In a move that has earned him widespread praise on social media, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has responded to a suggestion from Stripe co-founder John Collison, which has now resulted in a new feature being rolled out to Google Calendar users.
About a month ago, Collison casually tweeted a request, asking for a simple shortcut to duplicate events on Google Calendar. “Could we get Ctrl-click on Google Calendar to duplicate events, like many native calendar applications have?” he posted.
Pichai, in a direct and public response, announced that the feature is now live for everyone using Google Calendar on the web. “This feature is now live for everyone on Google Calendar on the web – thanks for the suggestion!” he wrote. The new shortcut allows users to hold down the Ctrl key (or Cmd on Mac) and drag an event to another time slot, instantly creating a copy. This significantly streamlines the process, which previously required multiple clicks through menus.
The interaction quickly went viral, with social media users commending Pichai for his hands-on approach to user feedback. Comments ranged from “Sundar Pichai is out here doing customer service. I love it” to lighthearted requests for other features.
This is not the first time Pichai has provided “customer support” on X. Earlier this year, he publicly responded to a complaint from Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo regarding the audio quality of Google Meet. After D’Angelo posted about his company switching back to Zoom due to issues with background noise cancellation and echoing, Pichai replied, “Hey Adam, will follow up offline as haven’t experienced this… we will debug to understand the root cause and fix. Thanks for flagging.”
This consistent engagement by Google’s CEO with prominent figures on social media highlights a unique blend of high-level leadership and direct customer service, further solidifying Pichai’s reputation for being accessible and responsive to user needs.