I agree, but not with the conclusion. I don't think a Nadella is what they need. He's far too much of a stabilizer, which makes sense for Microsoft given their incredibly rocky years. This archetype is also what Pichai is trying to fill and why Google isn't working out.
When you step back for a moment, it's utterly bizarre Tim Cook was able to pivot Apple towards being this privacy-focused company who is now able to eat Google's ad lunch from right under them. Tim Cook, the very same guy people called just a boring distributions-focused leader, yet he has a more forward-thinking vision than Pichai. Pichai, the man who once led a team to create Chrome.
It's outright absurd how much one has stalled in comparison.
What I like about Nadella is that he is very responsive to threats, and I think he fundamentally gets the business. Much of MS' product line is improving across the board and ramping up vs AWS.
Cook really understands the customer perspective around privacy, and I view him as part of the A bomb that will destroy the glacier of Surveillance Capitalism. FB is limping, and Google is bleeding. He'll likely be ramming it at Mach5 with the subscription icebreaker which feeds right into the Apple ecosystem. Now, I do think he needs to drop %s and bring them down to reality as part of a long play to make it the best platform and defeat monopoly arguments.
He was a PM but there's relatively little PMing to do on a browser. If you look at the features Chrome launched with it was all engineering focused stuff: speed, security, non-functionals like that. The project itself was really driven by Page and some hires from Mozilla/Safari teams.
When you step back for a moment, it's utterly bizarre Tim Cook was able to pivot Apple towards being this privacy-focused company who is now able to eat Google's ad lunch from right under them. Tim Cook, the very same guy people called just a boring distributions-focused leader, yet he has a more forward-thinking vision than Pichai. Pichai, the man who once led a team to create Chrome.
It's outright absurd how much one has stalled in comparison.