Before the launch of Android and the T-Mobile G1, Steve Jobs had quite a close relationship with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Rare pictures of Jobs, Page, and then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the Googleplex have surfaced today.
Eric Schmidt was Google’s second CEO from 2001 to 2011 and famously known for acting as “adult supervision” during the company’s early years. The top job was eventually handed back to co-founder Larry Page, with Schmidt serving as executive chairmen of Google and later Alphabet. His last role was as technical advisor, and it emerged today that he departed earlier this year.
Following Alphabet’s Q1 2019 earnings yesterday, the parent company announced a number of changes to its board of directors. Eric Schmidt and Diane Greene are not seeking re-election and will be leaving later this year.
In late December, Alphabet announced that Eric Schmidt was stepping down as executive chairman. Reports pegged the departure as a result of the former Google CEO wanting to spend more time working on other efforts and we now know what that entails. MIT has revealed that Schmidt is joining the school as a “visiting innovation fellow.”
Alphabet announced today that Eric Schmidt is stepping down as the company’s executive chairman. Schmidt will transition to a new role as a technical advisor and will continue to serve on the company’s board.
Executive chairman of Google parent Alphabet Eric Schmidt last week told employees that the Trump administration will do ‘evil things,’ reports Buzzfeed.
Schmidt’s remarks were made during the company’s weekly meeting at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, on January 26 [when he said the Trump administration] is “going to do these evil things as they’ve done in the immigration area and perhaps some others” …
Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt is sitting down with Startup Grind Europe today. Tune in below:
In this week’s top stories: We breakdown the best Android phones you can buy right now, get a closer look at upcoming Android devices including the OnePlus 3, Galaxy Note, and Project Tango devices, and give you the latest app news and updates alongside our picks for the best 5 Android apps you should download this month. Expand
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Talking Schmidt fans have something to look forward to later this month: the Alphabet executive chairman and former Google CEO is set to speak at the first Startup Fest in Amsterdam on May 24th. Eric Schmidt is among several big name keynote speakers, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Uber founder Travis Kalanick, and Airbnb CTO Nathan Blecharczyk. Google is among the list of sponsors for the first Startup Fest as well.
Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt recently attended what many call “Burning Man for the 1%” with a handful of fellow tech and entrepreneur colleagues (via The Guardian). The festival is called Further Future and covers 49 acres of land right outside of Las Vegas. While Burning Man hides its lavishness, Further Future touts that it offers “unabashed luxury.”
Re/code today reports that Silicon Valley icon and longtime Google advisor Bill “The Coach” Campbell has passed away at age 75 after a long battle with cancer. The unfortunate news comes from “many prominent tech players,” following earlier unconfirmed reports. Campbell was a mentor to many tech leaders, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos.
Speaking in South Korea (where he was also seen using an iPhone), Eric Schmidt addressed the possibility of Google’s driverless cars expanding outside of the United States. In an interview with The Telegraph, Schmidt explained that UK officials have approached the company about bringing its self-driving vehicles to the streets.
Eric Schmidt is in South Korea this week to witness Google’s AlphaGo AI system completely destroy the world Go champion at his own game. Sedol lost the first game yesterday, saying then that he was “very surprised”. Today he lost again. “It was a clear loss on my part,” he said. He had predicted before the matchups began that he would win the five-game series 5-0 or 4-1 “at worst.”
But while the Alphabet Executive Chairman is in South Korea to witness the monumental battle, the Korean press (OSEN, in this case) is clearly focusing on something else. As you can see in the pictures below, Schmidt was caught at a press event this week taking pictures with an iPhone…
Today, United States Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced plans to establish a Defense Innovation Advisory Board made up of about a dozen technology leaders from Silicon Valley and beyond. Representing “Secretary Carter’s enduring commitment to building lasting partnerships between the public and private sectors,” the board “will provide advice on the best and latest practices in innovation that the department can emulate.”
And who better to lead such a group than Alphabet Chairman and ex-CEO of Google Eric Schmidt?
Speaking at a conference in New York today, Google chairman Eric Schmidt discussed how he believes artificial intelligence could one day help the world solve its “hard problems,” including issues like population growth, climate change, human development, and education. Schmidt explained that because of the fast pace at which AI technology is being developed, it can help scientists determine the relationship between the cause and effects of such issues by quickly analyzing large amounts of data (via Bloomberg).
