CEO Sundar Pichai talks about Google and Apple's unusual cooperation in fighting the new coronavirus

Sundar Pichai , CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, appeared as a guest on The Vergecast, a podcast distributed by the IT news site

Google and Apple are rivals in the mobile operating systems Android and iOS, but they are collaborating to develop a tracking app to combat the new coronavirus.

According to Pichai, the collaboration was initiated when he and Apple CEO Tim Cook both recognized the problem and felt that something had to be done. Since then, they have been meeting with public health organizations around the world multiple times a week.

In normal times, such joint efforts would take time, but this time, because it is an urgent matter and it is necessary to interact responsibly with many social institutions, they decided to 'announce it sooner rather than later.' From the beginning, the two CEOs shared the vision of 'revealing everything in detail.'

In addition to its subsidiary Google, Alphabet's medical science company Verily is also working on COVID-19 countermeasures. When asked about the relationship between the two companies, Pichai said, 'Sometimes Google works on healthcare, and sometimes Verily works on it. If we share resources where necessary, Google may have an AI breakthrough, and Verily may commercialize it.' He also said that it's good that they are structurally separated, because they can divide roles so that the other side can handle areas that are outside of the areas that each side should be doing.

He was also asked about the Pixel smartphone business, to which he replied that while the high-end segment is necessary for the 'evolution of computing' to advance, the company is investing heavily in it, and entry-level models are also important for the 'Android ecosystem,' so the company is working with the industry to move the business forward.