Google antitrust fight thrusts low-key CEO Sundar Pichai into the line of fire

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA: When Sundar Pichai succeeded Larry Page as the head of Google’s parent company in December, he was handed a bag of problems: Shareholders had sued the company, Alphabet, over big financial packages handed to executives accused of misconduct. An admired office culture was fraying. Most of all, antitrust regulators were circling.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department accused Google of being “a monopoly gatekeeper of the internet,” one that uses anticompetitive tactics to protect and strengthen its dominant hold over web search and search advertising.

Google, which has generated vast profits through a recession, a pandemic and earlier investigations by government regulators on five continents, now faces the first truly existential crisis in its 22-year history.