His Search Umbrella

The Google mothership enters into a bit of a storm. It’s a tough course from here. How shall the calm captain fare?

- Prasanto K. Roy

IT’S a rough patch for Sundar Pichai, steering Google through its ‘Microsoft moment’ as many are calling the crisis facing the global tech giant now. Google was hit with a record $5 billion fine by the EU in July for breaking antitrust laws. The European Commission says Google abuses its Android market dominance by forcing phone-makers to pre-install ‘Search’ and Chrome along with Android, if they want a Play Store licence; that it pays manufacturers and mobile operators to install only Google Search on their phones and that it prevents them from using alternative versions or ‘forks’ of Android. Through history, regulators have gunned for the most powerful companies: IBM, AT&T, Microsoft. Now it’s Google’s turn, and Pichai Sundararajan is at the helm.

No, the fine won’t break Google, though it will take away three-fourth of its second-quarter earnings. The bigger question for Pichai is: What happens to Android, if Google has to comply with the EU directives? Pichai answered that in a plaintive blog post on July 18, titled Android Has Created More Choice, Not Less. He said that Android remaining a free service depends on the suite of Google products being distributed along with it: Search, Chrome, Gmail, and others, “some of which make money for us”.

The EU ruling is worrying for Google, as access to world markets gets more restricted. And EU is a big part of the world outside America, the part more accessible to Google. Remember China? In 2010, in response to hacker attacks, Google said it was no longer going to censor search in China, and was ready to pull out. Beijing retaliated. By the time Pichai became the CEO in 2015, Google