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Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

googleblog.blogspot.com

71–80 of 160 posts

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#71
post #5

Leaders of the two major players, Apple and Google, are taking a back seat now at the same time. It'll be an interesting watch from here

The difference is that Google will be run by a founder (again). That's not the case with Apple, where no matter how its spun, Jobs leave is generally perceived as a negative. Given the way the Apple announcement was handled, it would not surprise me if their timing was in part to steal Google's thunder.

That gives me a great idea. Woz for CEO!

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#72
post #67
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just think it's funny that they probably wanted Sergey to pick a standard big company management title for the press release, like "President of Products" or similar. He went with "Co-Founder".

Any standard big-company management title other than "CEO" or "Chairman of the Board" is beneath CEO level. "Co-founder" makes it clear what his position is: power without any official duties. Pretty sweet deal.

Yeah..that was my point...I'll stop talking about this now :-)

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#73
post #37
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on the other side of the coin, this makes it a bit harder for Good Czar Larry to hide behind nasty old Eric Schmidt whenever Google does something inept or morally questionable.

well maybe that's the point?

I'm reminded of the quote "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.".

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#74
post #57

Me thinks Eric Schmidt will replace Steve Jobs (for now) to restore confidence in Apple when Steve steps down.

He's not leaving Google, or at least there's no indication that's the case. They're just refocusing on their strengths. Also, why on Earth would Jobs want that? That'd be like grooming Gates to take over for him when Scully fired him.

Jobs will find a product guy to take over, and that's not Schmidt.

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#75

No mention if he keeps his role of Chief Dismisser of Privacy Concerns

This meme is based on a few isolated and misinterpreted quotations. Let's take an earnings call, where we would expect him to be showing his true colors as someone who purportedly doesn't care about privacy:

Q: How does Google think generally about leveraging user data, both to better target ads and how to stay competitive with those like Facebook and Microsoft and Yahoo that are leveraging data possibly more so than what Google is today? And I think this is particularly relevant for using search data for your display business but, would love to get your thoughts on that.

Eric Schmidt: "We have a pretty strong opinion that we're not going to do very much of it. The reason is that we take our end-user data privacy incredibly seriously and the trust that people have with respect to giving us that information, both their search histories as well as other pieces of information, they get very upset, very, very quickly if we, in their view, misuse it.

"So, what we typically tell people is we're not going to do the kinds of things that you could do with this, in particular use it to generate sort of strange ads against your history and things like that, without your explicit permission. And we probably, in many cases, won't do it forever."

--Q3 2010 Earnings Call, October 14, 2010 http://www.123jump.com/earnings-calls/Google-Q3-Earnings-Cal...

This kind of quotation doesn't get press, but it's essential if you really want to get a balanced picture of what Eric says about privacy.

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#76
post #37
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on the other side of the coin, this makes it a bit harder for Good Czar Larry to hide behind nasty old Eric Schmidt whenever Google does something inept or morally questionable.

well maybe that's the point?

yup -- there's a thin line between "Don't be evil" and "Do good"

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#78
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Google will be run by a founder (again). That's not the case with Apple, where no matter how its spun, Jobs leave is generally perceived as a negative. Given the way the Apple announcement was handled, it would not surprise me if their timing was in part to steal Google's thunder.

That gives me a great idea. Woz for CEO!

I doubt that Woz will be interested in that.

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#79

Larry becoming CEO sounds like the same path that Bill Gates had. Found a company and become it's CEO. When it's time for the company to "grow up", bring in a well respected CEO who can structure the company for growth and stability while teaching the young founder. When the founder has learned the ropes he takes over again as CEO.

Gates was CEO from the beginning of Microsoft until he became Chief Software Architect prior to his retirement. Ballmer became CEO after Gates. There was never a gap between founding and CSA where someone else was CEO of MS.

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#80
post #34
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What decisions made by Eric Schmidt would you consider "bad"?

I don't know about bad business decisions, but he certainly had a bad year for putting his foot in his mouth. And there's certainly no shortage of unpopular, not-classically-Google-like decisions (though thoroughly defensible business-wise) in the recent past: Buzz Privacy, StreetView WiFi debacle, Net Neutrality reversal, the WebM reversal, the Scan-First-Ask-Later library project and settlement process, etc. If we…

"the Scan-First-Ask-Later library project and settlement process" that move was pure genius in my book. Evil genius maybe but asking for permission in these type of things leads to stalemate. Google to a huge risk but a calculated one. I think it's defensible more than just business-wise. At the end of the day, publishers have always tried to put sticks in the wheels of anything new in the book world. Google's move is good for man kind in a way and I think it was also helpful to groups like the Internet Archive.
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