Eric Schmidt Out, Larry Page In As Google CEO

jfruhlinger writes "Google surprised just about everybody at its earnings call by announcing that Eric Schmidt, who had served as company CEO for more than a decade, would be stepping down and that cofounder Larry Page would take over. Schmidt will stay on as chairman and provide 'technology thought leadership,' whatever that is. When Schmidt, an old Sun hand, joined Google in 2001, it was seen as a move to turn the scrappy upstart into a mature company; now on his Twitter feed Schmidt proclaims that his 'adult supervision' is no longer needed."

Comments

Re:Freaked out for a second

[spun]

I briefly confused Larry Page with Larry Ellison. Whew. That would be terrible.

How could you confuse a rock and roll guitar legend with a diminutive, bombastic sci-fi writer?

Beginning of the end?

[bigsexyjoe]

He says he doesn't need "adult supervision" anymore? Well the child is the worst to judge these things.

If Schmidt is such a good CEO, why change the setup? Page just thinks he'd be a better CEO because it is human nature to believe such things. I think this is an ego driven move and it could turn out very badly. At least they are keeping Schmidt on in a high level role.

Re:Beginning of the end?

[alvinrod]

The probably dropped him as CEO because he just comes off as creepy and not giving a damn about privacy; and this from the CEO of a company that's collecting information about everything and everyone. His insights and abilities are probably appreciated, but when he's in front of a camera he ends up saying something stupid that makes Google look evil. Here's an example from the WSJ. Here's another from the Atlantic. The crap he says makes him sound like someone who's Google's enemy and trying to scaremonger the public.

Re:Beginning of the end?

[Red Flayer]

Offtopic, I know, but re: your sig:

There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.

Obviously you have not had the pleasure of eating a Möbius pancake. Once you can figure out where the butter and syrup go, they are delicious.

Re:Beginning of the end?

[Lemmy Caution]

Those are the steps of a business trying to improve morale, not the steps of a business with high morale.

Re:Freaked out for a second

[Locke2005]

Jagger is the darker-skinned one with the wider nose.

Re:Freaked out for a second

[Lemmy Caution]

Thank you for the briefing, Ambassador Obvious of the Planet Literal.

Hopefully Schmidt's privacy ideas leave with him

[schwit1]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/google-mocked/

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

"I think that over time, on the internet, there will be less anonymity. And I actually think that's good"

Clearly threatened by a real competitor in search?

[rsborg]

DuckDuckGo :-)

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

In his defense it was a really cool remote controlled iCar.

Re:Hopefully Schmidt's privacy ideas leave with hi

[_Sprocket_]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/google-mocked/

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

What's more interesting is the next piece:

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.

Schmidt is telling us that Google is being served PATRIOT Act notices without breaking the law and telling us that they're being served. It's a pity everyone is hung up on the nothing-to-hide idiocy. Of course, it's little wonder we're missing the important pieces when served up ham-fisted attacks by the likes of Consumer Watchdog.