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Here’s Sundar Pichai chilling with the creator of Flappy Bird

Here’s Sundar Pichai chilling with the creator of Flappy Bird

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In an unorthodox meeting of the minds, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen met today in Hanoi, Vietnam. Pichai, who assumed the role of chief executive in October following the company's restructuring as Alphabet Inc., tweeted about meeting the game maker, noting that great developers can come from anywhere in the world. Nguyen considered it an honor to meet the "CEO of the most powerful internet company."

Nguyen became an international celebrity of sorts when Flappy Bird, a devilishly simple yet difficult mobile game, took off in popularity in February 2014 months after its initial release. However, the swell of attention was overwhelming, and Nguyen found the intense scrutiny and criticism of his game's addictive properties good enough reasons to pull Flappy Bird from mobile app stores. The developer has since focused on making other games like Swing Copters 2, which was released just last week, with his six-person team at DotGears Studios.

It's unclear what the nature of the meeting was. Pichai can be seen having an animated discussion with Nguyen over drinks while both sat atop bright colored chairs with a busy Hanoi street in the background. So they could be discussing the state of global entrepreneurship in the mobile age, but if we had a chance to meet Nguyen, we'd surely ask for some tips for scoring higher than three points in Swing Copters 2.