Raspberry Pi Zero launched today, touted as “the $5 computer,” and it turns out (via The Wall Street Journal), that its existence — or at least its announcement today, before the launch of a more expensive Raspberry Pi — is partly thanks the words of none other than ex-Google CEO and now Alphabet Inc. chairman Eric Schmidt… Expand
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Back in the summer, Google announced a major new restructure and rebranding, with Google itself just one of many companies now owned by Alphabet. The move caught us all by surprise, and seemingly, caught Eric Schmidt by surprise too. Re/code was able to get hold of some recordings where the former Apple man stated he was on vacation when the company announced the move.
I wake up, and I’m the chairman of Alphabet. We sort of announced it without actually knowing which companies it would be. So we’re still working the details.
With Alphabet, each company within the group is given its own letter. Google, for instance, is ‘G’, and ‘L’ stands for Life Sciences. With there only being 26 letters in the alphabet, you might wonder what they’ll do when they’ve used all 26 of them. Schmidt’s answer: “After 26, we’re going to probably transcendental numbers”. Numbers like pi… “You think I’m kidding?”
Alphabet may have to start using them soon if Schmidt’s other comments are to be taken seriously. We’re to expect “a lot” of new companies: ““I’ve been meeting with the current CEOs of the Alphabet companies and the proposed ones. So you’ll see a lot coming.” He didn’t say what those new companies would be, but he apparently praised the innovation within the self-driving car move.
Schmidt was talking at the Virtuous Circle conference in Menlo Park, California when he made the comments. He spoke on many matters, including policy issues like encryption, the ‘Right to be Forgotten‘ policies in Europe and bandwidth regulation among others. Like many, he’s worried about the tech scene in Europe, especially the Safe Harbor ruling which sees each country have its own digital borders, and their own set of regulations.
Alphabet is still in its early days, and like many of us, it seems Schmidt is excited to see what lies in the future.
Lobbying group Citizens for Tax Justice has called out Google, Apple and Microsoft and others for what it described as “accounting tricks” in which companies “pretend” to be based overseas for tax purposes. The claims were made in a report entitled Offshore Shell Games 2015.
Many multinational corporations use accounting tricks to pretend for tax purposes that a substantial portion of their profits are generated in offshore tax havens, countries with minimal or no taxes where a company’s presence may be as little as a mailbox. Multinational corporations’ use of tax havens allows them to avoid an estimated $90 billion in federal income taxes each year.
Google’s overseas tax arrangements came under fire in the UK back in 2013 when it was revealed that the company paid just £6M ($9.4M) on a UK turnover of £395M ($620M), claiming that all its advertising sales were made by staff in Ireland (a claim later challenged) …
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google parent company Alphabet, has made a thinly-veiled attack on Apple Music in a BBC op-ed on artificial intelligence. He described human-curated music selections as a decade out of data and an elitist approach.
A decade ago, to launch a digital music service, you probably would have enlisted a handful of elite tastemakers to pick the hottest new music.
Today, you’re much better off building a smart system that can learn from the real world – what actual listeners are most likely to like next – and help you predict who and where the next Adele might be …
The long-running dispute between Oracle and Google over whether Java application programming interfaces (APIs) used within Android were protected by copyright has taken another strange turn, with the Justice Dept urging the Supreme Court not to hear Google’s appeal.
The legal battle is over whether small sections of code originally written by Oracle’s predecessor, Sun Microsystems, can be used under the ‘fair use’ exemption to copyright laws. Google argues that it used only small code snippits, did so mostly for consistency and offered to pay royalties; Oracle argues that the code is its intellectual property, and the royalties offered were too low … Expand
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<a href="http://viptest.9to5google.com/tag/how-google-works/" target="_blank">Rosenberg & Schmidt promoting their book “How Google Works”</a>
Jonathan Rosenberg has been tapped to temporarily lead Google’s robotics division replacing James Kuffner, according to The Information.
The report cites sourcing claiming Kuffner’s appointment to replace Andy Rubin last year was never intended to be permanent with Rosenberg being the division’s next boss. CEO Larry Page is expected to continue searching for a permanent head of the robotics division in the meantime.
Android’s co-founder Rubin led the robotics division from late 2013 to late 2014. Rosenberg’s appointment now makes the third head of Google’s robotics team in less than two years. Subscribers can read the full report here.
ATP head Regina Dugan with some of her 100-strong team
Google’s mobile-focused research group, Advanced Technology and Projects (ATP), gives projects a maximum of two years’ work before they are killed, adopted as official Google products or sold to outside companies, reports the WSJ.
