Building trust is among the objectives Srinivasan has set for herself.
“In my role, it becomes about balancing all the different realities that we have,” she said. “Whether it’s leveraging AI or the new sorts of queries coming into search—and doing all of this with user privacy and user trust in the forefront of everything.”
Figuring it out quickly
Srinivasan brings a considerable skill set to meet the tasks ahead of her. She trained at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, where she built a computer from scratch with her (all-male) classmates. After earning an MA at Georgia Tech, she spent 10 years as an engineer at IBM followed by another six at Amazon Web Services. Her current post at Google is her third, and one that represents her methodical career approach that started with leading measurement, advertiser platforms and then consumer platforms like search, travel, shopping, Gmail and Discover feed.
“It’s a privilege to run a business like this,” she said. “It is also true that it happened in increments.”
Allan Thygesen, who ran the ads business for the Americas and worked closely with Srinivasan when she joined Google in 2019, recalls what a quick study she was.
“She knows her stuff—and if she doesn’t, she figures it out very quickly,” said Thygesen, today CEO of DocuSign. “For her to come in from the outside and assume a senior leadership position speaks to how I and everyone at Google experienced her. I wasn’t at all surprised when she got handed everything.”
And everything is, well, an awful lot. Google’s advertising revenues—nearly $66 billion in Q4 alone—constitute 77% of its earnings. It’s a titanic responsibility—and perhaps a scary one?
“I don’t know if I’d use ‘scary,’” Srinivasan said. “I do feel the weight of responsibility.”
