Somehow it's strange seeing these tech giants being handed over to a new generation. Microsoft has long been associated with Gates and Balmer, Steve's DNA still runs in Apple, and Google still reminds me of Schmidt. The newer generation of executives and board directors in these companies has a very difficult task to do: stick to the past or redefine the company for the future.
Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
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Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#12Dropping the Pilot? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropping_the_Pilot
I'm not well-enough versed in history to follow the analogy. Are you saying Schmidt is being asked to leave because of internal differences? Did Bismarck leaving have good/bad implications after the fact that you are alluding to here?
Bismarck was a whiz of foreign policy, who had successfully juggled the alliances surrounding the (relatively nascent by European standards) German state throughout his time as a diplomat and Chancellor.
His contemporary Hohenzollern monarch (Wilhelm's II predecessor) largely allowed Bismark to take free reign over diplomacy, recognizing him as a generational talent.
If Bismarck was an ideological juggler, capable of accepting political loss in the short-term to catch out his adversaries in the long-term, Wilhelm was a firebrand, who refused to play games with "the enemy" (especially the Russians), even if they benefited the long-term survival of his state and person.
The cartoon shows Bismarck stepping off the ship, leaving Wilhelm to take over. While this is perhaps an unflattering characterization of Bismarck, it reflects that, even in 1890, it was known that Wilhelm would not be able to lead the nation better than this forcibly-retired titan of European diplomacy.
Bismarck probably could have stayed on the ship, because its sailors were largely aligned with him, but he was getting old (75 when he retired); and he tired of suffering the youth and ignorance of the not-so-subtle monarch. His most immediate, and unfortunate legacy was the black hole he left unfilled.
The aftermath was a complete lack of long-term thinking, that led to all the European countries (even Russia!! who had a hard time getting along with the UK/France in particular) agreeing to form alliances against Germany. It's quite reasonable to point to Bismarck's departure as the first big slip down the slippery slope that led to WWI.
Compare this to Eric Schmidt leaving Google (filled with young Wilhelm IIs?) how you will.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#13This is of course extremely subjective, and I have no knowledge of what Google was and is on the inside except for a short internship almost 10 years ago: I somehow always felt that Google with Eric Schmidt as a CEO was a much different Google than later on. Under Eric Schmidt, Google seemed like this extremely innovative company with the brightest minds in the industry. Afterwards, it seemed to instead grow into jus…
Remember that Larry was CEO twice: 1998-2001 and 2011-2015. During the first period Google was exceptionally innovative. During the second, Google attempted to be exceptionally innovative but largely fell flat on its face.
I'd blame size and market position more. Google was left as one of very few profitable giants standing when the dot-com crash hit, and yet they were young enough to not have the institutional inertia of Amazon, E-bay, and Yahoo. That left them exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on the Internet's deployment phase, where the technology got good enough and widespread enough to really build huge businesses off it. They managed to own the next platform (mobile) but were too large, slow, and entrenched to really understand the implications of it, and they're not even attempting to play in the cryptoverse.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#14Does anyone inside Google care to share how Eric is perceived among fellow engineers?. From the outside, it seems many of the great innovations came when he wS CEO and Larry + Sergey were building the company culture.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#15This is of course extremely subjective, and I have no knowledge of what Google was and is on the inside except for a short internship almost 10 years ago: I somehow always felt that Google with Eric Schmidt as a CEO was a much different Google than later on. Under Eric Schmidt, Google seemed like this extremely innovative company with the brightest minds in the industry. Afterwards, it seemed to instead grow into jus…
Remember that Larry was CEO twice: 1998-2001 and 2011-2015. During the first period Google was exceptionally innovative. During the second, Google attempted to be exceptionally innovative but largely fell flat on its face. I'd blame size and market position more. Google was left as one of very few profitable giants standing when the dot-com crash hit, and yet they were young enough to not have the institutional inert…
> cryptoverse
What exactly is this and what business is doing well in it?
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#16Somehow it's strange seeing these tech giants being handed over to a new generation. Microsoft has long been associated with Gates and Balmer, Steve's DNA still runs in Apple, and Google still reminds me of Schmidt. The newer generation of executives and board directors in these companies has a very difficult task to do: stick to the past or redefine the company for the future.
Steve Jobs of course famously left Apple (not on the friendliest of terms), then returned several years later to "redefine the company for the future" (very successfully of course). His return marked a major new period for Apple, with major changes in direction and execution.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#17This is of course extremely subjective, and I have no knowledge of what Google was and is on the inside except for a short internship almost 10 years ago: I somehow always felt that Google with Eric Schmidt as a CEO was a much different Google than later on. Under Eric Schmidt, Google seemed like this extremely innovative company with the brightest minds in the industry. Afterwards, it seemed to instead grow into jus…
I worked at Novell while Eric Schmidt was the CEO. I thought he was a great leader and enjoyed working at Novell while he lead the company; in spite of the fact that my direct boss was an oversized tube of ass paste.
I liked Google as a company a lot better during Schmidt's tenure as well. Best of luck to him in his next role.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not well-enough versed in history to follow the analogy. Are you saying Schmidt is being asked to leave because of internal differences? Did Bismarck leaving have good/bad implications after the fact that you are alluding to here?
Bismarck was a whiz of foreign policy, who had successfully juggled the alliances surrounding the (relatively nascent by European standards) German state throughout his time as a diplomat and Chancellor. His contemporary Hohenzollern monarch (Wilhelm's II predecessor) largely allowed Bismark to take free reign over diplomacy, recognizing him as a generational talent. If Bismarck was an ideological juggler, capable of…
Curious who the analogous Wilhelm II is in Google today? Sundar is not one - Sundar is actually very diplomatic and strategically-minded, which is how he ended up CEO of Google in the first place (he managed to avoid all the political struggles common to Google's SVPs at the time, such that he became the obvious successor when they all left to run VCs / got fired for sexual harassment / became top brass at Yahoo/Softbank/Twitter). If anything, Larry was the Wilhelm II who picked fights with a lot of big up-and-comers, but even he was pretty restrained and strategic about it.
Google's problem now is that anything smaller than a billion-dollar business is not on their radar screen, which means that by definition they are going to miss the next growth industry. And they don't really have anyone in the company who can do anything about that, because you don't go to Google because you want to work on the small problem that might become big, you go to Google because you want to work on big problems.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#19Does anyone inside Google care to share how Eric is perceived among fellow engineers?. From the outside, it seems many of the great innovations came when he wS CEO and Larry + Sergey were building the company culture.
it's kind of a bimodal distribution. many engineers hated him with a passion but then they would learn he wrote lex and set up early networks at Berkeley and kind of come around to the idea that he was a very successful technobusinessman who confronted Microsoft repeatedly.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not well-enough versed in history to follow the analogy. Are you saying Schmidt is being asked to leave because of internal differences? Did Bismarck leaving have good/bad implications after the fact that you are alluding to here?
Oh, Bismarck leaving only led to WWI, no big issues otherwise ;)
I've never understood why Bismarck doesn't get more blame for creating a system of alliances that could only be safely operated by himself.