The deadline was created by former DARPA head Regina Dugan in an attempt to counter the normal tendency of companies to grow less nimble and more bureaucratic as they grow in size, said Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.
Product cycles slow down as a company gets larger. All of us believe we could execute faster […]
We like this model because it puts pressure on people to perform and do relevant things or stop. I’ve spent an awful lot of time on projects that never end and products that would never ship.
The company is ruthless about killing off projects which don’t deliver notable results, said Dugan, who was hired by Google in 2012, and it doesn’t always let them run as long as two years … Expand
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If you’ve been following the facts behind the situation with Glass, you know that the project is not seen as even close to being dead within the Mountain View company. Despite the Explorer Program being shut down earlier this year, Google clearly sees potential in the platform. And according to comments recently made by Google’s Eric Schmidt, Glass is just far too important to scrap… Expand
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Eric Schmidt spoke today on gender equality in the tech industry at SXSW along with United States Chief Technology Officer (and former Google exec) Megan Smith. During the panel, Schmidt was kind enough to chime in on a number of topics, such as which questions he thought Smith should answer, and his thoughts on the Raspberry Pi.
Schmidt’s frequent interruptions were highlighted by an attendee who questioned the executive on his behavior during the panel. Without responding to the woman’s concerns about cutting off Smith, Schmidt did agree that the lack of women in the industry is “a tragedy.”
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFBXT9D00kM&start=2224]
Asked at a tech conference to name his hero, Google exec chairman Eric Schmidt told interviewer Sal Khan (of Khan Academy) that the answer came immediately to mind.
For me, it’s easy: Steve Jobs […] When I look at what he achieved in terms of impact on society, we could all aspire to be a small percentage of Steve.
Speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California’s Silicon Valley event , Schmidt said that while the competition between Google and Apple had not always made things easy, it worked out because they shared a mutual respect. Jobs was, he said, an exceptional person, and they are always worth spending time with “because there’s a good chance they’ll change the world.”
Schmidt served on Apple’s board from 2006 to 2009, at which point he resigned due to increasing competition between the two companies.
Asked at the World Economic Forum to predict the future of the web, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said that “the Internet will disappear.”
The somewhat surprising prediction isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds. What he means is that the Internet of Things will become so ubiquitous, that much of our interaction with the web will be invisible.
“There will be so many IP addresses…so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it,” he explained. “It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room. A highly personalized, highly interactive and very, very interesting world emerges.”
It’s clearly hyperbole: none of us are going to stop viewing webpages anytime soon. And as Gizmodo wryly insinuates, that “with your permission” part is far from certain when a company makes its money from the data rather than the devices. But there’s certainly a core truth here: with more and more smart devices, we won’t need to interact with them so directly.
Google is, though, not taking its dominant position for granted. Schmidt said that at a time when new apps can spring out of nowhere and become billion dollar businesses, “all bets are off.”
Check out some other Talking Schmidt quotes.
(Photo via <a href="https://twitter.com/AniBaboomian/status/542430824793010176">Ani Baboomian</a>)
There’s always something insightful worth hearing when Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt starts talking, and his presence today at the annual FT Innovate conference in New York is no exception…
The roof terrace of Google’s London HQ
New corporate tax measures aimed at preventing multinational companies making profits in the UK and then shifting them overseas where they incur lower taxes could potentially impact a number of tech companies, including Google, Apple and Amazon.
Dubbed “the Google tax,” the British government announced a new 25% tax on profits generated in the UK and then “artificially shifted” overseas, reports the BBC … Expand
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Eric Schmidt has been busy pounding the pavement promoting his new book How Google Works, but today the Google chairman switched gears and made a stop in Berlin to visit the headquarters of Native Instruments, a major producer of hardware and software for digital music production. In front of an intimate group of company founders, scientists and economists, Schmidt touched on important topics like innovation, tech and the future of the internet.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt and company advisor Jonathan Rosenberg have been on the road promoting their new book How Google Works and the duo recently spoke with Steven Levy and recapped several familiar events in Google’s illustrious history, however one morsel of newer information managed to standout.
