I will always remember him as the guy who would willingly collude with other mentees of Bill Campbell to not hire engineers from each others companies. Willingly trying to keep the salaries of engineers low is pure evil. They even tried to rope-in Zuckerberg into this gentleman's agreement. Zuck asked them to buzz off. When Eric is involved in shady practices like these, how do all other leaders on twitterverse who are singing his praises justify their pandering. I wonder if Eric would have survived now as a Google CEO. Half the company would walk out today, if they came to know Sundar is in bed with his other CEO buddies and has agreements not to poach employees from each other's companies.
Conveniently you (and everyone else who quotes that line) left out the following part.
"But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And [...] we’re all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."
His whole point is to NOT use their services because they are bound by law to turn over that kind of data. Not to shame you.
Because every CEO is saying "it's okay that privacy is gone! It's no big deal!" I know that one day I'm suddenly going to feel the consequences of their policies and learn by experience that privacy was a big deal after all.
> Eric Schmidt was the anti-privacy leader who dismissed privacy concerns.
Well, he did understand how to turn the customers data into a product. He is one of the key persons who formed the whole data economy thing; that's quite a big deal - he formulated the way of making money for the 21st century.
Once upon a time money was in producing stuff, now stuff and people are so much varied so that the main problem is that of pushing adds. This is the way that this age got the tool to keep it going...
Of course the system has its bugs that can be called 'features'
This 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 just another corporation.
Though maybe that's just what growth does in general.
EDIT: I singled out Larry Page before, but that's a bit skewed, given that he founded Google and was its CEO for the first few years.
The other big thing was Larry pushed social on the company without really understanding social as a product, and was absolutely unable to handle the huge negative response both internally and externally to that push. This all happened at the same time Microsoft and Amazon committed to Cloud (which Google has only tepidly adopted).
The one time I met with Schmidt to explain my cloud project, he was delighted and encouraging and helped shape the design in a way that made it much more effective. He was a very effective leader (although not everybody agrees- some people think he's an arrogant asshole).
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.
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.
Had nothing to do with Schmidt, it was all timing. Google was young, new & hungry. Conquering and not defending. Google is grown in a new phase, relaxed and now having to play defense to all the new unicorns wanting a piece of her pie.
Larry hasn't been the Google CEO for some time now. I do think the company got caught up in incremental goals and internal PC struggles during Sundar's time, making it feel like yet another large company rather than a powerful disruptor it used to be.
He also wrote this, to make it clear that he knew he was doing wrong: [let's share this with competitors] "verbally, since I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?"
To me, the big story is not so much that he attempted it, or that he tried to cover it up, or that he got busted doing something totally illegal, or that he was never prosecuted criminally, or that the judge threw out the initial settlement for being hilariously low, or that the revised settlement was still a small fraction of the billions estimated that the conspirators cheated away from staff...
It is that all of this happened, was well documented and publicly reported... and Google’s board did absolutely nothing. He continued in high ranking positions there for another ~decade. They sent a clear message that they find this sort of criminal conspiracy to be A-OK, nothing worth firing the guy over, or indeed reprimanding him in any meaningful way whatsoever.
To me that’s a bigger story than the Andy Rubin thing.
"No poaching" is underselling it. It was wage fixing plain and simple.
He was also the one who, with a straight face, said "if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to fear" in response to widespread surveillance. Of course, he would not then open himself up to any scrutiny.
"After over 18 years on the Board, Eric Schmidt is not seeking re-election at the expiration of his current term on June 19, 2019. He will continue as a technical advisor to Alphabet. Eric has served as a member of the Board since March 2001. He was Google’s Chief Executive Officer from July 2001 to April 2011, and its Executive Chairman from April 2011 until January 2018."
I'll remember Eric Schmidt for sabotaging XMPP progress by saying something along the lines of "no one wants to support IM federation, so we should follow suit" and killing off Google Talk (which caused me to lose most of my IM contacts at that time).
