Eric Schmidt, Google

Wednesday 8th October 2008

Eric Schmidt, the current CEO of Google, also works for Apple. You'd think that being part of one globe-conquering corporation would be enough for one man, but you'd be wrong

Mr Schmidt has progressed through the computer technology world, starting by writing his PhD dissertation about the problems of managing distributed software development and tools for solving these problems and progressing through the professional world.

Mr Schmidt joined Google from Novell, where he was chairman and CEO. At Google, Mr Schmidt shares responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations, and is focused on building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google’s rapid growth while ensuring that quality remains high and product development times are kept to a minimum. Mr Schmidt’s 20 years of experience as an Internet strategist, entrepreneur and technologist give him a well-seasoned perspective which perfectly complements Google’s needs as a young and rapidly growing company with a unique corporate culture.

Prior to joining Novell, Mr Schmidt was chief technology 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, he 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. Mr 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. In 2006, Mr Schmidt was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, which recognized his work on “the development of strategies for the world’s most successful Internet search engine company.”

Mr Schmidt is not without both a conscience and a sense of humour though, as you would need working at a company like Google. In the second quarter of 2004, alongside Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Mr Schmidt agreed to cut his annual salary from $250,000 a year to a mere $1 a year. A meeting was held in early 2005 between the three leading men of the company and its compensation committee offering Mr Schmidt, Mr Brin and Mr Page pay rises due to the outstanding performance of the company. All three declined.

This outlandish career move seems unconventional and ill-advised to the poorly informed spectator. Mr Schmidt owns approximately 13.9 million shares of Google worth nearly $2.7bn. Mr Schmidt is now back to a slightly less modest salary.

In 2007, Mr Schmidt was voted number one of the 50 Most Important People on the Web by PC World magazine.

Commments

Well Eric Schmidt, has shown superior intelect over Rupert Murdoch, maybe young women cloud the business mind?. To charge for online news will be suicidal business plan of gifting rivals with the leading brandname people associate from online news reading. And charge for what? news is free, therefore shows Rupert has a sponsor problem and internal advertising problem, the true rust.

Posted by Brian Woods

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