 1: thinks that they need to have AI starts, attach their
3:51
Speaker 1: name or or be a leader in it. Chat GBT
3:55
Speaker 1: got out to the public first, but you've been working
3:57
Speaker 1: on it for a long time, maybe before open AI did.
4:00
Speaker 1: Are you going to go more public with what you're
4:02
Speaker 1: doing in artificial intelligence? And how is artificial intelligence going
4:06
Speaker 1: to change your company?
4:09
Speaker 3: I mean it is. It's been a big focus for
4:12
Speaker 3: us as a company. One of the first things I
4:14
Speaker 3: did as CEOs to pivot the company to be focused
4:17
Speaker 3: on AI AI first. You know, we've developed a lot
4:22
Speaker 3: of the core underlying technology, a lot of its powers
4:25
Speaker 3: search today. So part of what has helped us keep
4:28
Speaker 3: search about everyone else is by incorporating a lot of
4:31
Speaker 3: AI in how we do search. The current moment around
4:35
Speaker 3: generator AI is what's captured people's imagination. We are incorporating
4:41
Speaker 3: that in search in a deep way. So today if
4:43
Speaker 3: we go to Google and type a query in we
4:45
Speaker 3: give for many queries, we give something called an AI
4:48
Speaker 3: overview and you get a nice summary on top which
4:53
Speaker 3: we are summarizing the top results and giving context around
4:57
Speaker 3: it using AI. It's been very well just people love it,
5:01
Speaker 3: and so it's you know, it's one direction in which
5:03
Speaker 3: we are using AI. Table of our product we have.
5:07
Speaker 3: Our models are called Gemini, and people can also talk
5:10
Speaker 3: to Gemini directly. And I just feel like we're at
5:13
Speaker 3: very very early stages of what is probably the most
5:16
Speaker 3: profound shift in technology we will ever see as humanity.
5:19
Speaker 2: So it's an exciting time today.
5:21
Speaker 1: If I want to do a search, I suppose I
5:23
Speaker 1: look your name up on a search and it'll come
5:26
Speaker 1: up with your bio and so forth, and then maybe
5:29
Speaker 1: articles written about you will appear on this and then
5:32
Speaker 1: maybe those articles will guide me to let's say, an
5:35
Speaker 1: advertising site or something.
5:37
Speaker 2: But with AI, some.
5:39
Speaker 1: People are worried that your AI will basically have all
5:43
Speaker 1: the information, and therefore they won't they the advertisers won't
5:47
Speaker 1: have anybody coming to their site any longer.
5:49
Speaker 2: So how do you address that issue?
5:51
Speaker 3: Today we've past twenty five years. People come to Google
5:57
Speaker 3: because they're not only looking for what they want, but
6:00
Speaker 3: they enjoy the richness and the diversity of what exists
6:03
Speaker 3: on the bat right, So people are clicking through and
6:06
Speaker 3: going to a lot of sites. That is important for us.
6:09
Speaker 3: That's what makes this thriving ecosystem. So even if as
6:13
Speaker 3: we are evolving the product with AI, one of our
6:16
Speaker 3: core design principles has been making sure it works that way, right,
6:20
Speaker 3: and so we are prioritizing approaches which will send traffic
6:25
Speaker 3: to publishers and in the case of commercial queries, advertisers
6:29
Speaker 3: will also benefit as well. But that's you know, we
6:33
Speaker 3: think about it holistically because I think that's what allows
6:37
Speaker 3: people to create great content and create that virtual cycle.
6:40
Speaker 1: So advertisers are they concerned that somehow the AI search
6:44
Speaker 1: function you have might get them bypass.
6:47
Speaker 3: The way we think about it is users, when they
6:49
Speaker 3: come looking for information, there is an aspect of it
6:52
Speaker 3: where they're looking for commercial information. It's naturally in the
6:56
Speaker 3: user's intent, and when their intent is commercial, you know,
7:01
Speaker 3: advertising turns out to be very very relevant information. There
7:04
Speaker 3: was a core insight behind how we monetize Google Search
7:08
Speaker 3: that adds a valuable information when users have a commercial intent.
7:12
Speaker 3: That doesn't change just because there's a new underlying technology. Right,
7:16
Speaker 3: people are always looking for commercial information and providers of
7:20
Speaker 3: that information. Merchants, businesses are trying to reach users, and
7:25
Speaker 3: so that dynamic will continue to exist.
