Google’s Sundar Pichai: Excerpts From a Conversation at the WSJ’s Tech Live Conference

To discuss these issues, and the possibility of public/private partnerships in tech, Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Matt Murray spoke with Alphabet and Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference. Here are edited excerpts of the discussion.

Culture and innovation

MR. MURRAY: Where are you right now on returnees, remote work, mask mandates, test mandates, and what do you expect to see in the next few months?

MR. PICHAI: We are operating with the view that the future of work will be flexible. We deeply believe in the power of getting people together, which is why you saw us recently buy a building in New York. We’re roughly planning on a three-two model. We are looking to accommodate about 20% of our workforce to be fully remote over time.

Beyond January we are just going to tell people to make decisions locally, not centrally anymore, because different places in the world are going through different trajectories.

MR. MURRAY: How much are you going in right now?

MR. PICHAI: This week I’ve been in every day, but it’s been about two to three days a week.

MR. MURRAY: How are you going to have the culture you want to have and need to have, and that everybody can feel a part of, whether they’re in the office or working remotely?

MR. PICHAI: We are investing. We are reimagining physical spaces quite a bit, trying to create more collaboration spaces, fun places for people to come and get together.

When we opened our New York offices back, coming in is voluntary, but it’s about 50% capacity back. Last week we had lines in our cafes for the first time. And so the energy in the office was back there. People seemed really happy to be back.

MR. MURRAY: Is Silicon Valley different in terms of being the center of tech? Is tech everywhere now? Has Silicon Valley lost some of the centrality for tech work?

MR. PICHAI: There are strong indications that Silicon Valley is still doing amazing things and has access to the best talent possible. But there is more activity and energy in other places than ever before.

It’s a growing pie, and it’s not just going to be Silicon Valley alone anymore. You are definitely going to see other places doing well, which is good I think overall. But the Valley still has something special.

MR. MURRAY: You’ve had vocal incidents with your workforce. There’s been a union effort there now. Between those incidents and the challenges of remote work, how are you dealing with cultural concerns or objections inside the company?

MR. PICHAI: We have deeply empowered our employees. I view it as a strength of the company at a high level, having employees be so engaged, deeply care about what the company does.

There will be times we make decisions and our employees may not agree. We have to be clear and transparent about our decisions. That’s a new normal, and we’ve been used to it for a while.

MR. MURRAY: One of the big stories this week has been dealing with the Dave Chappelle special and the employees who are unhappy about that. It’s a new part of a tool kit for a CEO today, you have to learn to deal with employees speaking up. Are you more vocal yourself with pushing back if you disagree?

MR. PICHAI: Running a large company, you want to make sure the company is doing the right things. It brings a sense of accountability, which I’ve always viewed as a strength of the company. We have invested in ways by which people can raise their concerns.

It’s important there also be a dialogue of respect on both sides. But CEOs need to embrace the fact that in the modern workplace, employees want to have a say in where they work, and there is strength in that too.

MR. MURRAY: Alphabet’s performed very well on your watch. The criticism that you’ve gotten at times is that Alphabet isn’t the innovative force that it once was. Is that fair?

MR. PICHAI: We’ve spent over $100 billion in R&D in the last five years. The challenge I had given the company was to use that investment to build helpful features.

I see evidence of it every day. If you’re in Gmail and you’re typing, Smart Compose saves you time. In our upcoming Pixel phone, look at how voice typing works, or how you can talk to another person in a different language, and the translation happens on the device in real time.

Innovation for me is about people that are relying on these products, making life easier for them, in micro moments. There will be bigger leaps, but those happen over time.

The privacy question

MR. MURRAY: There is a big debate, as you know, going on about privacy. How at odds are changing notions of privacy with Google’s business model? Does the business model need to change itself?

MR. PICHAI: People’s privacy expectations are constantly evolving. We work hard to stay ahead. Most of the data today we keep is for the benefit of the user. We support our products through advertising. We need very limited information to make sure the ad is relevant to you, and that enough people find the ad effective. We have clear road maps to do all of that in a privacy-safe way.

It’s trust. We listen to that. One of the biggest changes we announced is by default auto-deleting your activity data. For over two billion accounts, by default we automatically delete the data after a period of 18 months.

MR. MURRAY: Hacking attacks and other things are worse than ever right now. What’s causing that?

MR. PICHAI: The world of cyber doesn’t have norms and conventions like we have established in the real world. Governments on a multilateral basis need to put it up higher on the agenda. I’m calling for global frameworks. You’re going to need it for areas like cybersecurity, just like we have it in the real world. If not, you’re just going to see more of it.

MR. MURRAY: You’ve been grappling with different regulatory concerns in different parts of the world. Should there be one privacy standard everywhere? And if there is, what should it look like?

MR. PICHAI: I think having common frameworks helps. I think the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation has been a great foundation. I would really like to see a federal privacy standard in the U.S. I’m worried about a patchwork of regulations in states. That adds a lot of complexity.

MR. MURRAY: YouTube has recently said digital advertising bought on its platform won’t appear with content that denies climate change. On some level, aren’t you basically acting as a publisher when you have to make decisions like that?

MR. PICHAI: We have a deep commitment to freedom of expression. We fight for it around the world.

We are trying to balance content creators, users and advertisers. There’s a lot of brand advertisers on YouTube. They don’t want their ads next to content they think is brand negative.

You can go debate things in YouTube. And we see plenty of debate all the time. We have to respect where advertisers want to spend their money—and if they pull out, creators suffer too. We as a company are incented to get it right, even from a business viewpoint.

MR. MURRAY: There are areas of controversial speech, though, that have to be protected beyond what the advertisers think.

MR. PICHAI: The way we approach it as a company is, we’ve been ranking to raise high-quality information in search results.

For the past four years we’ve taken that approach in YouTube. The answer is, a lot of times, raising authoritative information. We are also trying to find expert organizations which people would accept.

That’s always harder than you realize. In some countries, public-health authorities are viewed as an authoritative source, and it’s a bit more controversial here in the U.S. We are trying to find the right balance.

Working with Washington

MR. MURRAY: Should the government be supporting certain kinds of tech research, either with money or more deeply, in a closer public/private partnership?

MR. PICHAI: The government has limited resources, and it needs to focus. But all of us are benefiting from foundational investments from 20 to 30 years ago, which is what a lot of the modern tech innovation is based on.

When I look at [developments in next-generation quantum computing], government can play a key role both in terms of policies, allowing us to bring in the best talent from anywhere in the world, or participating with universities and creating some of the longer-term research areas. I do think public/private partnerships here can be a good template.

I’m heartened by the fact that there’s bipartisan interest in making sure we are thinking about it for the long term.