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Why Eric Schmidt Left As CEO of Google?
Edsj writes "According to The New Yorker: 'Schmidt, according to associates, lost some energy and focus after losing the China decision. At the same time, Google was becoming defensive. All of their social-network efforts had faltered. Facebook had replaced them as the hot tech company, the place vital engineers wanted to work. Complaints about Google bureaucracy intensified. Governments around the world were lobbing grenades at Google over privacy, copyright, and size issues. The “don’t be evil” brand was getting tarnished, and the founders were restive. Schmidt started to think of departing. Nudged by a board-member friend and an outside adviser that he had to re-energize himself, he decided after Labor Day that he could reboot. He couldn't.'"
So basically what they're saying is "Eric Schmidt is pro-evil".
You're killing me. The CEO of one of the most well known companies in the world steps down because he doesn't like the company motto and the new man at the top upholds "don't be evil". Hilarious. How do you come up with this stuff?
You heard it here first.
As far as I know the share structure of Google gives enough voting rights to the founders to retain absolute control even with a minority of the shares.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, mr. schit
sergey brin emigrated to the usa at age 6 from russia. it is my understanding his strong anti-censorship views comes from what his parents imparted on him from their experience in the totalitarian ussr
so good for you mr. brin, bless you. maybe google can be a force for good in this world and not a data abusing behemoth like facebook as long as you draw breath
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The reason google is looked upon by people as a great company and why every software guy wants to work there is their "don't be evil" policy! google gives ni ads to promote itself, yet it continues to be the most admired companies of our times! i think the decision for uncensored searches was awesome, and the fact that these guys don't give a shit about corporate bullshit is even awesomer!
A CEO getting butthurt over not following something in their company core values shouldn't be running that company. Not everything can be easily quantifiable by dollars and cents, but you can bet your ass that that corporate philosophy has made them money over the years. Schmidt is short sighted.
Why Eric Schmidt Left As CEO of Google?
...we must establish when he was supposed to leave. Only then can we begin to meaningfully speculate.
Otherwise, everything fronted here as the answer is just hearsay.
It will certainly boost the no-evil trust which started to bite Google a little I must say. Is it a master chess move or not?
Good move.
Why Slashdot doesn't know proper grammar?
or at least not clearly right. Context from TFA:
This doesn't mean that Schmidt wanted to move away from "don't be evil", he may have just been worn out from trying to uphold it for as large and diverse a company as Google is.
(I self-sensored the title) ... ...
ok I remember steve jobs leaving apple
maybe I should read the article, but what I get from comments so far is
Is it business as usual ? Business of the internet age ? (Google is one of the first big internet-based companies)
ranging from privacy abuses to wireless scandal. in his watch, google almost lost its reputation for dont be evil policy. this is further evidenced by his merry acceptance of censored search result serving in china. some justify that as 'trying to keep a diverse company up', but i call it lack of backbone. the very backbone, which carried google to prominence on the shoulders of people who liked the have-backbone policy.
it was high time he left.
Read radical news here
What's with all the class warfare on Slashdot today? Has someone declared the revolution open?
Two sides to every story -
I viewed the China censorship affair as a large corporation ignores a country's laws because it was powerful enough to be above the government.
I don't think that's a force for good at all, I think that it sets a very dangerous precedent.
Why lolcats added to headline proofreading department?
if you bring some creation to life, you better stand by it and watch it forever. if you hand it over to someone else, s/he may undo what your vision has done. someone else, is flatly, someone else. not you. noone can hold your vision stronger and clearer than you can.
i think this should be a good lesson for sergei and larry. and all of us tech upstarts.
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Schmidt probably wanted to build an empire by acquiring hot startups as quickly as possible, in the manner of most of Google's competitors (Apple is an outstanding exception). He's been around Silicon Valley long enough to see how quickly the landscape turns over a hot new platform. The other two want to do it in house "the right way". Briefly, Schmidt's way produces much better short term business results, but (lack of) product integration and multi-site bureaucracy become continuing burdens for the company. The in-house way is elegant and life-affirming, but only if you can ship the product that people want in a timely fashion AND anticipate or roll with changes in the industry.
