Eric Schmidt is an investor and executive chairman of Google. The company's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, recruited Schmidt from Novell to serve as CEO from 2001-2011. At Novell, Schmidt led that company's strategic planning, management and technology development as chairman and CEO.
At Google, Schmidt focused on building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remained high while product development cycle times were kept to a minimum.
Prior to his appointment at Novell, Schmidt was chief technology officer and corporate executive officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc., where he led the development of Java, Sun's platform-independent programming technology, and defined Sun's Internet software strategy. Before joining Sun in 1983, Schmidt was a member of the research staff at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and held positions at Bell Laboratories and Zilog. Schmidt has a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University, and a master's and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California-Berkeley.
Related Links: www.google.com
Last Updated: Wed, Jul 27, 2011
| Category | Title | Author/Speaker | Organization | Length | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Video | Technology and Social Responsibility | Larry Page · Eric Schmidt | 01:39 | 05/2002 | |
| Video | Search Engines and Competition | Larry Page · Eric Schmidt | 01:21 | 05/2002 | |
| Video | New Leadership and Organizational Change | Eric Schmidt · Larry Page | 01:38 | 05/2002 | |
| Video | Encouraging Creativity | Larry Page · Eric Schmidt | 01:42 | 05/2002 |
The founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin believe that it is incredibly important for people to have access to information around the world -- and that this is something that Google can deliver. They have run into issues with foreign governments over censorship, but recently it has not been a major problem. CEO Eric Schmidt predicts that Google will become an unintended central focus around global copyright and ownership legal issues.
In the beginning, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin tried to license Google to other companies because they wanted to finish their PhD's, but none were interested. Google was started out of desperation; they had no other option but to start the company themselves. Though the founders do worry about competition, the barrier to entry is continuously increasing as Google indexes more and more documents and becomes the foundation of so many other services.
When CEO Eric Schmidt started at Google, his job was largely centered around providing some organizational design. The culture was working well but the company needed more structure. He hired a financial and controller system, instituted staff meetings, and set and reviewed quarterly objectives.
Google's main problem is separating the wheat from the chaff through the mounds of creativity they have on hand, says co-founder Larry Page. There are simply more ideas than time and resources allow them to accomplish.