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Google chairman Eric Schmidt and company advisor Jonathan Rosenberg recently sat down with Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist of MSNBC’s Morning Joe to promote their new book, How Google Works. During the brief segment, the two executives talked about Google’s unconventional approach to projects. Schmidt went on to talk about how in his early days as CEO, another employee moved into his office due to their space being too crowded.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt and former product manager Jonathan Rosenberg are currently on tour promoting their new book How Google Works, and as the co-authors continue making their rounds, they’ve been engaging in some rather assertive interviews. This time around the duo stopped by Bloomberg’s Market Makers with hosts Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle. The group talked about the search giant’s biggest competitors like Apple, Yahoo, Amazon and others. Here are a few highlights from the 15 minute segment.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt recently sat down with ABC’s Rebecca Jarvis and discussed topics ranging from immigration to snack foods and reading interests. The Google executive also spoke candidly about Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent letter on privacy and WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange, who’s publicly referred to Google as “the private NSA.”
Who wants to take a trip down memory lane? Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt does! The one time company CEO recently took to Google+ to do a little reminiscing. The year was 2003 and Google had been going strong for about five years. In its earlier days, the lighthearted tech company would welcome new employees to the fold by presenting them with a smiley helium balloon to float around their office space. A kind gesture, the balloon was also an easy way for seasoned employees to spot a “Noogler” (new Google employee).
Google has been battling allegations of burying rival companies in its web search results while promoting its own services, such as Maps and YouTube. The search giant was close to avoiding costly fines from the European Commission, but following negative feedback from its competitors, Google will now have to take additional measures to settle this multi-year investigation.
“Know your competition, but don’t copy it.” Those words of wisdom come from the image above accompanying a message put on the entirely original – not a copy of Facebook – Google+ by Google executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt. Schmidt is promoting his new book with Jonathan Rosenberg called How Google Works due out next month where the billionaire lays out the principles that made Google what it is today.
Included with the lemonade stand image and ‘don’t copy’ caption is another Schmidt line on originality and competition. “Playing catch-up with the competition will never help you get ahead by creating something new,” Schmidt says. Google would be the “hard” boozy lemonade to the competitions’ fresh lemonade. In the case of Google Plus, the booze could be the hangouts or perhaps the photo editing features or integration with other Google products.
Now picture this tidbit from Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs:
“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
It’s hard to deny that Android started looking a lot more like iOS after the iPhone’s introduction, and iOS has clearly borrowed its fair share of features from Google’s mobile operating system, but there’s no denying that Schmidt’s message could be challenged. File this one with the rest under Talking Schmidt.
Photo: dexigner.com
In a surprisingly low-key response to a European court decision that individuals can require Google to remove links to sensitive information, executive chairman Eric Schmidt said that the court had got the balance wrong, and its chief legal officer say that the ruling was “disappointing” and “went too far,” reports the WSJ.
In response to a question at Google’s annual shareholder meeting, Schmidt said the case reflects “a collision between a right to be forgotten and a right to know.” A balance must be struck between those two objectives, Schmidt added and ”Google believes … that the balance that was struck was wrong.”
The European Union Court of Justice ruled that individuals could ask for the removal of links to information about them which was accurate where the passage of time made it “out-dated or irrelevant.”
Shareholders also raised concerns about the the controversial stock split that gave Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin 56 percent of the voting rights despite owning only 15 percent of the company.
Page said that the company’s goal is “making major investments in things that take a little longer to get done” and that by adding the new non-voting shares Google can avoid the “quarter to quarter focus” that he said plagues other public companies.
I have to admit sympathy with this view: too many public companies are forced by shareholders to focus on short-term financials rather than longer-term goals. Given Google’s record to date, it would be hard to argue that the co-founders are getting things too wrong …
Google chariman Eric Schmidt joined a group of tech CEOs who met with the president and members of the administration today to discuss the implementation of recently-announced changes in the National Security Administration’s spying practices. Other CEOs in the group represented Facebook, Dropbox, Netflix, and more. Along with the president were several advisors and councilors, including the Deputy Director of the NSA.
The executives were updated on the status of changes to the NSA’s spying policies that were first detailed last year and continued to be further expanded upon in recent months. These CEOs were among those who signed an open letter to the federal government comdemning the unwarranted sue of spying tactics to intercept and store communications sent via various online platforms.
Earlier this week Google’s Larry Page also discussed the NSA and issues of privacy during the TED conference.
Finally some wisdom from Schmidt that I can’t dispute: “If all you care about is having fun, you should go to college.”
You know, the Google chairman has a point. He did include a number of other reasons for attending college as well, but that was really just sugar coating:
If all you care about is money, you should go to college. If all you care about is culture and creativity, you should go to college. If all you care about is having fun, you should go to college. Go to college. I can’t be any clearer.
