Google CEO Sundar Pichai Defends Products as Regulators Kick In

As antitrust regulators increase the scrutiny in Google products over the company's business practices, its CEO Sundar Pichai has said that it is important for advertisers to have standardised measurement that's fair across all media and that delivers insights in a way that fully protects users' privacy.

In an earnings call after reporting Q3 results, Sundar Pichai on Monday said the company consistently wants to work and build products that benefit users and support the ecosystem.

"And so our products and services benefit consumers, small and medium businesses advertise this and overall they've help reduce prices and expand choice. And so that's our underlying approach, I think, which is what helps us engage and explain to regulators and we'll continue to do that," he told analysts.

The US Department of Justice is set to open a broad antitrust review of tech companies including Google, and has also launched a separate antitrust probe into Google.

Pichai said that in several areas, the company is a new entrant.

"We create competition and sometimes the competitive pressures can lead to concerns from others. And so that's part of what's going on as well," he noted.

Google last week announced a major update in its Search algorithms to better understand people's queries and throw more relevant results.

"Any time we can better make sense of queries, we can serve users better. Our search quality goes up and people engage and engage more. So it's part of a long run, sort of things we have been working on, but this is one of our bigger breakthroughs in terms of helping improve the search experience and search quality," explained Pichai.

On achieving "Quantum Supremacy", Pichai said it is the "Hello World moment we've been waiting for and represents a distinct milestone in our effort to harness the principles of quantum mechanics to solve computational problems".

To demonstrate supremacy, Google's 53-cubic quantum machine Sycamore successfully performed a test competition in just 200 seconds that would have taken the most powerful supercomputers 10,000 years to accomplish.

On his hardware business like Pixel smartphones, Pichai said the business is still in its early stages.

"But we are continuing to build the business and the portfolio of healthful products. Our new Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL are the first phones at motion sense. This allows users to use natural gestures to get things done without touching their phone," said Pichai.

Google has just unveiled a new more powerful Nest Mini speaker and Nest Wifi.

"Finally, the team is looking forward to launching Pixel Buds, first truly wireless headphones as well as Stadia, our streaming gaming platform, which will soon be available in the US, UK, Canada, and throughout Europe," he said.

"We are investing deeply in our next billion users. So markets like APAC continues to be a big long-term opportunities for us as well," Pichai added, without mentioning whether India is still its next growth market.