#471 – Sundar Pichai: CEO of Google and Alphabet
Episode publishedPodcast: Lex Fridman PodcastLex Fridman Podcast
Transcript preview
Preview only
The following is a conversation with Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet. And now a quick few second mention of your sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfreeman.com/sponsors. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Tax Network USA for taxes, BetterHelp for mental health elements for electrolytes, Shopify for selling stuff online, and AG one for your daily multivitamin drink. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the flatteries. You can skip them if you like, but if you do, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. If you
would have probably laughed it off. You know, probably too far fetched to imagine or believe at that time. You would have to explain the Internet first. For sure. Computers to me at that time, you know, I was 12 in 1984. So probably, you know, by then, I had started reading about them. I hadn't seen one. What was that place like? Take me to your childhood. I grew up in Chennai. It's in South Of India. It's a beautiful, bustling city. Lots of people, lots of energy. You know, simple life. Definitely, like, fond memories of playing cricket outside the home. We just used to play on the streets. A
telephone. There
was a five year waiting list, and we got a rotary, telephone. Mhmm. But it dramatically changed our lives. You know, people would come to our house to make calls to their loved ones. You know, I I would have to go all the way to the hospital to get blood test records, and it would take two hours to go. And they would say, sorry. It's not ready. Come back the next day. Two hours to come back. And that became a five minute thing. So as a kid, like, I mean, this light bulb went in my head, you know, this power of technology to kinda change people's lives. We had no running water. You know, it was
don't think you'll ever be able to equal the first time you get hot water. To
have that convenience of going and opening a tap and have hot water come out? Yeah.
It's interesting. We take for granted the progress we've made. If you look at human history, just those plots that look at GDP across two thousand years, and you see that exponential growth to where most of the progress happened since the industrial revolution. And we just take for granted. We forget how how far we've gone. So our ability to understand how great we have it and also how quickly technology can improve is quite poor. Oh,
I mean, it's it's extraordinary. You know, I go back to India now, the power of mobile. You know, it's mind blowing to see the progress through the arc
of time. That's phenomenal. What advice would you give to young folks listening to this all over the world who look up to you and, find your story inspiring? Who wanna be maybe the next Sundar Bichai? Who wanna start, create companies, build something that has a lot of impact in the world? Look,
Keep exploring with a free account.
A free account preserves the short preview. Upgrade to Pro for the full transcript and episode chat.