Eric Schmidt is chairman of the board and CEO of Google. Google founders recruited Schmidt from Novell, where he led strategic planning, management, and technology development as chairman and CEO.
"Recessions end on their own but politicans like to take credit for recovery"
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Google CEO talks about media, the economy and the internet heavyweight he runs, Google. Kai Ryssdal of American Public Media's "Marketplace" interviews Mr. Schmidt.
Notes from Mr Schmidt’s interview:
- He says he still doesn’t understand how we got into the financial mess: “the failure of information that got us to this point.”
- On recovery: “We’re on schedule. Because the people who got us into this told us that.”
- He reminds us that Google was not part of finance. “Had we been doing it we might have been measuring where all the money was.”
- “We already had our bubble… We had a great time. Next time, I’m going to sell at the peak.”
- Asked whether we can innovate out of a recession, Schmidt said “recessions end on their own and politicians love to take credit for recovery”
- Schmidt says the ups and downs will be amplified because there is more information.
- “You do not want the government to own your company… In many cases, they will turn out to be jobs programs.”
- He says simply that he hopes people will more likely say this (house inflation, Iceland’s economy) just “doesn’t make sense”
- Question : You guys are everywhere. Answer: “That is our goal.”
- “I learned a while ago that the right way to run human systems is transparency.” Problems came from information hiding.
- Brian Lehrer asks Schmidt where Google is so big it needs to be regulated as a public utility. A: “no” .
- I don’t know how to solve newspapers' generic problem. He says they are working on products in this arena.
- “The internet is a great friend to small businesses.” He says Google does not favor big businesses and big businesses don’t like that.
- Asked abot Froogle, he says, “Why did you remind me.” Why didn’t it work? “It didn’t work because it just didn’t work. We celebrate our failure in the company because we want people to take risks.”
- “We love advertising.” 97 percent of Google’s revenue is advertising. “No, we love advertising revenue.” He said his board is looking for more legs to the stool and Schmidt says they do have other streams coming.