Google antitrust fight thrusts low-key CEO Sundar Pichai into line of fire

OAKLAND - When Sundar Pichai succeeded Larry Page as the head of Google's parent company in December, he was handed a bag of problems: Shareholders had sued the company, Alphabet, over big financial packages handed to executives accused of misconduct. An admired office culture was fraying. Most of all, antitrust regulators were circling.

Pichai, a former product manager, may seem an unlikely candidate to lead his company's fight with the federal government. But if the tech industry's bumptious history with antitrust enforcement is any lesson, a caretaker who has reluctantly stepped into the spotlight might be preferable to a charismatic leader born to it.

Google declined to make Pichai available for an interview. In an e-mail to employees on Tuesday, he urged Google employees to stay focused on their work so that users will continue to use its products not because they have to but because they want to. Page dealt with impending antitrust scrutiny with detachment, spending his time on futuristic technology projects instead of huddling with lawyers. Even as the European Union handed down three fines against Google for anticompetitive practices, Page barely addressed the matter publicly.

Google said that the case was"deeply flawed" and that the Justice Department was relying on"dubious antitrust arguments." Google has appointed Halimah DeLaine Prado as its new general counsel. A 14-year veteran of the company's legal department, Prado was most recently a vice president overseeing the global team that advised Google on products including advertising, cloud computing, search, YouTube and hardware. While Prado doesn't have a background in antitrust, she has been at Google since 2006 and is, by now, well versed in competition law.

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