Sundar Pichai’s big European adventure

Google’s new chief executive is about to receive what has become the traditional Brussels welcome for American tech giants: a sit-down with Margrethe Vestager and her phalanx of enforcers.

Sundar Pichai makes his first trip as CEO to the European Union capital Thursday for the high-stakes visit with the competition commissioner who wields scepter-like power over the company’s future on the Continent.

With his company facing an onslaught of antitrust and tax probes across Europe, Pichai will try to succeed where his predecessors failed. 

Google Founder Larry Page and former CEO Eric Schmidt each paid homage in the past. Fruitlessly. Indian-born Pichai, 43, is a fresh face. He travels without the baggage built up by years of tortuous negotiations between Brussels and the search giant. With his mild manner and toothy smile, he has little of the swagger and bravado of other tech titans.

Yet within Google he is legendary. He led the development of what is now the world’s most popular Internet browser, Chrome, and managed the world’s most popular operating system, Android. Chrome has more than 1 billion users, while Android powers about three out of every four smartphones.

Pichai — pronounced Peh-chai — was appointed CEO last August during the re-organization that hived off the company’s more speculative activities to new parent company Alphabet. His mission is to nurture and protect Alphabet’s cash cow: online advertising.

That is why he sought to mend relations Wednesday with one of Google’s staunchest European critics: the powerful publishing industry.

Speaking in Paris, Pichai offered to put news websites under Google’s own anti-hacking shield. He also announced €27 million in funding for digital news projects across Europe, and said Google would help improve mobile access to news websites.

“We are committed to ongoing discussion between the tech and news sectors … And play our part in building a more sustainable news ecosystem,” Pichai told a group of students at Sciences Po.

Pichai is not exactly a stranger in Brussels, and that may cut both ways. In 2009, he helped lobby the Commission to clamp down on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. He argued on Google’s blog: “Internet Explorer is tied to Microsoft’s dominant computer operating system, giving it an unfair advantage over other browsers.”

Those words may now haunt him.

“Google could fare better by coming out of denial and voluntarily offering real remedies to the online competitors they have been harming for about a decade now,” said Michael Weber, director of Germany’s Hot Maps, which has lodged a formal complaint against Google. “The EU probe can be effective in the end but the process takes many years too long.”

Pichai’s first priority will be to gauge the status of the antitrust probes facing Google.

“It is time to bring in the top management to show they are serious,” said Jill Craig, who heads up consultancy Hume Brophy in Brussels.

The timing of his trip is intriguing.

Almost one year ago to the day, Schmidt sat opposite an impassive Vestager and defended Google’s search engine. Six weeks later, she filed charges. A final decision is still pending with a maximum fine of some €6 billion.

Since then, antitrust officials have been hunting for evidence to mount a case against Google’s Android software.

Pichai is also likely to plead his case to Martin Selmayr, the influential head of cabinet to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Lawyers and lobbyists are skeptical.

Andreas Geiger, managing director of lobby firm Alber & Geiger, derided it as “helicopter diplomacy.”

Thomas Tindemans, a consultant heading up the global practice of Hill+Knowlton Strategies, cautioned, “To think that one can settle serious competition law concerns with a chat and a handshake, as if it were a transaction, is an illusion.”

The meetings take place after many months of questions with mounting stakes. Antitrust investigators are looking at Google’s advertising model, search engine and Android software. The fines on each case could reach into the billions of euros and stymie the company’s push into the mobile market.

Google’s tax arrangements have also drawn hungry interest from treasuries across Europe. The Commission said last month it could check if EU state-aid rules were broken, setting off alarms across Silicon Valley.

All the while the Commission continues to hammer out sweeping European rules — from copyright to Internet platforms, connectivity speeds to data protection — that will have deep consequences for Google’s business models.

Pichai’s discussions with Vestager may also touch on recent revelations that Google will pay the United Kingdom £130 million (€166 million) in back-taxes.

“The commissioner has to raise it and establish if this was a one-off or if this is how they will continue to do business across the EU,” said Neena Gill, a center-left member of the European Parliament from the U.K.

Pichai and Google have barely been out of the news this year. Alphabet was briefly the world’s most valuable company, while Pichai became one of America’s best-rewarded executives. Last month, Alphabet announced it granted Pichai, 43, stock worth $199 million, which critics observe is more than its U.K. tax settlement.

After attempts to resolve Europe’s antitrust probes collapsed almost two years ago, Google fell on bended knee.

The company’s European chief executive, Matt Brittin, acknowledged to POLITICO in June they mishandled its messaging in Europe and offered an olive branch to the Commission. He said Google had failed to explain its business and vision to European policymakers, and the company was trying to adjust its Silicon Valley image.

“We don’t always get it right,” Brittin said. “As far as Europe is concerned: we get it. We understand that people here are not the same in their attitudes to everything as people in America.”

On Thursday, Pichai will also meet with Günther Oettinger, the commissioner for digital affairs, another critical relationship for Google’s future in Europe.

Pichai and Oettinger already met at Google HQ in California in September. Germany’s tough-taking Commissioner and euro-patriot is currently drafting a far-reaching overhaul of Europe’s rulebook for the online sector. Thursday morning’s meeting is billed as a crunch one for Google to provide its view on plans that could dramatically liberalize Europe’s market, or hit the search giant with a heavy tome of regulation.

Nicholas Vinocur contributed to this article

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