Google chief Sundar Picha set for a £274m payday

Google’s chief executive is in line for a £274million payday after it revealed another sales bonanza.

Sundar Pichai’s stock award has soared in value after the tech giant’s share price rocketed by more than 90 per cent in just four years.

In that time the shares have risen from about $520 to $1,080.

It means Pichai will receive 353,939 shares worth about $382million (£274million) in total tomorrow. The award will be one of the biggest corporate payouts in recent history.

Mystery man: Google boss Sundar Pichai, pictured with wife Anjali, is in line for a £274m payday after it revealed another sales bonanza

It came as Google’s parent Alphabet smashed expectations last night with revenue soaring 26 per cent to £22billionn for the three months ending March 31 – or £244million per day. 

Profits jumped 73 per cent to £6.5billion as the firm benefited from soaring sales of advertisements on Google.

Finance chief Ruth Porat said the firm had exciting opportunities ahead as revenues from advertising rose 23 per cent to £19billion. 

Its revenues from other areas, such as its Nest set of home thermostats, security cameras and smoke alarms, rose 34 per cent to £3billion.

Over the whole of 2018, the firm is forecast to rake in £95.8billion.

The results eased concerns that Alphabet was diversifying too far from its core search engine. They also suggested that rising global privacy concerns were not hurting profits.

The Forgotten Man Of Tech 

  • Sundar Pichai was made Google’s chief executive in 2015
  • The 45-year-old grew up in Chennai, south-east India, and was born to an electrical engineer and a stenographer
  • He and his brother slept in the living room of their two-room flat
  • Pichai joined Google in 2004, and was made head of products in 2014
  • He is now a US citizen and lives near Google’s Mountain View headquarters, in California, with his wife Anjali and two children
  • As well as cricket, he closely follows football and is a huge fan of Spanish giants Barcelona. He visited the La Liga leaders to meet players and coaches during a trip last year

Pichai, 45, was put on the shares plan in 2014, one year before he was promoted to chief executive. At that time, the company became a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc as part of a major reorganisation.

Pichai is regarded as the forgotten man of Silicon Valley because of his low-profile.

He previously spearheaded development of the firm’s Chrome internet browser and the Android smartphone operating system, and is now in charge of Google’s most important customer businesses, including advertising and artificial intelligence.

But the father-of-two’s award still looks modest next to some other Silicon Valley legends.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg cashed in £2billion of shares when his firm went public in 2012, while Tesla chief executive Elon Musk raked in £1.2billion in 2016 from a separate sell-off.

Google – through its advertising sales – accounts for about 98 per cent of Alphabet’s revenues, giving Pichai enormous power.

The Indian-born boss joined the tech giant in 2004 and rapidly rose through the ranks to become one of co-founder Larry Page’s top lieutenants. 

He took over from Page as head of the search-engine business in 2015, putting him in charge of a vast portfolio that includes video website You Tube, Android, Google Cloud and development of hardware such as the Pixel smartphones and the Google Home smart speaker.

Along with fellow online advertising behemoth Facebook, Alphabet’s share price has been hit in recent weeks as the Cambridge Analytica data scandal unfolded.

The companies rely on data about users to target advertising, but have come under fire for not explaining clearly what they have collected, sparking outcry on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the case of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook allegedly allowed data on millions of its users to be obtained by the firm – which is accused of then using it to target political advertising.

It has led some advertisers to drop Facebook in protest. That has spooked investors in Google, because of its heavy reliance on ad income.

 



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