The not-so-Sundar part about Pichai's job as Google's superboss

BEGALURU: As Alphabet Inc’s new CEO, Sundar Pichai has his task cut out.Rising regulatory scrutiny across the world, increased tax demands and threat from Chinese competitors for the next billion internet users, especially in emerging markets like India, will confront the chief executive of Google’s parent entity. He will have to hit the ground running, experts said. Pichai is taking over the reins from Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have stepped down from active management of the technology giant.Untitled Carousel 72376903 72376681 Apart from leading Google’s search, advertising and related products such as videos platform YouTube, Pichai’s purview will now extend to Alphabet’s futuristic ventures, like driverless cars, high-altitude balloons and efforts to prolong life. His most challenging job, however, will be to maintain Google’s dominance on the internet at a time of increased regulatory eye and rising competition from new technology startups from China, the foremost of which is Tik-Tok’s parent ByteDance, one of the most valued startups in the world. Tik-Tok, a popular short videos platform, has already emerged as a formidable competitor to YouTube.ByteDance has also launched a smartphone and a music streaming product, directly competing with Google’s offerings in the same space. ByteDance has also become a daunting competitor for the next billion first-time internet users in India and other emerging markets.A few years ago, the online advertising market functioned almost as a duopoly between Google and Facebook, but with the entry of TikTok that dynamic seems to be eroding.Google bet hugely on India’s digital payments business with the launch of Google Pay two years ago and is expanding the number of languages it supports on existing apps and services.Pichai’s efforts to re-enter China, allegedly through a censored search engine, have not yet taken off.News about Google’s ‘Project Dragonfly’ – which surrendered to the censorship demands of the Chinese state in exchange for market access – has attracted severe backlash from politicians and its own employees.In the United States and Europe, there have also been increased calls to break up technology giants into smaller businesses to curb their monopolistic control of the internet and consumer data.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2rf4P03