India-born Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who was born in Tamil Nadu and grew up in Chennai, has said India is deeply rooted in him and a big part of who he is.
During an interview with the BBC at the Google headquarters at Silicon Valley in California, when the tech boss was asked about his roots, he said, “I’m an American citizen but India is deeply within me. So it’s a big part of who I am.”
During the interview, Amol Rajan, the interviewer, covered a wide range of topics, including the threat to free and open internet and also narrowed down two developments that he feels will further revolutionise the world over the next quarter of a century as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing.
Apart from many other questions, Pichai, was also asked when was the last time he cried? He told, “Seeing the morgue trucks parked around the world during COVID. And seeing what’s happened in India over the past month.”
“I view artificial intelligence as the most profound technology that humanity will ever develop and work on. You know, if you think about fire or electricity or the internet, it’s like that. But I think even more profound,” said Pichai, the CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet.
When asked about whether the Chinese model of the internet based on surveillance is in the ascendant, Pichai said the free and open internet “is being attacked”. While he didn’t refer to China directly, he said: “None of our major products and services are available in China.”
On the controversial issue of tax, he said: “We are one of the world’s largest taxpayers, if you look at on an average over the last decade, we have paid over 20% in taxes.
“We do pay the majority of our share of taxes in the US, where we originate and where our products are developed. I think there are good conversations and we support the global OECD conversations figuring out what is the right way to allocate taxes, this is beyond a single company to solve,” he said.
Further, he encouraged people to adopt the “two-factor authentication” when it comes to passwords to ensure multiple protections and admitted he is constantly changing his phone to test out new technology.
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Pichai’s love for India is known widely. Previously in an interview with The Guardian in 2017, Pichai had said that one day he wants to come back to India and wants to “give back”.
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