10 years as CEO of a Fortune 500 company isn't a bad record. The average is 6.5 years. Schmidt leaves with Google much larger than when he started, profitable, and in good condition. He's done far better than the CEOs of most of the Fortune 500 in the last decade.
"Facebook had replaced them as the hot tech company, the place vital engineers wanted to work" :P
What?
He may figure that the Oracle lawsuit won't go so well, and either paying Oracle off or being forced to join OpenJDK won't do wonders for the Android business plan.
This space left intentionally blank.
In the corporate world there is such a thing as social responsibility. The bad thing is that most corporations can have a very skewed view of the world. Some corporations have social responsibility only as a word in their charter. This means they lie and don't hope to get caught. Then there is the corporations that have active tactics to avoid getting caught. For instance they sub-contract small companies to do manufacturing. And if there is a scandal, they just deny knowledge and fire the sub-contractor. Then there are the fascist, they have corporate responsibility to some charities that they deem to be important, usually some cheap face-value thing that only helps limited amounts of people. When it comes to paying taxes, those corporations think that they already supported a charity of their choice, so they think that paying taxes is excessive. They hide money in tax heavens too.
Then there are corporations who really live up to their responsibilities. They will have union representatives in their organization. They will have wages through the organization that does not make so much difference between the people who work there. They pay their taxes. They go green. They provide a unlimited expense health-care plan for all their employees. They stay out of the elections because they believe in democracy. They give a yearly contribution from their employees to charity instead of presents during holidays.
But, the quality-assurance is hard on these matters. There really should be independent third-parties making sure the companies live up to their promises. The goals are in place, everybody knows what they should be. But, the companies to guarantee such measures are not in place. And some companies would not be able to live up to ethical measures no matter how hard they try.
Schmidt, and most of the upper portion of Google management is evil. However, Google is not alone in its desire to own the world of information. Apple, M$, the US Gov, other governments... The real issue is where Schmidt and others like him will land when their time on this planet is over.
Part of the Obama administration, in the spring. You heard it here first, unless you already read John Dvorak's Second Opinion -- http://www.marketwatch.com/story/eric-schmidts-next-act-bodes-well-for-tech-2011-01-21 .
Wait for it; Schmidt will be named to his buddy Obama's "White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness", and it was thought best he not be GOOG CEO while doing so.
-=Maggie Leber=-
Even in death, his beachball spins forever.
Good night, sweet prince.
CALL -151
They, to paraphrase, "lose some energy and focus" when they do not get their way. Interesting way to put that.
From TFS: "Facebook had replaced them as the hot tech company, the place vital engineers wanted to work."
Could someone explain?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Google: Is struggling to offer profitable new products and is suffering of bit rot. Is stuck at 00's. Bing was the first product that got google by surprise and they had to catch-up to it. Also too slow on making changes. (see Gmail) Wastes too much energy on issues that are meaningless to it's average users. Needs to take some fresh air.
I'm not saying that Schmidt wasn't at fault, just that TFA didn't directly state that Schmidt was at fault (apart from the China searches) - it just sort of implied it.
Wait, so we can't change our posts but they can change the summaries!
YRO!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The real reason: He's going to run Apple after Jobs has to step down.
There is an interesting report going out on BBC News 24 at the moment about Putin's Russia.
It seems that the Russian people like an Autocrat. Remember that they had centuries under the Czars who were semi benevolant dictators.
Many Russians view Putin in the same light.
My other half is Russian and from a very rural community. All her family back in Russia prefer an oligarch/czar like figure in power. Their society is very different to the west and not enough people in thr west recognize that fact.
but isnt it implied ? he is the ceo after all. he is the one giving direction to the company, appointing and guiding key people who are making the policies. it is his making. what else a ceo does if not these, in the first place ?
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Leave Google to go work on PHP spaghetti code? Puhleese.
Maybe people have left Google, but show us the numbers. I highly doubt they went to FACEBOOK.
I'm a 2000 man.
Engineer and facebook are the last two words that I would EVER associate with one another.