About that - Facebook was leaching off Google's network graph by allowing cross-platform chats (initiated from Fb), but Google couldn't access Fb users from GTalk. IMO, it's a perfectly reasonable response in terms of game theory; the best course of action when the other party defects in a Prisoner's Dilemma scenario is to also defect.
I'm starting to read "When Google Met WikiLeaks" by Assange. In this book Schmidt is the villain. It will be nice to match Assange's point of view with all the eulogies that we will read about Schmidt now.
Does 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.
I was there for both the end of the Eric era and the beginning of the second Larry era. I liked Eric - he was an engineer at heart, but he also was effective at making decisions, listened well, and was able to defer to subordinates when they had better ideas. Much of Google's strength came because he tolerated Larry & Sergey running around sponsoring talented engineering teams to work on crazy projects without his knowledge, which must've been challenging as a leader but was ultimately a great thing for Google.
I left Google years ago and have a few crazy stories about Eric, but it might be still too early for some of them.
He was very approachable and understood well the technology that we were building. Most of my colleagues seemed to like him, too. He wasn't the money guy at the top of the org chart that doesn't understand his own products. That was even clearer when I talked to him in person once, after a company-wide meeting. He wasn't in a rush to get away from us plebeians, either.
Someone next to me made a comment about surveillance and he replied along the lines of "You know, I grew up in the Hoover days", explaining that he had seen the potential for abuse of power or personal information since a young age and that he held that as something to keep in mind or avoid when making strategic decisions.
I found Eric extremely impressive as a CEO. He always spoke with eloquence and charisma and generally seemed to have the answers and explanations when pressed.
Hard to compare Eric and Larry as CEOs because they both led at very different times in the company’s history, each with their own unique set of challenges.
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.
"-- Google Inc.'s top three executives agreed in 2004 to work together at the Internet search and advertising giant for at least 20 years, a company spokesman confirmed on Wednesday."
I do hope that his notions about Google's place in society goes with him. The things he wrote in 'A New Digital Age' were terrifying. Simply because they made a great amount of money, he viewed Google as the clearest guide for societies future. He advocated for Google taking an active role in attempting to shape social thinking. That might sound good to some, but I know too much history to be willing to support it. The unintended consequences that come from any attempted society-wide engineering are universally horrific.
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.
He's lucky he ruled when he did. Nowadays he'd have been exposed and destroyed for his sexual harrassment (which is why he stepped down originally) and other horrible behavior.
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?
Better late than never, but the main question is who are left behind and do they have the same mindset as Eric. He is the virus that has multiplied well. Just another member in the club of Gates, Ellison, Ballmer, Jobs, Zuckerberg & more.
Question is, can we undo the damage done. In 2019 lingo, reverse the Thanos snap. Not sure of Sundar but I still hope that Google twins might do the right thing.
Google is an internet monopoly with data and information. I think the only reason they've come this far without being exposed as such was cooperating with the government (learning from Microsoft's mistakes when they were exposed)
[+] [-] basetop|6 years ago|reply
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid...
Keep in mind this is the same guy who blackballed CNET reporters for finding personal information on him through google search.
https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/
The guy represents every wrong with tech. Privacy for him, but none for thee. And that's not even including on his shady ties to government.
[+] [-] throwaway6497|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icelancer|6 years ago|reply
"But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And [...] we’re all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."
His whole point is to NOT use their services because they are bound by law to turn over that kind of data. Not to shame you.
[+] [-] jeffdavis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitL|6 years ago|reply
https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/
This stuff was going on for a long time, FAANG just perfected it.
[+] [-] lostlogin|6 years ago|reply
You mean anti-privacy I think? It took me way too long to get there.
[+] [-] ErotemeObelus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrhappyunhappy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelMoser123|6 years ago|reply
Well, he did understand how to turn the customers data into a product. He is one of the key persons who formed the whole data economy thing; that's quite a big deal - he formulated the way of making money for the 21st century.
