
Why Is Eric Schmidt Stepping Down at Google? - mjfern
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/01/eric-schmidt-google.html?mbid=social_twitter
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brown9-2
The article seems to take the stance that Schmidt is "leaving", which seems to
run counter to the language of the announcement blog post yesterday.

~~~
fuzzythinker
"Leaving" or not, there's no way he or the trio or the board would allow the
notion that he'll be leaving in the post. I side with the author. I just don't
think he would be stepping down if he intends to be the chairman for more than
a few years. Also, if history is any indication, before he joined Google, he
only assumed the role of chief strategist for a year or so after relinquishing
from Novell's CEO position.

The one place I see him going is Microsoft since he was credited to have
turned Novell around during his CEO years there. No one would argue his
abilities at Google as well. Microsoft desperately needed someone more capable
than a car salesman. In some ways, it would also be a more challenging task
(and something new) for him to turn Microsoft around than for him to compete
with FB and Apple at Google. One thing for sure, Microsoft would be incredibly
lucky to get him since I don't envision anyone else capable AND willing. My
2nd guess would be Facebook, but I don't think Mark wants that unless he truly
sees him as a more capable CEO.

~~~
redthrowaway
In order for Schmidt to go to Microsoft, Ballmer would have to be forced out.
I don't see that happening, given the success of win7, the xbox 360, and
potentially wp7. I think wp7 would have to be an unmitgated failure for the
board to consider pushing him out.

I agree that Schmidt would be a better choice than Ballmer, but I don't see
Microsoft's board making that push barring some sort of catalyst.

~~~
fuzzythinker
Yes, win7 was a success, but weighted with Vista's failure & its 5 years to
debut, I won't call it so. wp7? we still have to wait it out, but again, it'll
have to be weighted along with Kin's billion dollar failure. xbox360 does not
define Microsoft. I think you're looking more at what he did, which isn't much
in the past 10+ years, in terms of both market penetration (except for IE, but
it's declining) and in terms of market capital, instead of what could have
been done in hands of more capable person. If Eric Schmidt or say Steve Jobs
were running Microsoft in the past 10 years, I don't think Microsoft would
languish as is. If the board had been doing its job, it had to have planed his
exit for years. Why it hasn't happened yet could be lack of better candidate
or lack of excuse like HP's dismiss of Hurd.

~~~
Encosia
I think it's hard to even begin to understand how deeply the Sherman Act has
shaped the last decade at Microsoft. One man's languishing is another's
staying out of trouble while continuing to rake in massive profits.

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dennykmiu
I believe Eric Schmidt is stepping down because he believes doing so is what
is best for Google. And I believe his reason has little to do with whether or
not he thinks that he is the right person for the job or that Larry Page is
the better candidate.

I think Eric believes that it is time for Google to get a real CEO because he
has been the CEO in name only.

C is for Chief and Eric was never the chief since he was not the person who
gets to make the final decision.

E is for Executive and Eric never spends much time executing because he was
too busy herding cats.

O is for Officer and Eric was not able to look out for the interest of all the
shareholders, just the two largest ones.

Good luck, Larry.

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acconrad
The one sentence answer is that Google is no longer the top dog, and he
doesn't seem to have the steam to weather through the storm. I feel like after
the whole Google/Verizon deal, the writing was on the wall.

~~~
lukev
If Google is no longer the top dog, who on earth is?

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phlux
Sadly, Facebook.

EDIT: Ill add some detail to my point;

Google ramped up huge to where they are now, Facebook has been ramping up as
well - but as Google enters maintenance mode with all of its service and tech
- Facebook is still in a massively growth oriented position.

Even if they're new user adoption slows, or even stops - the number of
products based on their data-set alone, for their 500MM users that can be
built is huge - and the value of those products even larger.

This is why all the defections from Google have occurred.

They built an amazing foundation for the internet at Google, now they will
build upon that with far more specific and deep information of the user base
___and how they are all related to each other_ __

What facebook has is something that is required for the true "semantic web"
which has been talked of for decades. Very very deep and specific information
on every aspect of it's users interests. This is something that Google thought
it was going to accumulate - but the problem is that from googles view, every
person is a silo of interests - where they would have to do a lot of
correlation on the back-end (which they have done) through their varied
products.

Facebook, rather, has built a true interest portal and people are throwing
ever single bit of human interaction data they can right into i - and linking
it all up for facebook.

There is a very very interesting future (albeit scary) if facebook doesn't
fuck this up.

