He references two cultural commandments as his guiding principles. One is a line from the founders’ letter that Brin and Page wrote when Google was mostly just the two of them, 16 years ago: Focus on the user and all else follows.
We call it the toothbrush test
, Pichai says, we want to concentrate our efforts on things that billions of people use on a daily basis. For it to work for us, it has to be global. Search started that way. You could be very educated or you could be a rural kid somewhere, but as long as you had access to Google connectivity it was the same thing. To me there was something very democratising about that.
Tim Adams I think the quote above captures Google’s long-term mission very well. But at the same time, their global ambitions are what concern many people and can easily be perceived as arrogant, a ‘we know better’-attitude. Despite their declared ‘focus on the user’, it’s evident many of Google’s initiatives failed to satisfy user needs – you only have to look at the string of failed social networks launched in the past decade – so people are naturally reluctant to embrace every new radical project coming from the search giant. I fear that, after the new Alphabet conglomerate structure comes into place, Google will be more transparent, but even less accountable to shareholders and users everywhere.
Photograph: Norbert von der Groeben/The Observer New Review
On the way out of his office, Pichai wonders out loud how Google might make itself better understood in Europe.
You could pay more tax
, I say.
He smiles politely.
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