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Comment by browningstreet | Hacker News Reader

Watched the 60 Minutes interview with Pichai last night. He’s really… unimpressive. He shouldn’t be doing MSM interviews if that’s the tenor of his performance.

Google is supposed to be a technical firebrand and their cloud isn't dominant, and their AI product and market position got punk'd by Microsoft... and he's out there saying things like AI will be a bigger discovery than fire. Which calls into question: so why isn't Google a leader in AI, or seem to be?

It's a bad PR thread for Google, and he lacked any Q factor in those interview clips.

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I can't help but feel like Google is going through their "Steve Ballmer CEO Phase". I wonder who will be the next CEO to fix things.

> He’s really… unimpressive.

That's putting it mildly

> He shouldn’t be doing interviews

He should not be running Google at all, period.

he's a good choice for "Good Times"...when the money is rolling in and you're on top, it is okay to have an inoffensive friendly supportive type in the CEO chair

those times are gone though and Google definitely needs someone more proactive and focused

> Google is supposed to be a technical firebrand

They used to be, but they haven't been that for a long, long time.

He comes off to me as someone in a funk, or stupor, or depression. Like he's out of touch, out of grasp with realities, and I think changes and things at google have probably hurt their culture quite a bit over the years. The best engineers in the world will churn out shit, if they aren't inspired to at least do exciting things sometimes, and I think Google's lost that thing that made them excite developers.

I imagine they have some AI solution in reach.

I wouldn't want somebody to give presentations as a head of Google. On the contrary, I hate when people produce vapor.

Microsoft bought their AI solution. We will see if they can successfully integrate it. I am not yet sure about that. I hardly call that innovation though.

"Embrace, extend, extinguis" was Microsoft's way to address widely used standards in its early quest to be a monopoly [1]. What they're doing with their AI solution seems like a similar case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

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