The free and open internet is under attack in countries around the world, Google boss Sundar Pichai has warned.
He says many countries are restricting the flow of information, and the model is often taken for granted.
In an in-depth interview with the BBC, Pichai also addresses controversies around tax, privacy and data.
And he argues artificial intelligence is more profound than fire, electricity or the internet.
Pichai is chief executive of one of the most complex, consequential and rich institutions in history.
The next revolutions
I spoke to him at Google’s HQ in Silicon Valley, for the first of a series of interviews I am doing for the BBC with global figures.
As boss of both Google and its parent company Alphabet, he is the ultimate leader of companies or products as varied as Waze, FitBit and DeepMind, the artificial intelligence pioneers. At Google alone he oversees Gmail, Google Chrome, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Docs, Google Photos, the Android operating system and many other products.
Over the past 23 years, Google has probably shaped the mostly free and open internet we have today more than any other company.
According to Pichai, over the next quarter of a century, two other developments will further revolutionise our world: artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Amid the rustling leaves and sunshine of the vast, empty campus that is Google’s HQ in Silicon Valley, Pichai stressed how consequential AI was going to be.
“I view it as the most profound technology that humanity will ever develop and work on,” he said. “You know, if you think about fire or electricity or the internet, it’s like that. But I think even more profound.”
Artificial intelligence is, at base, the attempt to replicate human intelligence in machines. Various AI systems are already better at solving particular kinds of problems than humans. For an eloquent exposition of the potential harms from AI, try this essay by Henry Kissinger.
Quantum Computing is a totally different phenomenon. Ordinary computing is based on states of matter that are binary: 0 or 1. Nothing in-between. These positions are called bits.
But at the quantum, or sub-atomic level, matter behaves differently: it can be 0 or 1 at the same time – or on a spectrum between the two. Quantum computers are built on qubits, which factor in the probability of matter being in one of various different states. This is mind-boggling stuff, but it could change the world. Wired has an excellent explainer.
Pichai and other leading technologists find the possibilities here exhilarating. “[Quantum] is not going to work for everything. There are things for which the way we do computing today would always be better. But there are some things for which quantum computing will open up an entire new range of solutions.”
Pichai rose through the ranks of Google by being the most effective, popular and respected product manager in the company’s history.
Neither Chrome, the browser, nor Android, the mobile operating system, were his idea (Android was for a while led by Andy Rubin). But Pichai was the product manager who led them, under the watchful eyes of Google’s founders, to global domination.
In a sense, Pichai is now product managing the infinitely greater challenges of AI and quantum computing. He is doing so as Google faces a daily barrage of scrutiny and criticism on several fronts – to name but three: tax, privacy, and alleged monopoly status.
Taxing tech
Google gets defensive on matters relating to tax.
For several years, the company has paid huge sums to accountants and lawyers in order to legally reduce their tax obligations.
For instance, in 2017, Google moved more than $20bn to Bermuda through a Dutch shell company, as part of a strategy called “Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich”.
I put this to Pichai, who said that Google no longer uses this scheme, is one of the world’s biggest taxpayers, and complies with tax laws in every country in which it operates.
I responded that his answer revealed exactly the problem: this isn’t just a legal issue, it’s a moral one. Poor people generally don’t employ accountants in order to minimise their tax bills; large-scale tax avoidance is something that the richest people in the world do, and – I suggested to him – may weaken the collective sacrifice.
When I invited Pichai to commit there and then to Google pulling out of all tax havens immediately, he didn’t take up the offer.
He did, however, make clear that he is “encouraged by the conversations around a corporate global minimum tax”.
It is clear that Google is engaging with policy-makers on finding ways to make tax simpler and more effective. It is true that the company generates most of its research and revenues in the US, which is where it pays most of its tax.
Moreover, it has paid effective tax of 20% over the past decade, which is more than many companies. Nevertheless, any use of any tax haven is a reputational exposure for companies when, across the world, trillions are being borrowed, spent, and raised through taxes on ordinary folk in order to mitigate the pandemic.
The other big issues where Google is facing constant and growing scrutiny surround data, privacy, and whether or not the company has an effective monopoly in Search, where it is totally dominant.
On the last of these, Pichai makes the case that Google is a free product, and users can easily go elsewhere.
