Google CEO Sundar Pichai describes one of the company’s new Android Nexus smart phones in 2014. Alistair Barr for The Wall Street Journal 
 
 Alphabet Inc. granted Sundar Pichai, chief executive of the company’s main Google business, an equity award valued at nearly $200 million, making him one of the world’s highest-paid executives. 
 
 In a securities filing Friday, Alphabet said it awarded Mr. Pichai 273,328 Class C Google stock units on Feb. 3. At that time, the grant was valued at $199 million, though subsequent declines in Alphabet shares put the current value at about $182 million. 
 
 The new award vests in quarterly increments over the next four years as long as Mr. Pichai is employed by Alphabet. 
 
 The grant lifts the value of Mr. Pichai’s equity stake in Alphabet to more than $600 million. That is still well below the stakes held by co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt, Alphabet’s executive chairman, who was hired several years after the company started. 
 
 However, the award is one of the largest by a U.S. company. In 2011 Apple Inc. awarded Tim Cook a grant valued at about $376 million when he was named chief executive, succeeding co-founder Steve Jobs. 
 
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 For breaking news, features and analysis from India, follow WSJ India on Facebook. ||||| Pichai received 273,328 shares, company filing shows, bringing his holdings in Alphabet to $650m – still far less than the net worth of Google’s founders 
 
 The boss of Google, Sundar Pichai, has been awarded $199m (£138m) worth of shares, making him the highest paid chief executive in the US. 
 
 
 
 Pichai, who became Google’s CEO in October following its reorganisation into holding company Alphabet, was handed 273,328 shares, according to a company filing, worth $199m when they were awarded. 
 
 The new shares takes the value of Pichai’s Alphabet holdings to roughly $650m – or 14,440 times the $45,000 median net worth of US citizens as calculated by Credit Suisse. 
 
 But it is still far short of the fortunes made by Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are worth $34.6bn and $33.9bn according to Forbes. It is also a lot less than Google’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt, who holds shares worth $3bn. 
 
 Sundar Pichai: Google's rising star reaches the top (like his teacher said he would) Read more 
 
 Pichai’s award is worth more than the £130m ($187m) Google has grudgingly agreed to pay the UK government in back taxes since 2005. Critics of the controversial tax deal have calculated that Google generated sales of £24bn ($34.6bn) in the UK between 2005 and 2014 on which it has reported profit margins of between 25% and 30%, which works out an estimated profit of about £7.2bn ($10.4bn). As it already agreed to pay about £70m ($101m) in addition to the £130m ($187m) settlement, Google’s effective tax rate is between 2% and 3%, compared to the UK’s 20% headline corporation tax rate. 
 
 Pincai celebrated his award, which will vest in quarterly increments until 2019, by watching the Super Bowl and meeting NFL legend Ronnie Lott. 
 
 
 
 sundarpichai (@sundarpichai) Great game, even more so meeting a true NFL legend Ronnie Lott #SB50 pic.twitter.com/pUPjBsbYEh 
 
 Pichai, 43, was not the only Google executive given a big payday. Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s chief financial officer, was handed shares worth about $38m. That is on top of the $30m signing bonus she was given to lure her away from Morgan Stanley last year. 
 
 Diane Greene, who has been head of Google’s cloud computing business since November, was awarded shares worth $42.8m. This was on top of $148m worth she was granted last year following Google’s takeover of Bebop Technologies, a tech company she founded. ||||| Shira Ovide is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. She previously was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Read more opinion LISTEN TO ARTICLE 2:48 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email 
 
 Photographer: Marlene Awaad/Bloomberg Photographer: Marlene Awaad/Bloomberg 
 
 One of the trendsetters of "adult supervision" in the technology industry is now out of the picture. It's too bad. Today's tech startups could certainly use more adults. 
 
 Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc., said on Thursday that he would step down from that role. He will stay on Alphabet's board of directors and become a technical adviser to the company. 
 
 It's hard to overstate Schmidt's role in the maturation of Google and how he helped shape leadership practices in Silicon Valley. In 2001, the longtime technology industry executive was hired to serve as a guiding hand for a company founded by two twentysomethings with little corporate experience. 
 
 In an interview at the time, one of those whippersnappers, Sergey Brin, was asked why he and co-founder Larry Page needed someone else to run Google. "Parental supervision, to be honest," Brin replied. 
 
 Alphabet's Market Cap Gain Since Schmidt Left CEO Post $541 Billion 
 
 It was a quip that changed technology. It became accepted for companies to hire experienced CEOs to serve alongside or in place of young founders. Sometimes those hired guns were good for a company, as was the case with Jim Barksdale at Netscape Communications and Meg Whitman at eBay. Sometimes adult supervision fell short. Look up the track records of John Sculley and Gil Amelio at Apple. 
 
 Now, the pendulum seems to have swung to the opposite direction. Founder-CEOs are cool again in the tech industry. Page took the CEO job from Schmidt in 2011. Arguably the most respected and feared company in the industry, Amazon.com Inc., has been run from the beginning by its founder, Jeff Bezos, and it's hard to imagine the company without him. Ditto for Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. He made every founder-CEO think he or she was inevitably the best person to run the company. 
 
 But not everyone is Mark Zuckerberg. Uber Technologies Inc. booted its founder-CEO this year in favor of, well, an adult. Microsoft Corp. rediscovered its mojo after it hired its first CEO without connections to the company's founding. It might not be a bad thing if Evan Spiegel had a little less power at Snapchat. 
 
 Who Needs Adults? The market value of the company now called Alphabet has climbed more than $500 billion since Eric Schmidt stepped down as chief executive officer Source: Bloomberg 
 
 Google has done more than great since Schmidt stepped down as CEO. "Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!" he said when he left the corner office. Definitely not. The company's market value has climbed more than $500 billion -- that is not a typo -- since Schmidt stepped down as CEO in early 2011. In a way, Page is now the adult supervision to Google's chief executive officer, Sundar Pichai. 
 
 Google isn't in desperate need of more adults. But the rest of the technology industry might be. 
 
 This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
– Google's parent company appears to be satisfied with how Sundar Pichai has performed during his four months as Google CEO, judging by the gargantuan $199 million equity award revealed in a securities filing. Alphabet stated that Pichai was awarded 273,328 Class C Google stock units on Feb. 3, bringing his holdings to around $650 million, reports the Wall Street Journal. The award makes Pichai the highest-paid CEO in America, according to the Guardian, which notes that Pichai's fortune is dwarfed by those of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are worth around $34 billion each, and by that of previous CEO Eric Schmidt, who's sitting on around $3 billion. (A former Google employee was awarded exactly $6,006.13.)