I’ve been having some fun at the expense of Sundar Pichai, but it’s worth keeping in mind that being CEO of Google, despite the enormous pay, is kind of a flunky job.
Google isn’t Google anymore, it’s now a subsidiary of Alphabet, the recently created umbrella holding company.
And Alphabet is completely controlled by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have awarded themselves all sorts of “supervoting shares” so that they control 51% of the voting power in Alphabet. They don’t own anywhere close to that percentage of the actual shares in Alphabet, but it’s their plaything due to how they have manipulated voting rights among shareholders.
As long as Larry and Sergey are united, their power is uncheckable.
Larry is listed as CEO of Alphabet and Sergey is listed as Co-Founder.
So, did Pichai really make the decision to fire Damore himself, or did it come down from on high?
About all we have heard is that the meeting Pichai ran on the subject was dominated by Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s arguments.
Granted, to an objective outsider Wojcicki’s arguments don’t sound all that overwhelming. They sound like they were cribbed from some Slate article written by a 24-year-old intern.
But Wojcicki, who was Larry and Sergey’s landlord back in the old century, and was Sergey’s sister-in-law for awhile and whose entire family appears to be indebted to Sergey and Larry, isn’t just an employee. She’s known Larry and Sergey from before they were Google.
If Susan Wojcicki says something, is that just her opinion or is that Sergey’s and/or Larry’s?
Or maybe Sergey and Larry don’t have an opinion, they want poor Sundar to make the decision, and they will follow his future career with great interest.
Or maybe Sergey and Larry disagree, which is the one thing that could really rock Google?
All this stuff seems kind of interesting but I haven’t heard much about it.
[Comment at Unz.com]