~~~
lukev
Edit: typed this before you add detail, which adds weight to your argument.
Thanks.

I don't think so.

Google's revenues 2010: $29,321,000,000

Facebook's revenues 2010: < $1,000,000,000

Google is also solving much more challenging technical problems (not to
dismiss the smart people at Facebook, but Facebook is really only interesting
because of its extreme scale. Except for that, it's pretty much a CRUD app)

~~~
catch23
Apple is probably top dog here... they made more in profits than Google's
total revenue for 2010 Q4.

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lukev
Apple is (mostly) a hardware company - they don't compete with Google in any
meaningful way.

Facebook does, at least in the sense that both operate in the web/user space,
and both have advertising as their fundamental source of revenue.

~~~
catch23
Wouldn't you say that Android is currently the biggest competitor to the
iPhone?

Apple & Google are both pretty big companies and will likely be competing in
the same space given the number of products they both own. Apple's iAds are a
direct competitor to Adsense on mobile devices, Apple TV/Google TV, etc.

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krakensden
Engineers are bad at things they can't measure?

~~~
jodrellblank
If they can't measure the results, who is to say they are doing badly?

~~~
moultano
Their own sense of integrity.

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tybris
Probably because that was always the plan.

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beej71
He's stepping down because of the H.264 debacle, obviously!

No wait--that's dumb.

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Stormbringer
Much as I despise Google's Minority Report style vision for the future where
personalised advertising is plastered all over everything, and their evil
actions regarding privacy...

... and much as I am allegedly a huge Apple fan ...

I still think it is unfair for people to compare the effectiveness of Eric by
comparing Google's performance to Apple's performance.

Google is operating in a mostly saturated market (online search and
advertising) in which they have a Microsoft style almost total monopoly. You
just _don't_ get spectacular growth numbers in those scenarios. Doesn't mean
you can't squeeze the monopoly position to make great profits of course, but
those profits aren't going to increase exponentially year after year without
cease.

Apple on the other hand has been recently expanding into new markets (okay,
some older ones too, and some borrowed and some blue) at an enormous rate.
People laughed at them when they said they would enter the phone market.
People laughed at them when they said they would enter the tablet market.

In fairly short order, they've totally disrupted _and defined_ those two
markets. Now personally I believe that their dominance in those markets will
be short lived, but I think they will continue to lead the direction of those
industries long after their market share has dropped below 10%.

Google's done what? They have a really nice e-mail service... but apart from
that and the search/advertising thing what do they do? Oh, they bought youtube
and slapped ads all over it... yeah... great work guys, but not exactly what
I'd call innovative. Oh, they have a browser and a smartphone... but again not
especially innovative.

I dunno, I just expected _more_ from the 20% time of a bunch of PhDs sitting
around?

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majorlazer
Android is the biggest cellphone OS on the market. Chrome is the best browser
and it is growing at an extremely fast pace. ChromeOS is well on it's way (it
won't compete with the MSFT or AAPL but it has it's niche). Gmail is the best
free mail service available (and it definitely was revolutionary, think back
to when it was just released). Google AdSense changed the way people monetize
on the internet. Google Search was the biggest revolution in the history of
the internet. Google Maps/Earth was also a huge revolution and is used by so
many different services and software on the internet and on cellphones. Google
Documents? Google Voice? Please, Google owns the internet.

