Pichai worked in engineering and product management at Applied Materials and in management consulting at McKinsey & Company.[22]
Pichai joined Google in 2004, where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products, including Google Chrome[23] and Chrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive. He went on to oversee the development of different applications such as Gmail and Google Maps.[24][25] On 19 November 2009, Pichai gave a demonstration of Chrome OS; the Chromebook was released for trial and testing in 2011, and released to the public in 2012.[26] On 20 May 2010, he announced the open-sourcing of the new video codec VP8 by Google and introduced the new video format, WebM.[27]
On 13 March 2013, Pichai added Android to the list of Google products that he oversees. Android was formerly managed by Andy Rubin.[28] He was a director of Jive Software from April 2011 to 30 July 2013.[29][30][31] Pichai was selected to become the next CEO of Google on 10 August 2015[12] after previously being appointed Product Chief by CEO, Larry Page. On 24 October 2015 he stepped into the new position at the completion of the formation of Alphabet Inc., the new holding company for the Google company family.[13][31][32]
Pichai had been suggested as a contender for Microsoft's CEO in 2014, a position that was eventually given to Satya Nadella.[33][34]
In August 2017, Pichai drew publicity for firing a Google employee who wrote a ten-page manifesto criticizing the company's diversity policies and arguing that "distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and ... these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership".[35][36][37][38] While noting that the manifesto raised a number of issues that are open to debate, Pichai said in a memo to Google employees that "to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK".[39][40]
In December 2017, Pichai was a speaker at the World Internet Conference in China, where he stated that “a lot of work Google does is to help Chinese companies. There are many small and medium-sized businesses in China who take advantage of Google to get their products to many other countries outside of China.”