7:27
Speaker 1: So Google is more or less the search engine part
7:29
Speaker 1: of your company. Alphabet has other parts. Let me ask
7:32
Speaker 1: you about some of them.
7:33
Speaker 3: I could, so maybe if I could step back. You know,
7:36
Speaker 3: Google has many businesses beyond search, right, So you have
7:40
Speaker 3: Google Search, but think about Google Cloud, where we provide
7:43
Speaker 3: software at all enterprises. It's YouTube, there is YouTube and
7:48
Speaker 3: so on. There's Android and so on. So think of
7:51
Speaker 3: Google as our you know, Internet related businesses. Okay, and
7:56
Speaker 3: then we're using technology still. But we have other long
8:01
Speaker 3: term bets. Weimo was a bet on autonomous self driving
8:05
Speaker 3: cars and that's been a long term bet. We have
8:09
Speaker 3: Wing which is a drone delivery company. We have Calico,
8:15
Speaker 3: which is pursuing long term drug discovery for difficult to
8:22
Speaker 3: treat diseases, etcetera. So these are longer term bets, and
8:25
Speaker 3: that's what we call as other bets.
8:27
Speaker 1: Okay, So Waimo is a long term bet, I assume,
8:31
Speaker 1: But have you been in one of those cars.
8:33
Speaker 2: All the time?
8:33
Speaker 1: You know?
8:34
Speaker 3: I make sure to go periodically and take a ride
8:38
Speaker 3: in Wemo is phenomenal the progress I've seen every six months.
8:42
Speaker 3: The last time I was in the car, the third
8:45
Speaker 3: time I was in it. You know, I was on
8:47
Speaker 3: my phone in the back seat. Once in a while,
8:49
Speaker 3: I tell myself, you know, look, I'm in a self
8:51
Speaker 3: driving car. It's amazing even how people sometimes look in
8:54
Speaker 3: Some people are curious, some people are kind of.
8:57
Speaker 2: Like they used to it. You wear a helmet when
8:59
Speaker 2: you're in there. Your confect.
9:03
Speaker 3: Not at all, you know, quite the contrary. It's it's
9:05
Speaker 3: pretty relaxing.
9:07
Speaker 2: You know.
9:07
Speaker 3: We've been surprised at how much okay, people like the
9:10
Speaker 3: experience we are now. We've scaled up towe hundred thousand
9:14
Speaker 3: paid rights every week in the In the US, we
9:18
Speaker 3: recently announced a partnership with Uber, so you can use
9:20
Speaker 3: the Uber app, for example in Atlanta to Haila waymocard.
9:26
Speaker 1: You have a business, that's the cloud business you mentioned earlier.
9:30
Speaker 1: I think Amazon got to the cloud first and other
9:33
Speaker 1: big tech companies got there later. How significant is cloud
9:36
Speaker 1: to you now? And are you the person kind of
9:39
Speaker 1: drove the cloud business here?
9:41
Speaker 3: I mean it was one of the big areas.
9:44
Speaker 2: You know.
9:44
Speaker 3: I bet On, I say, became CEO in twenty fifteen,
9:47
Speaker 3: and you know, we realized Google was built in the cloud.
9:52
Speaker 3: Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, everything works. We are a
9:55
Speaker 3: native cloud company and we are one of the best
9:58
Speaker 3: cloud infrastructure in the world. So we made it decision
10:00
Speaker 3: to really provide it to everyone else. And you know,
10:05
Speaker 3: we brought in CEOs who had real background to do that.
10:09
Speaker 3: Our current CEO, Thomas Korean, has really helped scale the business.
10:13
Speaker 3: Last quarter we had over ten billion dollars in revenues.
10:16
Speaker 3: I think we're probably the number fourth largest software company
10:22
Speaker 3: in the enterprise now, so it's one of our most
10:25
Speaker 3: robust businesses. And in fact, I announced in one of
10:29
Speaker 3: our earnings called recently that we will exit twenty twenty
10:32
Speaker 3: four in YouTube and cloud at one hundred billion dollars runderrate.
10:37
Speaker 3: And these were businesses which we've built from scratch over
10:40
Speaker 3: the past decade.
10:41
Speaker 1: So we've talked about cloud, which was a novelty ten
10:44
Speaker 1: years ago or so, and now AI is a bit
10:46
Speaker 1: of a novelty. What the areas in the future that
10:49
Speaker 1: you think will be the next great tech interest for
10:55
Speaker 1: Solicon Valley and other people is quantum computing?
