There was a simplicity to my life in Chennai, says Google CEO Sundar Pichai

When I first joined Google I was struck by the fact that it was a very idealistic, optimistic place and I still see that idealism and optimism a lot in many things we do today

Google is facing more challenges today than at any time in its 20-year history. Employees are outraged over sexual harassment. Executives are under scrutiny for an effort to secretly make a censored version of its search product for China. Google will shut down its social network next year after a data breach was discovered. Political and social debates, including one over building military-grade artificial intelligence, are roiling the workforce. 

Yet the man responsible for leading Google through this minefield is not one of the company’s founders — Larry Page and Sergey Brin — or even Eric Schmidt, the company’s former chief