Sure, Google may not have any hardware revolutions such as Apple, but when it
comes to the internet, Google creates and makes possible the most innovative
ideas.

~~~
Stormbringer
I don't think you really read what I wrote, or maybe innovation means
something different to you.

Edit: oh, I see the problem, either you're trolling or don't know the history
of products earlier than Google. Nice try Sergei.

===

I know in the PC industry if you can add one more tick to the extensive
feature list it is regarded as massively innovation, but I wouldn't call it
innovation, and it certainly isn't disruptive.

The only things gmail did differently from other free email services was that
they changed the way threading was done, and they added good search that
worked (edit: I want to make it clear that I'm not denigrating that, going
back to my work Outlook account after using my private gmail account was
enough to nearly make me cry - not so much because gmail was utterly amazing,
but because Outlook was utterly crap). Neither of those things is disruptive,
so I wouldn't really call it innovation. Similarly just about everything else
you mention is a minor improvement on something that went before, or something
'cool' (example: Google Maps/Earth) that Google has failed to do much with
because the bean counters from the ad division starve it of resources.

Sure Android and Search and Adwords are big - note that I very carefully made
a distinction between being big and being innovative. The problem with Android
and Chrome is that they are "me too!" things, where they copy other people's
innovations rather than doing anything particularly new. _I_ could announce
that I was doing a new browser, and nobody would think that it was breath-
takingly original... they'd be like "oh yeah, another web browser...
whatever".

Note that copying what other people have done is how most of the computer
industry works. Apple copied Xerox, Microsoft copied Apple etc. Don't get too
upset about it or you'll drain your Reality Distortion Field's batteries too
soon. (But hey, at least the Google RDF has replaceable batteries!)

Visicalc was innovative, but I'd rather have the bank balance of Excel than
Visicalc :D Even Excel was relatively more innovative than anything Google has
ever done, because it was the first spreadsheet with a modern interface rather
than being command-line driven. What'd Google do? Oh, we take a spreadsheet
and put it online. _Yawn_

 _"the biggest revolution in the history of the internet"_

Google search isn't even innovative let alone disruptive because there were a
great many search engines before them. Oh, they have a 'special' algorithm.
Big whoopy do.

Google AdSense changed your life huh? Must be a true believer :D Anyway, glad
that you can cash those big fat cheques from Google every month, good for you.
:D

~~~
cdavid
While I don't follow your thinking about google, I think that the "special"
algorithm for search, at least the original one (pageRank) is not that
special. Other people had the same ideas even before - what really made it so
successful is their use of commodity hardware IMO, and that was only possible
no sooner than late 90ies because linux became good enough (licensing any
proprietary unix for 1000s machines would have been difficult). This and the
corporate culture - it seems they manage to hire a lot of very talented
people, not just engineers, from early on. That's pretty hard to do.

~~~
Stormbringer
My memory may be a bit rusty on this, but as I remember it in the pre-pagerank
days Google were just aggregating the highest results from a bunch of other
search engines such as Alta Vista (?) and Yahoo (?) ... which seemed pretty
scummy.

As for my 'thinking' on Google, here's the way I see it. I see people giving
money to Dell. I see people giving money to HP. I see people giving money to
Adobe and Microsoft ($deity only knows why). I even see people giving money to
Apple.

When was the last time I saw someone buy something from Google? I've met two
or three people with Android phones. yeah, so Google gets what - a $10
royalty? Don't spend it all at once!

Which then raises the question: who/where/when/what on earth is paying for all
this 'free' stuff that Google gives away? Surely it _must_ be the advertising!

And if advertising is really the only thing they have bringing home the bacon,
eventually the bean counters from advertising are going to run the company (if
they don't already). Google maps is awesome, but I never once paid for the
privilege... how did they afford to put all those cars on the road eh?

What I see is things like Google buying youtube, and then making it worse by
slapping ads on it. I view Google as a modern day King Midas. But they don't
turn things to gold, what they touch gets covered in advertising instead.

Secondly, I have noted several instances where Google has been very 'cavalier'
(to be generous) with the truth

(no we're not sniffing your wifi. Okay, we're sniffing your wifi, but only
accidentally. Okay, we're doing it systematically and deliberately, but we're
not storing it. Okay, we're storing it, but nothing important. Okay we're
sniffing your passwords, are you happy now?!?!?!)

also privacy (Eric saying he doesn't believe in it - has he been snorting the
Zuckerman again?), or even lives

(see also: Chinese dissidents being sold up the river to Beijing by Google)

Google was bending over big time for the oppressive regime, until China tried
to hack them, when they suddenly grew a backbone and started standing up to
them. That's not character. That's not 'not being evil'.

===

NB: me saying Google is not perfect is not the same as saying that some other
company is perfect. what I was saying originally is that not only is it unfair
to compare Google to Apple because of Apple's unusually good current results,
but also they are different kinds of companies, working in mostly different
markets (fundamentally Google is an internet based advertising company, and
Apple is a media/hardware company - comparing them is like comparing a biotech
stock with Walmart, it just doesn't make sense. Moreover, one of the primary
differences in their financial results is that Google is in a saturated
market, but Apple is not. It is hard to be a 'growth stock' in a saturated
market where you already have a massive monopoly.