10:57
Speaker 2: One of them, you know.
10:59
Speaker 3: Would view quantum one of those foundational technologies like AI
11:03
Speaker 3: over time, you know, quantum, you know, you know, it's
11:07
Speaker 3: fundamentally thinking about how to design different computers than classical computers.
11:13
Speaker 3: So I would view it as just like aids are
11:15
Speaker 3: underlying technologies, but these technologies are going to hopefully enable many,
11:20
Speaker 3: many amazing applications on top of them, you know AI.
11:24
Speaker 3: You know, that's why compared AI to fire or electricity.
11:27
Speaker 3: You know, it's going to cut across every sector everywhere,
11:30
Speaker 3: and people are going to be able to read think
11:32
Speaker 3: think of AI as you're getting really intelligent decision making
11:36
Speaker 3: systems to deploy everywhere.
11:40
Speaker 1: Let's talk about your background for a moment. So where
11:43
Speaker 1: were you born.
11:44
Speaker 3: I was born in India in a city called Chennai
11:47
Speaker 3: in the south of India.
11:48
Speaker 1: And did you grow up you know, in middle class
11:51
Speaker 1: kind of.
11:52
Speaker 3: You know, it was a comfortable middle class life in India,
11:54
Speaker 3: you know. But one of the things was technology wasn't
11:58
Speaker 3: always around and we had to wait for a while
12:00
Speaker 3: before you know, we were on a waiting list. At
12:03
Speaker 3: that time, only the government made phones and this was
12:05
Speaker 3: a rotary phone. So it was a five year wait
12:08
Speaker 3: list to get a phone, right, and so we got
12:11
Speaker 3: the rotary phone changed our lives we were one of
12:14
Speaker 3: the few people in our neighborhood to have it. People
12:17
Speaker 3: would come to our homes to make calls to the
12:19
Speaker 3: loved ones. I recall, you know, I would have to
12:22
Speaker 3: it would before our trip to find the black test
12:24
Speaker 3: results for my mother. Sometimes I would go all the
12:26
Speaker 3: way to the hospital and they would say, no, it's
12:29
Speaker 3: not ready, come back tomorrow. And with the phone, I
12:31
Speaker 3: could call and get that information right away. So it really,
12:35
Speaker 3: you know, showed me the part of technology.
12:37
Speaker 1: So where did you go to college?
12:38
Speaker 3: I went to a college called the Indian Institute of Technology.
12:43
Speaker 3: It's a set of you know, a few institutions which
12:45
Speaker 3: are primarily focused on engineering. And what did you major in,
12:49
Speaker 3: you know, what's today called material science?
12:52
Speaker 2: And I astribute that, Okay, I did.
12:55
Speaker 3: Okay, you know I had a chance to you know,
12:58
Speaker 3: I really got interested in computers and semiconductors through my degree,
13:03
Speaker 3: and so I really, you know, was motivated by what
13:07
Speaker 3: was happening in Silicon Valley. I literally wanted to be
13:09
Speaker 3: in the place where semi connectors were developed, and that's
13:12
Speaker 3: why I had a chance to come to Stanford.
13:14
Speaker 1: You went to Stanford get a master's degree in engineering.
13:17
Speaker 1: That's right, And did you get a scholarship or how
13:19
Speaker 1: to get you afford that?
13:20
Speaker 3: I mean, it was very fortunate to get a full scholarship.
13:24
Speaker 3: You know, I was a teaching assistant.
13:26
Speaker 1: Had you left the United had you left the India
13:28
Speaker 1: before that?
13:29
Speaker 2: Had you ever been.
13:29
Speaker 3: Out coming to the US was the first time I
13:32
Speaker 3: was ever on a plane?
13:33
Speaker 1: Okay, So you got your master's degree and then you
13:36
Speaker 1: went to Wharton to get your MBA.
13:38
Speaker 2: I had only seen the West coast. I wanted to
13:40
Speaker 2: see more of the US.
13:41
Speaker 3: I through fall, I came to the East coast, loved
13:46
Speaker 3: the seasons, so I just wanted to spend time back
13:49
Speaker 3: back east and so you know, it was also you know,
13:53
Speaker 3: my goal with it was to get exposed to you know,
13:56
Speaker 3: I had a deep engineering and scientific background, so chance
14:00
Speaker 3: to get exposed to other walks of life out does
14:02
Speaker 3: a business work, get exposed to people from finance, from economics,
14:07
Speaker 3: and so that was all part of what I was
14:09
Speaker 3: looking for.
