No, this is not a photo of Google CEO Sundar Pichai coming to India to vote in 2019 elections

This article is more than one year old.
Published on April 25, 2019 at 11:30
1 min read
By AFP India

A post that has been shared hundreds of times on social media contains a photo it claims shows Sundar Pichai, CEO of American tech giant Google, in India to cast his vote in ongoing Indian elections. The claim is false; the photograph is actually from 2017 when Pichai visited his former engineering college in an east Indian town.

Multiple posts, for example this one on Twitter and this one on Facebook which has been shared more than 1,600 times since it was published on April 18, 2019, share a photo that they claim shows Pichai in India to vote.

Here is an AFP report on India’s 2019 elections.

There is text across the top of the image saying: "Google CEO Sundar Pichai came all the way from USA to cast his vote. A great inspiring gesture from him."

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

Snapshot of the misleading post

But the photo was originally posted here on Pichai's verified Twitter account on January 7, 2017.

It shows him during a visit to his alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology in the city of Kharagpur in east India.

Pichai's tweet is embedded below:

Also got to visit my alma mater (and old dorm room!) for the first time in 23 years. Thanks to everyone @IITKgp for the warm welcome! pic.twitter.com/OUn7mlKGI7
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) January 7, 2017

Multiple local media groups covered Pichai’s January 5, 2017 visit to his former college in Kharagpur, for example here, here and here.

Google India on January 5, 2017, live streamed his conversation with students at his former college on their official YouTube channel.

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