This is the same argument that Facebook has used, and Mark Zuckerberg’s company received a strong endorsement from Judge James Boasberg of Washington DC last month, when he rejected a raft of anti-trust cases against the social media giant on the grounds that it didn’t meet the current definition of a monopoly (that is, “the power to profitably raise prices or exclude competition”).
The exchanges on privacy, data, tax and dominance in Search were perhaps the most testy of the time I had with Pichai, and can be heard in the podcast version.
Industry respect
In preparation for the interview, I spoke to more than a dozen current or former Google executives, other senior executives at big tech firms, regulators and tech-sector strategists. There was reliably strong opinion and consensus within each camp.
Those who work in the tech sector said you just cannot argue with the growth in Google’s share price under Pichai. It has nearly tripled. That’s a phenomenal performance. Arguing that it is explained by favourable prevailing winds in consumer behaviour – of the kind that have helped other tech giants to grow – similarly misses the point.
Google created that consumer behaviour with astonishing engineering and world-class products.
Mostly off the record, the regulators said new laws, and language, needed to be designed to exert better scrutiny on this new kind of corporate giant. Judge Boasberg’s verdict on Facebook rather confirmed this. Interestingly, Lina Khan, the new 32-year-old boss of the Federal Trade Commission, has previously argued that the definition of monopoly should be expanded to reflect this new world.
The senior executives at other big tech firms were struck by what an effective public performer Pichai is. His testimonies in Congress have rarely led to drops in Google’s share price. His emollient manner and grasp of detail allows him to draw poison from potentially difficult situations.
A low-profile, avuncular figure, he keeps himself largely to himself – which is partly why Google staff who watch the interview will learn a lot about him (those present said they did).
In a very revealing quick-fire round of questions, we discover he doesn’t eat meat, drives a Tesla, reveres Alan Turing, wishes he’d met Stephen Hawking, and is jealous of Jeff Bezos’s space mission.
It was fascinating to find all this out from such an influential figure, precisely because he doesn’t make too many public pronouncements. You wouldn’t, for instance, find him on Instagram riding an electric hydrofoil surfboard while holding an American flag, on US Independence Day, to the sound of John Denver’s Country Roads (the version by Toots Hibbert is, of course, infinitely better).
Chief ethics officer
It was what I heard from those who worked with or for him, however, that most informed my approach.
Pichai is universally regarded as an exceptionally kind, thoughtful, and caring leader. Considerate toward staff, he is, according to everyone I spoke to who knew him, genuinely committed to being an ethical example. He is an idealist when it comes to the impact of technology on improving living standards, something that has its roots in his upbringing, which we discussed at length.
He was born into a middle-class family in Tamil Nadu, in south India. Various technologies had a transformative impact on him, from the old rotary phone that they were on a waiting list for, to the scooter they all piled on to for a monthly dinner.
At Google, he won over the engineers and software developers. It helped that he was a metallurgical engineer himself, but it’s still not easy; the brains trust at Silicon Valley companies includes many of the biggest egos on the planet. Yet they respect him hugely.
Pichai obeys the counter-cyclical approach to leadership appointments favoured by many head-hunters. After the necessarily pioneering, zealous, risk-taking leadership of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, it made sense to have a lower-profile, solid, more cautious leader who would soothe public anxieties and charm public officials.
Pichai has been outstanding at these latter tasks, and the company’s share price performance is remarkable. Not many people in history could say they’ve created a trillion dollars of value as CEO.
But the very qualities that made him a smart counter-cyclical appointment also point to potential pitfalls, according to ex-Googlers and many other close watchers. It’s important to say that these people are generally tech evangelists, who have very different priorities from your average punter.
The tech evangelists are united on a few points.
Second, Google has a bunch of “Me-Too” products rather than original ideas; in the sense that it sees other people make great inventions, and then it unleashes its engineers to improve them.
Fourth, that Google’s ambition to solve humanity’s biggest problems is waning. With the biggest concentration of computer science PhDs in the world in one tiny strip of land south of San Francisco, goes this argument, shouldn’t Google be reversing climate change, or solving cancer? I find this criticism hard to reconcile with Pichai’s record, but it is common.
