Earlier quoted context omitted.
What decisions made by Eric Schmidt would you consider "bad"?
Leading a decade of mediocre home-grown products (save for Gmail)? EDIT: Name one hit Google product Schmidt oversaw (again, save for Gmail) that wasn't an acquisition. This is supposed to be a company of innovation. EDIT 2: I regret the use of mediocre. I'm sure the technology, like everything that comes out of Google, was top notch. Certain products though, like Buzz, Wave, and TV, and the bizarrely bifurcated-from…
While we have yet to see the effects of ChromeOS, its release will no doubt be massively disruptive, and the ability to recognize the different functionality both operating systems serve and launch both consecutively despite the fact that it looks like a very odd play to the naive masses, takes balls and isn't something I would say ANY other company even a twentieth the size of Google would attempt, and I predict this will pay off in the end.
I also disagree that Wave, TV and Buzz lacked discipline and oversight. Not everything a company can do is going to be a revolutionary success. A lot of times markets just need to be probed or explored, and if there's a hit great but if not there's no huge loss of resources and returns will still be made in some form or another (eg. wave code being reused in Docs or buzz maybe showing up as part of another social product in the future). For Google TV in particular, it really hasn't been outperformed significantly by competitors, and really the world just isn't ready for that type of media. But when it is Google will be there.
I mean, I don't know Shcmidt's exact role in all these products but sometimes I think people are too quick to dismiss the Google products that don't live up to the expectations of Gmail, Maps, etc, when really they are minuscule investments by the company among many others, and even if one in ten is the next Gmail then that's a damn solid business model.