When new Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said no to millions of dollars of shares

If you want to know how Alphabet Inc.’s new Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai will run the company you don’t need to look very far – he’s essentially been doing it for several years already. Pichai, a 47-year-old engineer, grew up in India and immigrated to the U.S. to attend graduate school. His resume reads like the typical Silicon Valley operator: a Master’s degree from Stanford University, an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a stint as a consultant at McKinsey & Co.

He joined Google in 2004 and started amassing responsibility for some of Google’s most popular products, including Gmail, the Chrome browser and Android. Former employees often describe him as a collaborative and loyal colleague. He even turned down a big new grant of stock in 2018 because he felt he was already paid generously, according to a person familiar with the matter.

When Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created the Alphabet holding company in 2015, Pichai was chosen to run Google, whose businesses including YouTube, Maps and Gmail bring in almost all of the company’s revenue.