
Eric Schmidt to become technical advisor to Alphabet - EwanToo
https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2017/1221.html
======
bennettfeely
At the bottom of this thread is a comment by 'AmIFirstToThink' which has been
inexplicably marked "dead". It seems to be the only reply as of writing this
that makes the connection of Schmidt's stepping down to his strong bets during
the 2016 election.

A little-noticed WSJ piece from October would support that idea:

> [Google] Employees donated $1.6 million to her campaign, about 80% more than
> the amount given by workers at any other corporation, and Executive Chairman
> Eric Schmidt helped set up companies to analyze political data for the
> campaign. Mr. Schmidt even wore a badge labeled “STAFF” at Mrs. Clinton’s
> election-night bash.

> His support of the losing side didn’t go unnoticed among the victors. As
> President-elect Donald Trump was preparing for a meeting with tech
> executives at Trump Tower not long before his inauguration, he asked
> strategist Stephen Bannon whether Mr. Schmidt was “the guy that tried to
> help Hillary win the election,” according to someone who heard the
> conversation.

> “Yes,” said Mr. Bannon. “Yes, he is.”

> Google, one of the most powerful players in Washington in recent years, is
> now facing the consequences of its lost political clout—and is moving
> mountains to regain it.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-dominance-in-
washington...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-dominance-in-washington-
faces-a-reckoning-1509379625)

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
What do HN people think about a law to prevent corporate executives from
giving money to politicians?

~~~
eru
If you care about democracy, you want to make it easier for individual people
to spend a lot of money on politics.

As with so many regulations, it mostly benefits the people who have enough
resources to work around them:

With strict limits per person, you need a huge established machine that can
reach out to many individuals to get your donations rolling. Without limits,
you just need to convince one eccentric billionaire. While the latter is still
hard, it's still much easier done than the former.

~~~
aalleavitch
Yes, because we want people with sufficient money to be the only ones with a
voice, and we want their voices to massively outweigh the voices of everyone
else. That's definitely what someone who cares about democracy would want.

~~~
eru
The supposedly money-restricted alternative is not the democratic utopia you
paint, but the place where only established machines can compete.

------
rajnathani
> Alphabet expects that its board will appoint a new, non-executive chairman
> at its next meeting in January, meaning that it will join the ranks of Apple
> and Microsoft as major companies with non-executive chairman.

Could someone provide some context around this topic of executive/non-
executive chairpersons?

Edit: The above quote is taken from the original link which this HN post
pointed to - [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/eric-schmidt-is-stepping-
dow...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/eric-schmidt-is-stepping-down-as-the-
executive-chairman-of-alphabet.html)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Could someone provide some context around this topic of executive/non-
> executive chairpersons?

An executive chairman is something of a weird beast; they are both chairman of
the board and an executive employee involved in managing the firm (as an
employee, they usually report to the CEO, but the CEO is accountable to the
board, which the chairman, well, chairs.) The exact division of duties between
an executive chairman and the CEO is different in every firm using the
arrangement, I would expect.

A non-executive chairman is just the head of the board and not involved in
day-to-day executive management of the firm, only oversight of management.

~~~
sjg007
Well you can be the chair of the board and CEO so then that's not too weird.

~~~
dragonwriter
Chair and CEO is less weird than separate executive chairman and CEO. The
executive chairman model is more analogous to if, say, the CIO or CFO was also
the board chair.

------
jamiesonbecker
One of the most interesting debates was between Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel
back in 2012, especially in the positions that Eric staked out:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4)

~~~
pavs
Wow, Peter Thiel, is annoying, to say the least. He sounds like someone who
lives in a bubble that is completely decoupled from the real world. He doesn't
even let anyone else make any point.

Am I even allowed to say all these without getting sued or banned?

~~~
afsina
I watched this video before. He is very annoying but I am mostly agreeing with
him.

------
CalChris
Bloomberg titles this quite differently:

 _Alphabet 's Schmidt to Step Down From Executive Chairman Role_

[http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Alphabet-Google-
Eric-...](http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Alphabet-Google-Eric-Schmidt-
to-Step-Down-12448538.php)

~~~
brepl
Makes more sense than the current HN title.

------
jtchang
Investors are seeing this as a non-event. He's still going to be around, just
a much more limited capacity.

More interesting is who they decide to appoint.

~~~
notatoad
Who they decide to appoint will only be interesting if they appoint somebody
interesting, which seems unlikely. Larry Page is still running the show, and
moving from an executive chairman to a non-executive chairman will probably
only mean that the board has less power than they did before.

Odds are they appoint somebody politically well-connected, and that person
then gets to use the "chairman of the board at alphabet" title to lobby
various governments in Google's favour, rather than they appoint somebody who
is going to do any serious oversight of alphabet's executives.

~~~
georgeglue1
Interesting. Obama could be a good bet if he would take the job.

(Perhaps the departure was predicated on Obama agreeing in advance)

~~~
maxpupmax
Honest question: Why would Obama be a good bet? Or is this comment a joke?

~~~
georgeglue1
Obama could personally call any world leader and talk about taxes, privacy,
regulation, etc. with authority.

He would also be generally pragmatic, likable, and qualified.

~~~
andrew_
Objectively speaking, he would generally be considered likable by about 47.9
[1] of the voting public. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the vast
majority of employees of either Alphabet or Google would agree with your
assessment, and indeed likely most in the tech sector. But I'm not sure any
polarizing figure would be a good fit outside of those niches.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_app...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_approval_rating)

~~~
r00fus
47.9% (on average) approval rating by Americans for his job as President (and
consequently positions his cabinet, Congress and his party took). It's a
barometer of how Americans feel about the USG, too.

If you polled him right now across worldwide audience about his stature, it
would probably be north of 70%.