14:09
Speaker 1: So you got your MBA from Whorton, that's them.
14:11
Speaker 2: What did you do?
14:12
Speaker 1: You know?
14:13
Speaker 3: Pretty much very soon after that, I ended up at Google,
14:15
Speaker 3: but I spent a short time at mckinzi before that.
14:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, so are your parents alive.
14:21
Speaker 2: They are, and you know, I think they must be
14:23
Speaker 2: pretty proud of you.
14:24
Speaker 1: You're the CEO of Google and Alphabet that they call
14:26
Speaker 1: you all the time with advice or what do they do?
14:29
Speaker 2: You know? Both?
14:30
Speaker 3: You know, I'm fortunate. I'm very close to them. I
14:32
Speaker 3: see them almost every week. But my dad is you know,
14:37
Speaker 3: kind of it shows me amazingly. He's eighty two. He
14:42
Speaker 3: relentlessly reads everything about you know, he's tried to keep up.
14:46
Speaker 3: He's not a software engineered by training. But a few
14:49
Speaker 3: years ago you wanted to know what a API is,
14:53
Speaker 3: and he has learned it. So he tracks news closely,
14:56
Speaker 3: and so he just talked to me about it.
14:58
Speaker 1: Eighty two is young. The present United States is still young.
15:01
Speaker 1: There you go and your mother, you talked to her.
15:04
Speaker 3: All the time, and you know she's I got my
15:08
Speaker 3: love of reading from a very young age from from her.
15:11
Speaker 3: Due to financial circumstances, you know, she she was working
15:14
Speaker 3: as a stenographer. She stopped working to support the family.
15:18
Speaker 3: But you know she was a voracious reader, and that's
15:23
Speaker 3: where I got my love of reading from.
15:24
Speaker 1: And so and did you meet your wife at Wharton
15:28
Speaker 1: Stanford or where?
15:30
Speaker 2: Back?
15:30
Speaker 3: You know, we both went to I at Indian Industry
15:33
Speaker 3: of Technology. She was you know, at the time they
15:36
Speaker 3: were in that many women, So she was she was
15:38
Speaker 3: a pioneer in her own way of breaking through. And
15:41
Speaker 3: so I met my wife and undergraduate.
15:44
Speaker 1: Okay, and so now we're married.
15:46
Speaker 2: How long over twenty five years? Five years? And you
15:49
Speaker 2: have two children? Two children, that's right?
15:51
Speaker 1: And do they run around Silicon Valley bragging saying my
15:54
Speaker 1: father is the CEO of Google or they don't?
15:57
Speaker 3: Quite the contrary. I think, you know, they're trying to
15:59
Speaker 3: find their own boys. And you know, we hardly talk
16:02
Speaker 3: about my role or anything in the context of my family.
16:05
Speaker 1: Let's say you go at a restaurant Silicon Valley with
16:07
Speaker 1: your wife. Do people come up with resumes all the
16:09
Speaker 1: time or ideas for funding things?
16:11
Speaker 2: How does that work? Ah? Yeah? People less less that
16:15
Speaker 2: as part.
16:16
Speaker 3: You know, maybe people want to picture or want to
16:18
Speaker 3: say hello, and so that does happen, particularly in Silicon Valley,
16:23
Speaker 3: but you know, doesn't always happen. I've kept a reasonably
16:28
Speaker 3: private life, so that helps.
16:29
Speaker 1: I think, how do you avoid being sclerotic when you
16:33
Speaker 1: have a company that now has one hundred and eighty.
16:35
Speaker 2: Two thousand employees.
16:36
Speaker 1: How do you get innovative ideas to get to the
16:39
Speaker 1: top without bureaucracy killing it.
16:41
Speaker 3: Look, I think you have to enable uh, you know,
16:45
Speaker 3: you have to empower small teams to move fast and
16:48
Speaker 3: get things done.
16:49
Speaker 2: Right.