Sigh. Not this shit again. Is China the evil villain now? I wasn't paying attention to Faux News. I am still at EyeRaan as the Axis of Evil chapter. In my non-American view, the US is the short, medium and long term threat to freedom in the world. The last global economic meltdown originated from there. The most Draconian laws (copyright, intellectual property laws, RIAA etc.) emanates from America. America can and did invade any country it likes on any pretense and get away with it. It can kidnap, imprison without trial and torture anyone regardless of nationality and get away with it. It has nuclear, chemical and biological weapon stockpiles that at any moment could fall into the hands of Sarah Palins and their ilk. It has mercenary fanatical soldiers who will carry out any order, even shooting civilians in cold blood. And worst of all, Americans still believe that they are the good guys. This belief is what scares me. Historically, China on the other hand had not much interest in the outside world other than the buffer zones around it. China want to become a world player but from what I have seen, it does not want to become the world police, judge and executioner.
"I believe that is what I said."
Consider the following (which is itself a simplification, but at least gives some idea of the range):
The article basically says "the China searches were argued, DBE was tarnished, some other stuff happened, he considered bailing", which taken by itself points somewhere in this range - but to get more specific than that, you have to draw on outside knowledge and read between the lines. The original submission made it out like the article was directly stating #3.
Looks like I've been trolled. Thanks for getting my hopes up.
Oh, look! Another moron who's never heard of a thing called a "monopoly".
Monopolies are answerable to the government in the country in which they reside. Furthermore, there is no monopoly that has the (legal) authority to put you in jail, confiscate your property, or terminate your life. I can live a free life without electricity or telephone service. Less convenient but quite doable.
Schmidt's rule: just change your name.
now, you have to connect the dots, for indeed, as you say, a few smokes coming out from different places do not mean there is a fire.
but,
in this case, all the items complement each other :
- google has engaged in serious privacy violations that even dwarf conventional wrongdoing by corporations. (private information scandal through wireless mapping for example)
- google has also been hinted to be cooperating with government sources
- on top of this, there is the question of censorship in china.
- schmidt was amiable to censorship in china, something that not only goes against the principles of DBE, but also even policies and laws of united states of america. yet he was content
connecting all the dots, we can easily say that schmidt either staged or approved these violations of DBE. EVEN if we go berserk and totally ignore that a CEOs job, is to set the policy or get the people who will set the policy. so, he was either grossly incompetent, or he did engage in violating DBE.
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There may be hundreds of Steve Jobs clones growing in labs right now as only he has the vision to be a total dick and also to recognize that the next cool thing will be. Think "Moon".
My guess is E. Schmidt is paying for Google's, and his, recent failures:
- being blindsided by FaceBook as "the" hot company
- Google Wave fiasco. This was a good technology, and probable a key component in displacing FBook, or getting more into the enterprise market.
- China fiasco.
- Google TV delays and failed launch.
- Android for tablets delay. It's been a year now !
- Chrome OS uncertainties
I'm looking for any thing actually exciting that Google has done recently... My take is: nothing much. And "execution" for what they did hasn't been compelling, either.
Plus, how come they're not a big cloud services provider ? Amazon ? really ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Governments have the power to deprive you of your life, liberty or property...literally.
So do corporations.
For a corporation to do that, two conditions must be met first:
1) there must exist a government
2) that government must be corrupt
Without a corrupt government, corporations do not have the powers you mention.
Without any government at all, let's say as happens in some parts of Africa, no corporations exist.
No wonder newspapers and magazines are dying - they still don't "get" it.
Google's PR problems started at the same time that Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp saw them as a serious competitor for the advertising dollar. That is why "Governments around the world were lobbing grenades at Google" after Murdoch went around the world talking to governments about the evils of the net and most likely calling in favours. Even the streetview wireless thing was really a non-event until it was blown way out of proportion by the Murdoch press.
Some things have improved, some things have gotten worse. It's hard to say, overall, that most people in the USA are much happier than the Haudenosaunee (Iroqois) were 500 years ago, even living a bit longer perhaps on average. Are those alive now in the USA much happier or more physically fit than the Arawak in Haiti who Columbus and his successors wiped out?
See, for example: ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
"Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:
"They
These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus."
So, sure, we have fancy laptops and the internet, and that is great. But do most of us have real families, real communities, and meaningful work anymore?
