Large companies can be often be mired with bureaucracy, with small changes taking months to be implemented, but Google seems to do things differently.
Google has implemented a feature for all its users worldwide after Stripe co-founder John Collison had suggested it to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on X. “@sundarpichai Could we get Ctrl-click on Google Calendar to duplicate events, like many native calendar applications have?” Collison had said on X on 6th July.
Now Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai presumably gets tagged in hundreds of such posts a day ranging from people complaining about account difficulties to giving suggestions to improve one of its many services. Pichai didn’t seem to respond to Collison’s post immediately. But today, nearly five weeks after the original post, Pichai responded with an update. “This feature is now live for everyone on Google Calendar on the web – thanks for the suggestion!” Pichai simply said.
It turned out that Pichai hadn’t only seen Collison’s post, but agreed with the idea and sent it across to the relevant team. The team quickly got together, implemented the feature, and after the requisite testing, implemented it for billions of Google Calendar users in five weeks. Even Collison was impressed with the outcome. “Wow, Google shipped a super speedy improvement to duplicating events in Google Calendar. Thank you @sundarpichai!” he posted on X.
This isn’t the first time that Sundar Pichai has been quick to react to feedback on X. Earlier this year, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo had said that Google Meet had issues with its noise cancelling. Just 25 minutes after his post, Pichai had responded, saying that he personally hadn’t experienced with D’Angelo was describing, but he’d get it looked at. The Quora CEO had immediately thanked Pichai for the response and his help. Some other top CEOs seem to follow social media for feedback too — in 2017, Elon Musk had received a product suggestion on Twitter, and Tesla had implemented it 6 days later. Modern CEOs don’t only strategize, lead their troops and outthink their competitors — they best ones seem to have their ear close to the ground for product feedback as well.