16:49
Speaker 3: You have your big products, they are constantly improving, and
16:52
Speaker 3: you have to make sure you're constantly investing in and
16:55
Speaker 3: innovating on our core products. But you have to allow
16:59
Speaker 3: in the system away for small teams to build new things,
17:02
Speaker 3: and sometimes you have to be deliberate about it. Early
17:04
Speaker 3: on at Google, we had a structure called Google Labs,
17:09
Speaker 3: and you know, in which you could have small teams
17:11
Speaker 3: with resources to go build new things. We are doing
17:15
Speaker 3: that again now and we again have created a new
17:17
Speaker 3: Google Labs team, And just recently they launched a product
17:20
Speaker 3: called Google Notebook, in which you can go put a
17:23
Speaker 3: set of documents and then AI kind of learns it.
17:28
Speaker 3: You can ask questions, you can even tell it to
17:31
Speaker 3: summarize it as a podcast, conversational podcast back to you, right,
17:35
Speaker 3: and you know it's breadtaking if you use it. So,
17:39
Speaker 3: but these are entirely new product built from scratch. And
17:42
Speaker 3: so Google Photos was a product built from scratch too,
17:46
Speaker 3: So you have to empower small teams to move the
17:50
Speaker 3: velocity of a startup and cut through the processes you
17:53
Speaker 3: have in a large company.
17:55
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the company today.
17:56
Speaker 1: So, as I mentioned earlier, you have I think it's
17:59
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty three one thousand employees, and the
18:02
Speaker 1: company has a market capitalization today of about two and
18:06
Speaker 1: a half trillion or something.
18:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's over two trillion dollars. Yeah, over two trillion dollars.
18:10
Speaker 1: So the market capitalization is doubled since you've been the CEO,
18:13
Speaker 1: and the stock prices more than doubled since you've been
18:16
Speaker 1: the CEO. So do you tell the founders, look, you've
18:19
Speaker 1: done a great job, and maybe they should give you
18:21
Speaker 1: a big piece of the company or something.
18:24
Speaker 3: I'm very fortunate to be compensated. Well, look, I think
18:28
Speaker 3: for me, Look, as a technologist, you know, I feel
18:32
Speaker 3: like I'm at the front friend, drow Of, you know,
18:37
Speaker 3: dreamt about things like AI for a long time. To
18:40
Speaker 3: actually see it getting built now and to see this
18:44
Speaker 3: transition play out in front of us, to me, you know,
18:47
Speaker 3: that's the most motivating thing I could ask for.
18:49
Speaker 1: I also know that Google in the early days had
18:51
Speaker 1: a policy of free food for its employees, and I
18:54
Speaker 1: sampled some of your free food at lunch today.
18:56
Speaker 2: It was very good. You obviously have to spend a
18:59
Speaker 2: lot of money.
19:00
Speaker 1: You've got one hundred and eighty two thousand employees, so
19:02
Speaker 1: giving them lunch or breakfast or dinner every day, or
19:05
Speaker 1: for many of them every day, you must have a calculation, says,
19:09
Speaker 1: are we spending this much on food? We're getting this
19:11
Speaker 1: much higher productivity? And how do you assess that? And
19:14
Speaker 1: why do you think other companies don't give away food
19:17
Speaker 1: as much as you do?
19:18
Speaker 3: Look quite the contrar I think in technology, if you
19:21
Speaker 3: go to the Bay Area, I think a set of
19:24
Speaker 3: things which Google has done as part of now standard
19:26
Speaker 3: modern workplaces in the area. But you know, people value
19:31
Speaker 3: in person collaboration to us. You know, I can recalled
19:37
Speaker 3: several times, you know, when I was working at Google
19:40
Speaker 3: early on, being in cafes, meeting someone else, talking, getting
19:45
Speaker 3: excited about something, and.
19:46
Speaker 2: So it sparks creativity, It creates a.
19:48
Speaker 3: Community, and I think the benefit that comes out of it,
19:53
Speaker 3: you know, far dwarfs.
19:55
Speaker 2: The costs associate with it.
19:56
Speaker 1: Google is regularly considered be one of the most favorable
19:59
Speaker 1: places to work for employees, always high end surveys, and
20:03
Speaker 1: so I assume you've got lots of people who always
20:05
Speaker 1: want to come here. How many people a year try
20:08
Speaker 1: to apply for jobs at Google?
20:10
Speaker 2: Is?
20:10
Speaker 1: I assume it's a million people or something more than that.
20:12
Speaker 3: What I'm proud of is the metric I look at
20:16
Speaker 3: is when we make an offer, what percentage of people
20:20
Speaker 3: accept the offer?
20:21
Speaker 2: And you know it is percentages. It's almost close to
20:25
Speaker 2: ninety percent, right.