Once upon a time money was in producing stuff, now stuff and people are so much varied so that the main problem is that of pushing adds. This is the way that this age got the tool to keep it going...
Of course the system has its bugs that can be called 'features'
[+] [-] StreamBright|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anyfoo|6 years ago|reply
Though maybe that's just what growth does in general.
EDIT: I singled out Larry Page before, but that's a bit skewed, given that he founded Google and was its CEO for the first few years.
[+] [-] dekhn|6 years ago|reply
The one time I met with Schmidt to explain my cloud project, he was delighted and encouraging and helped shape the design in a way that made it much more effective. He was a very effective leader (although not everybody agrees- some people think he's an arrogant asshole).
[+] [-] nostrademons|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] amyjess|6 years ago|reply
This was their response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14540332
It's well worth a read.
[+] [-] scarface74|6 years ago|reply
From a business side, they really haven’t done too much.
[+] [-] fyoving|6 years ago|reply
What's with the persistent narrative of google not being "just another company" and then (sadly?) becoming one? that's some fairytale nonsense.
[+] [-] innocentoldguy|6 years ago|reply
I liked Google as a company a lot better during Schmidt's tenure as well. Best of luck to him in his next role.
[+] [-] sidcool|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] segmondy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zavi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FartyMcFarter|6 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Role_in_illegal...
He also wrote this, to make it clear that he knew he was doing wrong: [let's share this with competitors] "verbally, since I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?"
[+] [-] sneak|6 years ago|reply
It is that all of this happened, was well documented and publicly reported... and Google’s board did absolutely nothing. He continued in high ranking positions there for another ~decade. They sent a clear message that they find this sort of criminal conspiracy to be A-OK, nothing worth firing the guy over, or indeed reprimanding him in any meaningful way whatsoever.
To me that’s a bigger story than the Andy Rubin thing.
[+] [-] otakucode|6 years ago|reply
He was also the one who, with a straight face, said "if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to fear" in response to widespread surveillance. Of course, he would not then open himself up to any scrutiny.
[+] [-] bouncing|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azhenley|6 years ago|reply
From the press release: https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2019/0430/
[+] [-] shmerl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sangnoir|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neves|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krm01|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostrademons|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puzzle|6 years ago|reply
He was very approachable and understood well the technology that we were building. Most of my colleagues seemed to like him, too. He wasn't the money guy at the top of the org chart that doesn't understand his own products. That was even clearer when I talked to him in person once, after a company-wide meeting. He wasn't in a rush to get away from us plebeians, either.
Someone next to me made a comment about surveillance and he replied along the lines of "You know, I grew up in the Hoover days", explaining that he had seen the potential for abuse of power or personal information since a young age and that he held that as something to keep in mind or avoid when making strategic decisions.
[+] [-] enneff|6 years ago|reply
Hard to compare Eric and Larry as CEOs because they both led at very different times in the company’s history, each with their own unique set of challenges.
[+] [-] dekhn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cloudwalking|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inlined|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shutton|6 years ago|reply
I’d never heard of Bill Campbell before, seems like he was a huge influence around Silicon Valley.
https://tim.blog/guest/eric-schmidt/
[+] [-] jaybuff|6 years ago|reply
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120172640635329643.html
[+] [-] otakucode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] behnamoh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danity|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JetSpiegel|6 years ago|reply
Is Google wasting all their resources creating dozens of incompatible chat apps, but no blogging platform?
[+] [-] tschwimmer|6 years ago|reply
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropping_the_Pilot
[+] [-] ergothus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srndh|6 years ago|reply
Question is, can we undo the damage done. In 2019 lingo, reverse the Thanos snap. Not sure of Sundar but I still hope that Google twins might do the right thing.
[+] [-] Animats|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azhenley|6 years ago|reply
Press release: https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2019/0430/
[+] [-] meh206|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zer0faith|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] StreamBright|6 years ago|reply