His comments were made during a session at last week’s SXSW (South by Southwest) Festival (via TechCrunch) in Austin, Texas, in yet another appearance to promote his book The New Digital Age. Expand
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Our mentor and life coach (and Google chairman) Eric Schmidt is back to enlightening us as only he can. While both exciting the geek in us and deeply concerning the sci-fi movie watcher among us, Schmidt spoke yesterday about Google’s work on automation and experimenting with technology to replace common, repetitive behaviors. You know, like in The Jetsons. Per Bloomberg‘s report of his discussion at the Oasis: The Montgomery Summit, Schmidt shared his vision for the future: “Robots will become omnipresent in our lives in a good way.”
In a recent video interview with The World Post, Google’s Eric Schmidt sounded off on how he thinks smartphones and mobile devices are impacting global politics.
Schmidt describes the positives and negatives of smartphone prevalence across the world (naturally thinking of many more benefits, of course). He addresses government’s ability to use our mobile devices against us, likely referring to recent controversies around NSA practices.
But Schmidt focuses heavily on smartphones enabling young people to have access to more information and grow their voice in the political process, something he says he is working on.
Smartphones make it more difficult for politicians to lie to young people, Schmidt says, because it’s easier to fact check information. Schmidt also describes smartphones as a ‘check and balance’ against evil people and terrible things as cameras and GPS equip young people with tools to spread information. Check out the full video below:
Motorola has added iCloud support to its Motorola Migrate app, making it far easier to switch from an iPhone to a Moto X, Moto G or Droid handset than the longwinded process Eric Schmidt described back in November. Previously, it was necessary to go via Gmail or to use the online migration app.
With this update, you can pull in your contacts and calendar events by simply entering Apple ID and password directly into the app. The app the connects to iCloud and downloads your data automatically.
The app is powered by mark/space, a company specialising in sync technology and behind many consumer and corporate synchronisation tools.
As Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt makes his own predictions for 2014, I’m turning the subject over to you…the 9to5Google reader. There’s absolutely no shortage of topics to cover or “what ifs” for Google in 2014. Given the various branch directions that Android, Chrome OS and the company itself can go, it’s a loaded question. With recent reports indicating Chrome OS is on the rise, could we see Microsoft running scared in 2014 against the impending threat of low-cost hardware with an operating system that costs manufacturers absolutely nothing?
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Google’s Chairman is back with a microphone courtesy of Bloomberg TV making his predictions for 2014. There’s little question Schmidt has made some bold statements lately, including how to properly switch from the iPhone.
Following a year of mixed messaging and confusion regarding government access to personal data and how companies are handling the issue, Google is putting it’s support behind a petition demanding the United States government require a warrant before accessing email of private citizens.
[tweet https://twitter.com/ericschmidt/status/408987436945907712]
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt tweeted a link to the company’s post on Google+:
Doesn’t the stuff you keep online deserve the same protection as the stuff you keep offline? Under a law called ECPA, government agencies in the U.S. can see what you’ve written and stored online without a warrant. Sign this petition to the White House and tell the government to get a warrant!
The petition originated on November 12, 2013, and requires just over 42,000 signatures by December 12, 2013, to mean the threshold for a response from the White House. At the time of this writing, just over 57,000 signatures have been collected on the online petition.
The full petition reads as follows: Expand
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I think we all deserve to give Google Chairman Eric Schmidt a round of applause for his recently posted Google+ message telling the world how to ditch the iPhone. In a fairly lengthy write-up, Schmidt describes in detail how to set up an Android device, move contacts over to Gmail from iCloud and a quick reminder that ditching Safari for Chrome is the new hotness.
Google has done a U-turn on its previous policy of stopping short of directly interfering with search results and is now actively trapping more than 100,000 searches for material which constitutes child abuse, reports UK newspaper the Daily Mail.
The world’s biggest media firm has agreed to introduce changes which will prevent depraved images and videos from appearing for more than 100,000 different searches.
The company’s chairman Eric Schmidt, writing in today’s Daily Mail ahead of a Downing Street summit on internet pornography, says: ‘We’ve listened. We’ve fine-tuned Google Search to prevent links to child sexual abuse material from appearing in our results’ … Expand
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Steve Jobs isn’t exactly a man known for keeping his thoughts to himself which is why excerpts found by Business Insider from a new book documenting the Google-Apple smartphone war are grabbing attention. According to the book written by Fred Vogelstein, Google was already working on its first Android-powered smartphone when Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007.
