Experiences of Eric Schmidt

On Thursday, June 2, in California, the three-day All Things Digital conference, which was held under the serial number "9", ended.

The person who opened this event was not Mark Zuckerberg, who is rightly considered the key person in the modern Web 2.0 revolution, and not Reid Hoffman, whose LinkedIn has been trading on the NYSE for several weeks. Even Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, was forced to rest until the second day of the conference. Not to mention Mark Andreessen, the “puppeteer” of overstated company ratings.

In the ergonomic red chair was Eric Schmidt, now occupying a seat on the board of directors (without a particular position in the company) and ceded the title of CEO to co-founder Larry Page.
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If someone suddenly forgot, I remind you - it was Schmidt who was the person who made Google the company it is today. If it were not for him, Page and Brin would sell their Excite product or Yahoo, never becoming one of the most expensive Internet companies of today. Companies whose business model seemed to be a bloated blank for Wall Street collars (it wasn’t); a company that the New York Times called the “bubble of the century” (it didn’t become one). Eric Schmidt is still called the “adult supervisor” over the founders of Google, whose need for fast-growing companies is so vehemently denied by the same Zuckerberg.

It is possible to argue, but it seems to me that Schmidt lost his chair in a brilliant moment. Of course, in the Valley now is much louder than Facebook, and, obviously, it will shake public markets at the entrance, whenever it happens. LinkedIn and Yandex have already broken Google's record in IPO volume. It is even possible that Schmidt threw off the reins of power for the reason that he began to become a "universal tool" inside and outside the company itself. Now all this is no longer important, because Eric can choose whether to be an authoritative representative of one of the largest Internet companies, or support Barack Obama in the next presidential election (Schmidt does not hide these intentions), in the end, he can do what he pleases.

So why didn’t he look happy on D9?

In an interview that Schmidt conducted with journalists from various publications, he took full responsibility for the failure of Google in the field of the social web. At least for this reason, he deserves more respect than anyone else.

But that is not all. Eric admitted that he made a lot of mistakes as the company's CEO. He several times out loud expressed regret that the company had missed the social revolution on the Internet. According to him, four years ago, he wrote internal notes, but did not do anything to participate in this race: "I knew for sure that I needed to do something and I did not do it." To the question “Why?” Schmidt replied as briefly as possible: “I was busy, but since the CEO must take responsibility, I can say: I screwed up.”

And then Eric burst. He talked about his failure in negotiations with music labels in an attempt to start a subscription service for Android, that he could not make quick decisions on the company's products (for this reason, by the way, Paget divided Google into 7 parts and meets with the head of each direction), about the failure of negotiations with Nokia in the process of licensing Android for devices of this company (which would give Google a huge advantage, primarily in emerging markets). He even mentioned Apple’s “beautiful but closed” products, which Google is currently trying to oppose with its own products. In the end, Schmidt literally signed the list of his own mistakes and shortcomings, saying that Bing does some of the search better and faster than Google.

The conversation ended with phrases about Google Wallet, which began to run around last week (and which already received critical comments from PayPal; according to the latest version, Google stole the company's “trade secrets”), as well as talking about no less revolutionary, but fast-growing services, like Square and Groupon, which also have to compete.

When Eric was still asked to tell about what he was able to achieve in Google, he replied: "You can write this story yourself."

Schmidt's modesty, and his pathological inability to throw words to the wind, made Google the company we know today. As for the rest, Eric told some interesting details.

So, for example, he mentioned that Google had finished developing a face recognition system based on photographs, as well as tracking mobile devices, but hid this development, because "It can be used by oppressive regimes and anti-democratic governments." His last phrase in this vein was: "Nobody needs biometric tracking bases." This is also connected with his greatest concern, as he himself put it: “the balkanization of the Internet”, when the web ceases to be united, intercontinental, whole, and begins to be controlled by governments of different countries.

Finally, at the final stage of the interview, Schmidt noted that traditional desktops and PC systems are beginning to die out, while web-based systems, also called “cloud services,” are developing by leaps and bounds. Eric called cloud services "the death of IT as we know it."

In the end, Eric Schmidt repeated more than once that he likes to work at Google, and he is not going to go anywhere anytime soon, putting down the joke that he "would work there even after death if he could find a way to do it."

Obviously, Google is no longer (if it ever once was) a company that makes no mistakes, but Eric’s ability to recognize them makes Google a reputation that no one on both sides of the ocean has.

Thanks for the info TechCrunch , ArsTechnica , Wired , D9