See also:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
We can't go back to those days and keep our big populations. But we can at least honor the memory of what was good about those times, and try to bring that goodness into the 21st century. Some people are trying:
http://www.blessedunrest.com/
Overall, I think Eric Schmidt was trying, too. I'm sort of sorry now I made fun of him and Knol here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle/msg/5bd385feed4127d7
"""
Gold Leader: Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are semantic wikis and desktops going to be against Virgle?
General Dodonna: Well, the Empire doesn't consider a small cgi script on a shared server or desktop to be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense.
-----
Commander #1: We've analyzed their attack on Knol, sir, and there is a danger. Should I have your Golden Parachute standing by?
Governor Schmidt: Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.
"""
Still, if he had listened to the points I was trying to make about Google and Post-Scarcity, maybe he would have had more success? ... Essentially, by focusing on "profit" (and so Empire to defend that profit and related "ownership" and "equity") this is the kind of deadly farce of the bubble of Empire that Google and Virgin are (in jest) proposing bringing to Mars. It's just the "uns
http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html
"This is an email I posted to the Project Virgle email list. Project Virgle was an April Fool's joke by Google and Virgin, which many did not see as that funny.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
you comin' on that film you're working on? Huh?
Got a big, uh, big stack of papers there?
In Western democracies, the governments are answerable to companies.
There is a huge difference between influence and power. Companies in the US and pretty much any other western democracy have a lot of influence, but when push comes to shove they can be (and occasionally are) shut down or taken over by government with the stroke of a pen. Companies have influence but their power doesn't remotely eclipse that of the government because the government has the military and the police and the companies do not.
You'd be an idiot to think it were otherwise.
And you would be a naive fool to think that a rich influential company has more power than the US government. Governments can and do take over companies at will. Happens all the time. The same is not normally true in reverse except for tiny weak nations.
This is an invitation to all to check out www.merlinslibrary.com, a wiki site where you can upload all your favorite links to help each other find good sites. All you need to do is just find the appropriate topic or create a new article and upload the link. It's that easy! So check out www.merlinslibrary.com
There's a difference between having the power (or "means" or "capability" or "opportunity") to do something and having the authority to do it.
A mugger has the power to acquire resources through threats or actual violence. The IRS has the authority to do so. When the mugger attacks you they are breaking the law. When the police seize your property to rectify a tax debt, they are enforcing the law.
This is a matter of definitions, not politics. Government is the system a society chooses (or fails to overthrow) as a mechanism to develop and implement the rules of law. Corporations are organizations which exist under those rules. Sometimes corporations break rules just as muggers do. It is within their power to do so, but they do not have the authority. Sometimes they get caught, sometimes they get away with it. That's the nature of reality. But the meaning of the words is such that only a system of government has the ultimate authority to use force to enact its will. Any non-government entity which acquires that authority does so at the behest of the government(s) it serves or operates under (which is usually the same thing).
When a Corporation mis-behaves, it is the job of the Governments who have jurisdiction over those incidents to correct the behavior of the Corporation in question. When a Government mis-behaves, it is the job of the Citizens to correct the behavior of that Government.
The grand-parent post used the word "power" when they should have used the word "authority". It is, by definition, true that "Governments have the authority to deprive you of your life, liberty or property." The circumstances under which various governments have that authority vary from country to country, and from state to state.
If you don't like what corporations due, vote with your dollar and your ballot. If you don't like what your government does, vote with your wallet, ballot and feet. (It looks like voting with bullets doesn't work anymore.)
The Search Network. Coming to to theaters 2012. ;)
Yup, that's about right. Google underestimated Murdoch.
Look at all the stuff coming out of Microsoft Research, even if it's never productized.
There's the difference between engineers and researchers.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
From TFA about Larry Page: And he will have to rid himself of a proclivity most engineers have: they are really bad at things they can’t measure
Doesn't that apply to every profession - a lawyer, a plumber and a manager of course can all be self-delusional about their abilities when actually they might be doing a lousy job.
This seems like the perpetual Engineer versus Manager debate that who actually runs the company - the Engineer or the Manager? whatever a manager's argument might be, the fact is that unless you create or develop a thing, you shouldn't be able to manage it. The Engineer precedes the Manager in the evolution chain.