Finally, that he deserves tremendous sympathy, because managing a staff as big, recalcitrant, demanding and idealistic as Google’s in an era of culture wars is essentially impossible. These days Google is quite frequently in the news because of staff walkouts over diversity or pay; or because key people have left over controversial issues around identity.
With more than 100,000 staff, many of them hugely opinionated on internal message boards, and activist in nature, this is just impossible to control. There is a tension between Google genuinely embracing cognitive diversity by having people of all persuasions among its global staff, and at the same time really standing up for particular issues as a company.
Acceleration
All the above are concerns of people within the tech world who want Google to go faster. A lot of voters in polarised democracies would like big tech to slow down.
The most obvious lesson I draw from my time in Silicon Valley is that there is no chance of that happening. Acceleration is the norm: the speeding up of history is itself speeding up.
And, when I asked about whether the Chinese model of the internet – much more authoritarian, big on surveillance – is in the ascendant, Pichai said the free and open internet “is being attacked”. Importantly, he didn’t refer to China directly but he went on to say: “None of our major products and services are available in China.”
With legislators and regulators proving slow, ineffective, and easy to lobby – and a pandemic taking up plenty of bandwidth – right now the democratic West is largely leaving it to people like Sundar Pichai to decide where we should all be heading.
He doesn’t think he should have all that responsibility. Do you?
Dozens of Palestinians killed in overnight Israeli strikes in central and south Gaza as Red Sea tensions rise.
Here’s how things stand on Monday, January 15, 2024:
Latest updates and human impact
- Israeli attacks continue unabated overnight killing and wounding dozens of civilians in central and southern Gaza. At least 22 people were killed and a large number injured as a result of Israeli forces targeting al-Thalatheni Street in the central Gaza Strip.
- Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired an antiship cruise missile toward an American destroyer in the Red Sea, which was shot down by a US fighter jet, announced US Central Command (CENTCOM) on X.
- This was the first US-acknowledged Houthi attack since the US strikes on Yemen on Friday.
- Hamas released a 37-second video showing three Israeli captives held in Gaza on Sunday, saying they would reveal the fate of the captives on Monday and urging the Israeli government to stop the offensive.
- The Israeli military says it has shifted to a new phase of the war focused on the southern end of Gaza, where almost 2 million internally displaced Palestinians are running out of safe spaces to shelter.
- The Gaza Ministry of Health has said almost 24,000 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive. More than 60,000 people have been wounded in 100 days of war.
Diplomacy
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that his country will pursue its war against Hamas until victory and will not be stopped by anyone, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
- The White House said on Sunday that “it’s the right time” for Israel to scale back its military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
- Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS) said in a statement on Sunday that one of the biggest obstacles to the timely delivery of sufficient aid to Gaza was Israeli inspection of the aid. The statement came after Israel blamed Cairo for the delay in aid delivery to Gaza during its defence at the ICJ.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken posted on X on Monday, calling for the release of the remaining captives held in Gaza on the 100th day since they were taken by Hamas. He did not mention the Palestinian casualties.
- Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who described herself as a “friend of Israel” to the press, will travel to Jordan, Israel, the occupied Palestinian Territories and the United Arab Emirates this week, her office said on Monday.
West Bank raids and violence
- Israeli forces arrested 25 students staging a sit-in in protest against high tuition fees at An-Najah University in Nablus. Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut reported that the protesting students received a text message from Israeli forces telling them to “surrender now”.
- Israeli forces have reportedly raided the family home of Nael al-Barghouti, the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner, in the village of Kobar, in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.
- The Israeli army said on Friday that it killed three Palestinian men who infiltrated a West Bank settlement and fired upon soldiers.
- The Israeli military killed two Palestinians after accusing them of ramming their car through a checkpoint near Hebron.
- Local sources reported that Israeli forces bulldozed two Palestinian-owned houses during a Sunday midnight raid in the city of Qalqilya, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
- Armed Israeli settlers broke into the village of Burin, south of Nablus, and attacked Palestinian residents’ houses and properties after midnight on Sunday, Wafa reported.
- “Violent raids and arrests have become part of the fabric of daily life in the occupied West Bank,” Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said. At least 347 Palestinians have been killed and thousands have been arrested since October 7.
Flames and smoke billow during Israeli attacks against Gaza on October 9, 2023
Human Rights Watch terms Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s call for a ‘complete siege’ on Gaza a ‘war crime’.
