Satya Nadella vs Sundar Pichai in cyber war

Hyderabad: Sundar Pichai’s appointment as CEO of newly-restructured search giant Google on Tuesday is all set to trigger one of the biggest tech wars the world has witnessed in recent times.

The ‘war for mobile’ and control over what’s described as the ‘internet economy’ will pit CEO Pichai against fellow Indian and Microsoft boss Satya Nadella. Both are product specialists, have been integral in their respective departments and more importantly, are future ready. Now, instead of working in the engine rooms... both have been asked to captain the ships.

Mr Nadella’s Microsoft is desperate to achieve a similar ecosystem as Apple’s — which promises seamless connectivity between devices. But standing in its plan to rule the world again is Google — with interests spread across search, operating systems and even hardware. It is the current master of the ‘internet economy’ — a world relying on internet access to generate both information and capital. Mr Pichai has built most of that globe-spanning infrastructure.

Read: Sundar Pichai lives his school’s motto ‘Be Brilliant’

Also, Apple’s out of this race because let’s face it, it’s not the mass market player both Google and Microsoft aspire to be. Mr Nadella’s push into search using Bing has been scoring a few hits. In March of this year, MS said one in five computers was using Bing to search the Web. Recently, the new Windows 10 OS was being seamlessly moved into mobile and customers are being promised a never-experienced-before bridge between Microsoft’s devices. If things go well, you could soon be using a Microsoft phone, using Bing search with Google nowhere in the picture.

Mr Pichai though may not allow that. He’s been steering innovations in Gmail, Google maps, Android and most of the services smartphone users have pretty much taken for granted.

And mobile is where the future is. Last year, for the first time in history the number of smartphone owners exceeded the number of PC users. By 2017, an estimated 5.3 billion people would’ve gone mobile. A whopping 99.5 per cent of mobile users are using their devices to access information, 62.1 per cent use phones to check emails and 41.7 per cent download and use apps.

Both Microsoft and Google then want this internet economy ‘pie’. MS under Nadella is getting leaner, faster and better. Google meanwhile (and sneakily) promoted one of its smartest mobile-era generals to take the company onto the new level. The big battle is coming and it will be fought on tiny devices.