BBC interviewed Google’s CEO – and he got away with no answers

Author Dimitra Letsa

Published on: 12/07/2021

The BBC has for years had a series of interviews with an impressive mix of leaders and personalities. The series is called Hard Talk which clearly indicates the type of interviews we are talking about. The exclusive interview with Sundar Pichai is something totally different. Headline could rather be Soft Ball.

It’s amazing that the BBC has access to one of the most controversial tech companies’ CEO and avoids putting any pressure on him to give clear answers in controversial issues. 

Pichai gives the same sympathetic and modest impression that you get when you meet him. He is a man who started from an environment very far from ‘connected’ circles, from the ‘must-have’ networking – still, he was leading one of the companies that rule our world, looking so humble and doric, a sympathetic, frugal figure ruling the world. 

But this is also a shrewd leader of one of the global companies and he knows how to gently avoid giving any real answers. And he gets away with it. 

The interview touches upon dominance, paying publishers, privacy etc. Pichai gives vague answers, no follow-up questions are asked and he gets away with really classical avoid-the-question strategies. 

When there is some tension in the discussion about using tax havens, Pichai gets the question if he here and now can say that Google will not in the future use tax havens. He softly says definition of a tax haven is difficult. And that’s it!

We get to know about his background, what car he drives, that his parents are proud of him and we understand he is sympathetic. It’s a portrait that most probably makes Google’s PR department happy.

But we don’t get any answers to the questions that politicians, competitors, antitrust authorities, publishers around the world right now are asking Google.