The Hamas movement has threatened to kill an Israeli hostage every time Israel bombs a Palestinian home without warning as Israel mobilised some 300,000 reservists and imposed a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, denying the enclave’s millions of residents access to food, water and fuel.
The warning from Hamas came on Monday as the death toll from the armed group’s surprise weekend attack climbed to 900 in Israel and revenge attacks by Israeli forces on the besieged Gaza Strip killed more than 700 people and left some 3,700 others wounded.
Residential apartment blocks, hospitals, schools and a mosque have been among the sites attacked by Israeli fighter jets, artillery and drones, according to media reports and witnesses.
Hamas spokesperson Abu Ubaida issued the threat to kill Israelis from the dozens held captive by the armed group. He said an Israeli hostage would be killed for every Israeli bombing of a civilian house without warning.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said more than 100 people were taken captive by Hamas during the deadly cross-border incursion over the weekend.
As Israeli forces conducted intense retaliatory attacks on Gaza on Monday, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant drew international condemnation by announcing a total blockade of the densely populated and besieged enclave, which is home to 2.3 million people.
Gallant said Israel would impose a “complete siege” on Gaza. “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply distressed” by the siege announcement and warned that Gaza’s already dire humanitarian situation will now “only deteriorate exponentially”.
Guterres also said some 137,000 people were taking shelter with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) at schools across Gaza.
UNRWA said on Tuesday that almost 190,000 people have been displaced in Gaza amid the Israeli attacks and the figure is expected to grow further as the violence intensifies.
Nearly half a million people have also not received food rations this week in Gaza as UN food distribution centres have been forced to remain closed amid the Israeli onslaught, UNRWA said.
Human Rights Watch said Israel’s total blockade on the necessities of life for everyday people in Gaza was a war crime.
“Defense Minister Gallant’s statements are abhorrent,” Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
“Depriving the population in an occupied territory of food and electricity is collective punishment, which is a war crime, as is using starvation as a weapon of war. The International Criminal Court should take note of this call to commit a war crime,” he said.
Abhorrent. This is a call to commit a war crime by @yoavgallant. The @IntlCrimCourt should take note.
Quote by @OmarSShakir ⤵️ https://t.co/kKVo6YtpI1 pic.twitter.com/neHQMwnXVn
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) October 9, 2023
Shakir also condemned the threat by Hamas to kill hostages, warning that such action was also a war crime.
“All hostages should be safely released to their families,” he said.
Grotesque. These threatened acts would amount to flagrant war crimes by Hamas’ armed wing. The @IntlCrimCourt will be watching.
Quote from @OmarSShakir ⤵️ https://t.co/FuNtvHe0YG pic.twitter.com/6cnHODLWyZ
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) October 9, 2023
On the diplomatic front, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Hamas and Israel to immediately end violence and protect civilians, the Egyptian presidency said.
Erdogan urged Israel against “indiscriminately” attacking civilians and delivered measured criticism of Hamas, urging both sides to respect the “ethics” of war.
The United Kingdom, French, German, Italian and US governments issued a joint statement on Monday recognising the “legitimate aspirations” of the Palestinian people and supporting equal measures of justice and freedom for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
But the prospect that fighting could spread also alarmed the region and the world.
Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel in response to at least three of its members being killed in Israeli shelling of Lebanon.
Israel said one of its deputy commanders was also killed in an earlier cross-border raid from Lebanon.
US President Joe Biden holds a bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York City, the US, September 20, 2023
Social media users, including journalists and observers, are calling out what they call a ‘double standard’.
After Saturday’s surprise attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Israel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to the social media platform X to offer “condolences go out to everyone who lost relatives or close ones in the terrorist attack”.
He also stated, “Israel’s right to self-defence is unquestionable.”
Many world leaders, including US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, shared similar sentiments.
The world is seeing appalling images.
Thousands of rockets raining down on Israeli cities. Hamas terrorists killing not only Israeli soldiers, but civilians on the streets and in their homes.
It’s unconscionable. Israel has a right to defend itself – full stop.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 7, 2023
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated, “Israel has the right to defend itself – today and in the days to come. The European Union stands with Israel.”
Accusations of Western ‘double standards’
Some social media users have criticised these statements, saying they highlight a double standard.
