Google's CEO Sundar Pichai nearly doubled his total compensation for 2016 to $200 million. Pichai drew a salary of $650,000 in 2016, which is slightly less than his $652,500 salary for 2015.
On the other hand, both Sergey Brin and Larry Page collected a dollar as salary for their roles as President and CEO of the parent company Alphabet, respectively. For the unfamiliar, the two cofounders requested that their salary be reduced to $1 from 2004. However, both Brin and Page are worth over $40 billion through their stock holdings.
Pichai's Google Haul
Although Pichai earned a marginally less salary in 2016, the Google CEO received $198.7 million as stock award. This is roughly double of his 2015 stock award, which was previously $99.8 million.
The stock award made the Google CEO's 2016 compensation a whopping $199.7 million. This figure is roughly the double of the $100.6 million he earned in 2015.
Pichai's compensation hike is justified if one takes into consideration Google's 2016 performance. In 2016, with Pichai at the helm, Google's sales experienced a 22.5 percent rise. Moreover, its net income increased 19 percent and Google maintained its numero uno position as the top-seller of internet advertising.
Pay Rise For Greene
Apart from Pichai, another Google employee saw a rise in her compensation. The total compensation for Diane Greene, Senior Vice President of Google's cloud operations, was $43.7 million in 2016. Most of the rise is be credited to two stock awards worth $42.8 million.
The pay rise for Greene for 2016 was a sharp hike compared to her 2015 earnings, when she served as a director on the Alphabet board. In 2015, Greene's salary was $454,000 for the position of a board director. She was roped in for Google's operations in December 2015.
Alphabet's Performance And Pay Rises
In 2016, Google's parent company Alphabet underperformed in the broader stock market for tech stocks. The company saw a rise of 5 percent in its shares and the broad Nasdaq Composite Index increased 10 percent.
Despite the underperformance, Alphabet's CFO Ruth Porat received a pay rise in 2016. Alphabet poached Porat two years ago from Morgan Stanley, to bring in more fiscal discipline in Alphabet's operations. Porat's total compensation for 2016 was $39 million, an $8 million increase from 2015's $31 million.
On Thursday, April 27, the company announced its profit and sales figures for the first quarter of 2017. Alphabet's Q1 results topped Wall Street expectations and boosted the company's share prices to a record high.