20:26
Speaker 1: So typically, if somebody wants to get a job, somebody's
20:28
Speaker 1: watching this and says, I want to work at Google,
20:30
Speaker 1: what are you looking for? High IQs, high work quotient?
20:33
Speaker 1: And it used to be said that you had a
20:35
Speaker 1: very complicated interview process. I don't know if you still
20:38
Speaker 1: have that. But what's the best way to get a
20:40
Speaker 1: job here for an entry level person?
20:42
Speaker 3: Look, we are you know, it depends on whether you're
20:44
Speaker 3: an engineering or something else, but you know we are.
20:48
Speaker 3: You know, if you're an engineering, we are looking for
20:51
Speaker 3: really good programmers, people who understand computer science well and
20:55
Speaker 3: you know, can be dynamically, you know, are willing to
20:58
Speaker 3: learn and grow up themselves into new situations and do well.
21:03
Speaker 3: But we are really looking for you know, you know,
21:07
Speaker 3: superstar software engineers.
21:09
Speaker 2: Right, So, when.
21:10
Speaker 1: You're doing a search yourself, I suppose you want to
21:12
Speaker 1: get information. Do you ever have frustrations that you can't
21:15
Speaker 1: get what you want? I mean, sometimes I can't find
21:17
Speaker 1: what I want, But I'm not the CEO of Google,
21:20
Speaker 1: so I assume you can have better access to the
21:22
Speaker 1: search than I can.
21:23
Speaker 3: No, there are one of the reasons I'm so excited
21:27
Speaker 3: about AI improving searches. You know, we're constantly people don't
21:31
Speaker 3: always formulate the right queries. You know, we are constantly
21:35
Speaker 3: working to make search easier to use. So for example,
21:38
Speaker 3: you can now you know, speak with search as well
21:42
Speaker 3: as take pictures and ask search questions. In many countries,
21:46
Speaker 3: for example, in places like India, a large volume of
21:49
Speaker 3: our queries actually come by people just talking to search.
21:53
Speaker 3: And you know, because people get phone not everyone is
21:55
Speaker 3: comfortable typing in these phones. They just talk talk to Google.
21:59
Speaker 2: Similarly, what we call visual search.
22:01
Speaker 3: We have a product called Google Lens and you can
22:02
Speaker 3: take a picture and ask questions. We get billions of
22:05
Speaker 3: queries through visual search. Humans interact with the world in
22:09
Speaker 3: very natural ways. We see things, we hear things, we speak,
22:13
Speaker 3: and so that's an example of how we can search,
22:16
Speaker 3: make search better, and AI can play it all. I
22:19
Speaker 3: constantly am challenging our product find things we could be
22:23
Speaker 3: doing better than I'm emailing my teams.
22:25
Speaker 1: So, leaving the US government aside, what do you see
22:28
Speaker 1: as the biggest challenge to Google an alphabet going forward?
22:31
Speaker 1: Is it competitors coming along, is it a new technology
22:35
Speaker 1: that you're not in yet coming along and being very important,
22:38
Speaker 1: or just keeping your organization efficient and not bureaucratic.
22:44
Speaker 2: What do you see as the biggest challenges?
22:46
Speaker 3: Look, one of the things I would say, because we've
22:51
Speaker 3: always been a foundational technology company and we are working
22:54
Speaker 3: on these technologies which can apply across many things. I
22:57
Speaker 3: think one of the things which is unique to Google
22:59
Speaker 3: and Alphabet is, you know, we have a chance to
23:02
Speaker 3: go do many things, but being disciplined doing a few
23:07
Speaker 3: things and doing them well and doing it with the
23:11
Speaker 3: relentless focus on innovation and doing it as efficiently as possible.
23:14
Speaker 3: As a company with discipline, you know what leads to
23:17
Speaker 3: long term success. And so so I think that's what
23:21
Speaker 3: I think about, right, you know, where all can we
23:24
Speaker 3: do it ourselves as a company? Where do we partner
23:27
Speaker 3: and enable others? That's why Google Cloud has been a
23:30
Speaker 3: big part of our focus because there are many sectors
23:33
Speaker 3: in which the best way we can help the world
23:35
Speaker 3: and have a good business doing so is by providing
23:39
Speaker 3: our technology and solutions to others, and so you know,
23:42
Speaker 3: it's getting that balance.
23:43
Speaker 2: Druck.
23:44
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
23:47
Speaker 1: can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
23:51
Speaker 1: wherever you listen.