The world is seeing appalling images.
Thousands of rockets raining down on Israeli cities. Hamas terrorists killing not only Israeli soldiers, but civilians on the streets and in their homes.
It’s unconscionable. Israel has a right to defend itself – full stop.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 7, 2023
Ukraine’s right to defend itself is praised by most international leaders while Russia’s invasion is condemned, but commentators said the same cannot be said about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Aaron Bastani, a leftist British journalist, said on X that there’s a “clear double standard in endorsing terrorism against civilian targets in Ukraine … and condemning it by Palestinians”.
Many users said Western diplomats and media support the Ukrainians who defend their land, but label the Palestinians fighting against Israel as “terrorists”.
https://twitter.com/KhaledBeydoun/status/1710787817415082349?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1710787817415082349%7Ctwgr%5E6acf829869e993177f32aa38aa48c02f38cb7f61%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2023%2F10%2F9%2Fwestern-leaders-accused-of-hypocrisy-over-response-to-palestine-ukraine
An illustration of a woman’s face, in which one eye is closed beside a Palestinian flag, and one eye open beside a Ukrainian flag, has been regularly shared as a symbol of the West’s alleged double standards in how the two conflicts are viewed.
https://twitter.com/OnlinePalEng/status/1710994682883273172?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1710994682883273172%7Ctwgr%5E6acf829869e993177f32aa38aa48c02f38cb7f61%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2023%2F10%2F9%2Fwestern-leaders-accused-of-hypocrisy-over-response-to-palestine-ukraine
Clips also emerged on social media from a CNN interview with Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, in which he posed the rhetorical question, “Why does the United States support Ukraine in fighting occupation – while here they support the occupier, who continues to occupy us?”
The hypocrisy and double standards of western governments and media platforms dealing with situations in Ukraine-Russia and Palestine-Israel blow the mind. Absolute disgrace.
— Said Yacoubi (@AlyacoubiSaid) October 8, 2023
It is not the first time Western nations have been accused of double standards in their stance on the Ukraine war.
Earlier in the year, Amnesty International published a report highlighting the West’s “double standards” on global human rights.
Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, told Al Jazeera at the time that the occupation of Palestinian territory was a “particularly important one”.
“Without making any comparison between Russia’s aggression and Israel … it is clear the Palestinian people are under a regime of oppression – a regime of occupation and a regime of apartheid,” Callamard told Al Jazeera.
Over the last three days, X users recirculated earlier statements calling out what they called Western hypocrisy, sharing video by the Irish lawmaker Richard Boyd Barrett from March 2022 in which he berated the Irish government’s double standards regarding Ukraine and Palestine:
“You’re happy to use the most strong and robust language to describe the crimes against humanity of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, but you will not use the same strength of language when it comes to describing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.”
Barrett on Sunday again called out what he described as “shocking double standards of Western leaders supporting Ukraine resistance but condemning Palestinian[s].”
Meanwhile, others warned against comparing conflicts.
https://twitter.com/denfordauthor/status/1710993737738768607?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1710993737738768607%7Ctwgr%5E6acf829869e993177f32aa38aa48c02f38cb7f61%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2023%2F10%2F9%2Fwestern-leaders-accused-of-hypocrisy-over-response-to-palestine-ukraine
And some cautioned that Hamas and the Palestinians should not be seen as one and the same.
Just to clarify:
Palestine did not mount an attack on Israel. An Iranian proxy militia did. Palestinians are by and large huddled in their homes praying that an Israeli airstrike won't kill them or theirs. Hamas is the culprit here. This isn't a decentralized grassroots thing.
— Romeo Kokriatski (@VagrantJourno) October 9, 2023
Ukrainian footballer Oleksandr Zinchenko, who plays for Arsenal, posted on Instagram, stating he “stands with Israel”.
Zinchenko has been a vocal supporter of his home country in its ongoing defence against Russia, and he participated in a Game4Ukraine charity match in London earlier this year to raise money for Ukraine.
After online backlash, with some questioning an alleged double standard in his support of Israel, the footballer removed the post and switched his social media account to private.
Several people claimed that Zinchenko’s football club, in not responding to his comments, was guilty of hypocrisy after they had distanced themselves from former player Mesut Ozil’s comments in 2019 over alleged human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in China.
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