~~~
majorlazer
Your first point about Google aggregating results from other search engines,
please provide a source.

You've met two or three people with Android phones? You must not get out very
much because Android passed the iPhone in total monthly activations a while
back and just passed them in total phones on the market.

Buying YouTube and slapping ads on it? That was inevitable, whether or not
Google bought them, there comes a time in every websites life when it needs to
be monetized to it's fullest potential.

As for the whole wi-fi/china/privacy ordeal, you really know how to
sensationalize a story. You happen to post on Reddit?

I wasn't commenting on your comparison of Google and Apple, I agree that they
are very different companies. But when you say Google isn't innovative, that
is not true. Sure, most of their ideas are improving on other companies ideas
but that doesn't make it any less innovative. Do you know why so many people
are starting to use Chrome? Because it is a fucking perfected browser. The
changes Google made were very minimal, but now every browser company is
following suit. Going by your logic, no company is innovative because they all
just improve upon one another's ideas. Think back to when Gmail was just
released. The major competitors were Hotmail and Yahoo. Do you remember their
offering? 25mb of space, fucking horrible layout, slow as shit, email search
was non existent, and the spam... Oh the wonderful spam.

Sure, Google might be currently receiving a huge chunk of their income from
advertising. But with the market control that Google currently has, they can
offer any product/service and people will hand over their cash no questions
asked. Google has established itself as a trustworthy company that provides
amazing products for cheap/free. You mention that every company is selling
something except Google. Is Facebook selling anything? Weren't they just
valued at $50 billion? Their stock is going public next year? Hmmm... So much
for needing a product to sell. Sure, I think valuing Facebook at $50 billion
is retarded as fuck but the fact of the matter is, in todays day, information
is worth more than any other commodity. And Google has a shit ton of
information.

~~~
Stormbringer
Thanks for your reply. No, I do not post on Reddit. I was looking for a place
that wouldn't just descend into one line witty put-downs.

On that basis, even though I disagree with you and think you're way too deep
in the Google-cool aid ( :D ), I will vote you up, because I acknowledge your
time invested deserves a reward.

It seems like every year I rediscover that arguing with strangers on the
internet is pointless. This year I got there by Jan 22 ... a new personal
best. Wish you all the best.

~~~
majorlazer
Heh, nothing wrong with a bit of debate, as long as it doesn't end in flame
wars. Halfway through writing my above post I stopped and thought, is this
really worth it? Will I prove anything with this post? And I decided to finish
my thoughts because I really was interested in what you have to say in
response to my "arguments". Anyways, thanks for not resorting to childish
arguments and put-downs like on other sites.