------
minimaxir
Schmidt will still be on the board.

IR release:
[https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2017/1221.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2017/1221.html)

~~~
puzzle
When he was hired, there was a pact with Larry and Sergey that the three would
run the company for 20 years: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-
executives/top-goo...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-
executives/top-google-execs-pledged-to-stay-20-years-report-
idUSN3026301220080131)

------
perseusprime11
Is it just me or does anybody else think that the reason could potentially be
a sexual harassment?

~~~
sumedh
Something is fishy which is why they released this info just before the
holidays so that the general public forgets about it soon.

~~~
tyingq
There is some amount of gossip floating around:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2371719/Googles-
Eric...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2371719/Googles-Eric-
Schmidts-open-marriage-string-exotic-lovers.html)

Not that the Daily Mail is a credible source, but there is a little smoke.

~~~
perseusprime11
It has got to be more than love rat though. He must have crossed a line
somewhere.

------
prepend
Is this related to #metoo?

~~~
bertil
For anyone wondering: there have been some rumours that Eric Schmidt has been
indiscrete in the past, more specifically that he described that he had an
“open marriage” and that he had relations with “exotic dancers”.

As far as I can tell, there is no reason to think that his close collaborators
at Google didn’t know about and discovered something unsavoury recently. More
to the point, there is no reason to think his behaviour (although offensive to
some) was ever non-consensual.

It’s entirely understandable that, after more than a decade at the helm of the
most incredible companies of all time, he’s stepping down to simply retire.

Given the times, the question bears being asked -- although as far as we can
tell, No.

~~~
eanzenberg
Cool, I always wanted our sexual culture to revert back to the puritan 1600's.

~~~
rayiner
It's not a reversion, it's a continued evolution. As Dworkin noted:

> Empirically speaking, sexual liberation was practiced by women on a wide
> scale in the sixties and it did not work: that is, it did not free women.
> Its purpose—it turned out—was to free men to use women without bourgeois
> constraints, and in that it was successful.

The hippies became Reaganites and women were allowed to participate in the
economy to some extent, but that freedom also came with the expectation of
sexual availability. You see it even now: suggest that maybe we should
prohibit relationships between coworkers, and men flip out. The idea that we
might categorically close off some spheres of life to sexual advances, so that
women can work in peace and build their careers, induces apoplexy.

~~~
eanzenberg
Weird though, because school/work is the most common place for couples to
meet. Your opinion is another example of ivory-tower syndrome, or living in an
ultra-liberal bubble.

Coworkers abstaining has more to do with risk (greater on the men’s side).
Elites have always tried controlling sexual freedom and exploration because it
threatens their control over literally creating future elite generations.

The sexual revolution absolutely improved women’s prospects from the
Eisenhower era. Instead of forced to religious-coupling or pushed into
traditional female roles, instead women were able to more freely choose their
mate.

~~~
rayiner
Work is at 10% of relationships and rapidly falling: [https://arc-anglerfish-
washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...](https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-
prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/ARQXH32AVQ4KTP4255WUYDHHUQ.png). In a
few decades it’s going to be socially unacceptable to hit on coworkers. “If I
were looking for a date, I’d be on tinder!”

As to the sexual revolution, read Dworkin’s take on it. Her point that it is a
distinctly a man-centric view of sexual freedom is prescient. It’s not just
about being free to have sex whenever/with whoever you want, but also freedom
to live aspects of your life without dealing with sexual advances. It’s about
the freedom to go to work and have coworkers look at you as someone who can
help advance their careers, or someone who they can mentor, not a potential
date.

------
samfisher83
[https://www.recode.net/2017/6/13/15788892/alphabet-
sharehold...](https://www.recode.net/2017/6/13/15788892/alphabet-shareholder-
proposals-fair-shares-counted-equally-no-supervote)

Larry and Sergey have special voting shares so its their company. In this case
how much does the board really matter. Sergey and Larry can do what they want.

~~~
telltruth
Have you looked at Alphabet or other big company board? One thing you will
notice is that lot of board members are actually from giant investment funds
(3 in case of Google, much worse for companies like Microsoft). Regardless of
who owns voting shares, these investors have huge say on how things gets done.

For example, they can threaten to dump their stock or not buy in anymore.
Because of small daily volumes relative to market cap even small dumping can
have huge price swings in stock. For public companies, their stock is
literally a currency. They use it for acquisitions, hiring and so on. These
investors can reject motions in board voting and usually always want to
tighten screws for short term gains.

Now you should have more understanding on why Google was forced to hire people
like Ruth Porat as CFOs and why she can cut down on so many projects for "more
business focus" and increase "shareholder value". Owning majority voting
shares are not that useful as they were hyped up to be.

------
oh-kumudo
What is he doing as of late? I don't really feel his presence bears too much
significance for today's Google..

~~~
oh_sigh
“In recent years, I’ve been spending a lot of my time on science and
technology issues, and philanthropy, and I plan to expand that work.”

------
zeep
good news that he is getting less power

------
sctb
We've updated the link from [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/eric-schmidt-is-
stepping-dow...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/eric-schmidt-is-stepping-
down-as-the-executive-chairman-of-alphabet.html), which points to this.

------
yuhong
As it happens, I posted a blog post on some issues about Google, Mozilla, and
the debt-based economy:

[http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2017/12/google-mozilla-and-
debt...](http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2017/12/google-mozilla-and-debt-based-
economy.html)

I now have email threads with jrockway and ChuckMcM on this.

~~~
kzrdude
Your blog post has an unreadable presentation and looks like blog spam,
unfortunately.

~~~
yuhong
I agree that I really should clean my blog up. Creating a blog post is easier
than linking to individual tweets. This is the Blogspot default look.

~~~
lwf
Consider re-writing it as prose, instead?