Why you write like Chinese stereotype?
Blue and White. With a David star on it.
Of course corporations can do harm, just like a your neighbor can do harm if he was so inclined. And in a just world, the aggressor would be punished and the victims would be awarded proper restitution. However, none of these entities hold a special right to do harm as government does. THAT is the key difference.
Only government holds the unique right to employ actual coercion against you (meaning theft, fraud, physical force). This automatically makes government the most dangerous entity that could ever exist. The specific ability to initiate force ("legally") is what defines government and seperates the entity of government from the common man. If this key difference did not exist, then logically, government could not exist. You cannot be ruled without a ruler, and you cannot rule without the ruled.
Therefore, any corporation which employs coercion must either have the specific blessing of government (which is the fault of government) or is doing so illegally (in which case the victims would have the right to employ coercion in self-defense).
There must be some point in Larry's decision..Lets wait n see..what happens to google. Hotels Cyprus
After I was as rich as that guy, I might quit too. How much money does one person really need? At what point do the hassles of making more money start to outweigh what the money does for you?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Google's ridiculous hiring practices are bound to one day catch up with them!
The idea that industrialization, capitalism and corporations are inherently evil is laughable, rather, through them acting in their own interests they have lead us to a high standard of living.
This is becoming an old fable. I've heard this sermon many time at the church of Rev. Russ Roberts. Like all fables, it has a compelling grain of truth. Worse than believing it too much is not believing it at all.
What I don't get is why this particular fable hooks so deeply into the evangelism reflex of a certain segment of the population. In my grade two school year we learned about Gerry Germ (no connection with the Germans failing to prop up the Euro). A certain segment of the classroom took Gerry Germ to heart. You could practically see them cross out "cleanliness is next to godliness" and replace it with "sterilization is next to godliness". No mention of hormensis to balance the dialog. Or the fact that the human bag of water consists of more bacterial cells than human cells.
I've never thought the free market fable belonged on the sterilization rung of inner conviction. Societies that fail to harness the motive power of self interest fail to flourish. Societies that inject self interest into the blood stream with a syringe have entirely different problems.
It's such a tricky fable. Sometimes you see it reduced to a pithy epigram: private wealth is a public good. Except when it isn't. Except when private wealth stuffs $300 million into his jeans and flies off to a private island with hooker fiance shortly before the big implosion.
Private wealth *can* function as a public good, when public policy constrains it to do so. The problem is that the average moralistic mind presumes that the necessary constraints are denominated in outcomes. This leads to exactly the kinds of constraints that sap economic vigour.
The correct constraints are the kind that hold the feet of every party in the economy to the fire of market discipline. Almost the first thing that happens when someone piles up a billion dollars is a careful examination of how to escape market discipline. Scratch any entrepreneur, you'll find a loss averse MOFO. The entire business agenda of RIAA and the MPAA can be summarized effectively as "escape market discipline".
Market discipline is what results from clear price signals and voluntary transactions among equal parties. The opposite of market discipline is being unable to understand your phone bill, or not knowing what you spent the last month until you're hit by billshock.
Here's your modern quasi-capitalist business plan: work your ass off, become rich and powerful, abuse money and power to escape market discipline. In the first phase, public good is created. In the closing phase, public good is shuffled into Swiss bank accounts.
Corporations differ in how they progress through the quasi-capitalist life cycle. If Monsanto ever spent a day in the first phase, I've never heard about it. In this economy, if market discipline is pinching your toes (and you have a fat enough wallet) you can always find a congressman to help loosen your shoes.
Greenspan believed that market discipline was somehow miraculously self-perpetuating. If the banks under initial conditions were subject to market-discipline, their entwined self interest would gridlock any available escape route. History proves differently. All that was needed to break this system was a big enough sleeping blind as provided by Joe homeowner, who stupidly behaved as if Greenspan had a correct view of the world. They calculated their economic outcome on the presumption of a forbidden outcome and it all looked good. False presumption, raining down from on high.
The irony is that the system was quite stable for a long time, before people started to put faith in this stability on an ideological basis. Yet the preaching continues, as if nothing was learned.