Google's Android head Sundar Pichai in running for Microsoft CEO: report

Another India-born tech honcho has been named as a possible choice to fill in Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s shoes. Reports from the blog Silicon Angle confirm that many close to the hiring team consider Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Google Apps, the top external candidate in line for the job, with negotiations already on. Pichai was in the spotlight after the team he led managed to add the Android mobile OS to Google’s portfolio. It will be interesting to see how this plays out since Google  alledgedly once paid Pichai close to $50 million to turn down an offer from Twitter and continue with the search engine behemoth. The story comes after news broke last week that Microsoft’s own Satya Nadella was slated to take over as the Washington-based tech giant’s new chief. Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992, is executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group, responsible for building and running the company’s computing platforms, developer tools and cloud services. Nadella earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from India and graduated from Mangalore University and the Manipal Institute of Technology. He also has a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago. Pichai followed a similar path, with a degree and silver medal from IIT-Kharagpur, a master’s in engineering and material science from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business where he was named a Siebel Scholar.