For people who have had secure jobs in Government all their life, where positional authority is not distinguished from influence & power, the achievement of Sundar will not mean much. His rise to top position at 43 (yes, it is the top position, one that matters to the investors and board of directors most) is a testimonial to Google's culture.
I have several friends who work at Google. It is very difficult to get into the company in the first place. Not only product results matter but results driven by categoric financial metrics matter for anyone in leadership role.
Often as part of succession plans large numbers of people are identified and groomed with successively complex assignments in most corporations.
Handing over the running of a 40+ billion dollar company is not a small thing. Usually the founders do not always make good CEOs. That is why during any acquisition, or when serious investors get involved the original team that created a product is moved aside to CTO and other such roles.
The metrics that one is held accountable is extraordinarily tough. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft had to leave after bad financial performance.
Sundar recently opened a worldwide IO conference with 2 million people in attendance from all over the world using Live stream to link people across the world.
The key products he directly managed, led and held accountable for financial results have reached billion plus users in each of the cases within a short time frame.
That kind of results is his source of power.
You can hear his vision in this youtube segment at least the first 10 minutes,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V-fIGMDsmE
He becomes a role model for large number of people in the world including Indians, and South Indians
