Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google's parent company Alphabet, has a packed audience in front of him at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, Calif. He's doing his best to play the role of the new-school tech company head pioneered by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: a bit of a pop icon, a bit of a church preacher communicating God's will, only no longer through songs or sermons, but through software and silicon. Unfortunately, the soft-spoken, introverted Pichai is not naturally well suited to this role. Somehow the atmosphere of his speech was more like a high school musical, without the warmth of a Hollywood theater.