Google’s Sundar Pichai has climbed the ranks at Google, and made waves when he became one of the most prolific individuals at the company when it comes to products. Pichai’s catalog of products he is on overwatch includes Android, maps, the technology behind advertisement, commerce, social, search and more.

In his first interview since becoming Google’s “product czar,” Forbes dug into several different categories in the sweeping in-depth look at what Google has done, will be doing, and where Pichai believes Google can do with innovation while it evolves its own products. It’s pretty clear that Pichai has a very clear goal for Google, and believes that, without a doubt, the company can achieve it:

Q: How has product development and vision at Google changed since you took charge of most product areas in October, and how is it going to change going forward?

A: Larry and I share overall goals. If you look back at Google search, it’s a product which worked for everyone in the world. It was very accessible and it was something which solved an important problem, that people used all the time. And it applies to billions of users. That’s the essence of what we get excited about – working on problems for people at scale, which make a big difference in [people’s] lives. A lot of my work is about making sure we continue to do that in our core products.

What’s interesting, is Pichai’s honesty regarding projects within his realm and that go through a “healthy pruning.” Not that it’s any surprise that Google looks at a lot of different projects, and decides to skip some, but considering how many Google actually announces, it would still be very interesting to see how many get shelved:

Q: Are there things in the portfolio that you want to jettison, that you don’t think Google needs?

A: When I used the word focused innovation, the word focused matters. We go through a healthy pruning. We constantly look at stuff and say, is it working well. But that’s not the main thing for where we are. I see a huge opportunity to innovate.“

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google+ has been seen as a two-part product for Google as a whole. The first is the product itself, but then there’s the more important aspect for the company itself, and that’s the log-in aspect of Google+ and the ability for users to use that one log-in to get from one product to another. Pichai says that part has worked really well for them as a whole:

“Q: The one thing that comes to mind is Google+. We haven’t seen a lot of new things there and many people outside of Google think it’s been a flop. What are the lessons you learned from it? What’s the future for it?

A: Google+ has always meant two things for us. There’s the stream in the product that you see. And for us, Google+ was also a way by which Google after many years, we made sure there’s common [login and] identity across our products. The second part was in many ways even more important than the first part. That part has worked really well for us. In terms of the stream itself, based on the stats we see, we have a passionate community of users. We would definitely like to see more scale at what we do. The team is working on a few next generation ideas. But to us these are two different things, and I don’t think we have always done a good job of explaining that.“

The rest of the interview is certainly interesting, especially considering its Pichai’s first since his new role was implemented, so take a look through the source link below.