Must Watch: “The Internet Gave Me A Vision" – Sundar Pichai On His Early Days | DWS News | AI14

But no, I think it's important that we talk. First of all, you can see we have a great connection, number one. But number two, this is the Sundar I know, so that's what I'm trying to do. I think a lot, you know, like I said, on my ride in, I was just thinking to myself, a lot of people, they just don't have the opportunity to realize the person that I know so well. Your heart, you know, your life, your connection. And, you know, now, OK, so anyway, let's just get back to the story. You're in Stanford now. Right. And now all of a sudden you kind of see this new world and it is a different world. You're you are in Palo Alto. It's it's not just cold. There's a whole thing going on. Right. And so what is your biggest surprise now that you're in Palo Alto besides the weather? Oh, I mean, look, I think, you know, maybe take this for granted in the valley and in a place like Stanford. And I mean, it's I mean, America is truly a land of opportunity in a way. The phrase I think very few people really understand, you know, deeply. And it's extraordinary. You can come here and, you know, you're willing to work hard, pursue your dreams. Anything is possible. Right. And it was kind of obvious to me once I came in. You know, if you're passionate about something, you meet other people who are passionate about it. This is a place of dreamers and builders. You're excited about something. People want to build on that idea. You know, it's almost like they want to compose that with you. That is so unique, unique about the place we live in. And so that struck me. So, you know, this optimism, this real desire to make the world better, you know, and sometimes we all are so used to it. Sometimes I think, you know, we get jaded with technology or something. We forget that. I feel it now when I travel around the world and you go to places where they don't have access to this technology. They so want to be a part of it. Here we have it. And, you know, I think we've gone through these waves. But that is the essence of this place, I think. And you brought it back to the visitator in which Steve Jobs did some of those, you know, path breaking announcements. I think that's the spirit of this place. I felt it at Stanford and I feel it today. So now here you are. You're you're feeling it. You are connected to the energy of Silicon Valley, the magic of what's happening. Stanford, kind of the heart of it all. Near the garages where these great companies have started, like HP, like Apple. You're starting to meet these cast of characters. It's like going to Disneyland, right? You're meeting Donald Duck. You're meeting Mickey Mouse in person for the first time. And now you're in Stanford. And are you at this point thinking, OK, I heard about this company, Google. It's 2004. This is where I'm heading. Is that the is that the direction? I was in I was in Stanford in the 90s. And, you know, this was the time when Mosaic and Mosaic had launched. And ironically, I think Larry and Sergey were at Stanford at the same time. I don't think I knew them or we didn't overlap. You didn't know them at the time. No, I didn't know them at the time. I was I was focused on different things. I was very interested in semiconductors. That was my area of research. That's what I was working on. I was so excited to have access to all that. I almost didn't realize there was this thing called the Internet, which was happening. So but, you know, a few years later, you know, had the chance to get to know a few people. And when the Internet was really taking off and I started using Google early, the first time I started using it, I realized this is going to give more access to information. It must be what, 96, 97, 98? No, it wasn't that. Google started in 99. I first used it in about 2000, right, 2000, 2001. And I could instantly feel like you have this thing which is going to give access to technology to more people than anything before. You could use it. You could feel it. The fact that. Where was that first time that you used Google in 2001? Where were you? I was still in Palo Alto, you know, but I was working in the semiconductor industry. It's interesting to see back as we are going through this moment in AI, everything is coming back to chips, you know, which turns out to be the might be the real driver of intelligence. Right. And it's not an accident that Google works on TPUs, too. Right. So it all comes back full circle. But that's the context in which I use. But, you know, it's just that when I used it, I instantly felt like this is where I want to be. And spoke to some people. Ended up at Google. And soon started working on Chrome. Yeah. And you went to Google. It was about 2003, 2004. 2004, yeah.