Eric E. Schmidt
Encyclopedia
Eric Emerson Schmidt is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 software engineer
Software engineer
A software engineer is an engineer who applies the principles of software engineering to the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the software and systems that make computers or anything containing software, such as computer chips, work.- Overview :...

 and the current executive chairman of Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

. From 2001 to 2011, he served as the chief executive officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...

 of Google.

Additionally, Schmidt was a former member on the board of directors
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...

 for Apple and sat on the boards of trustees for both Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

 and Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

.

Along with Mike Lesk
Mike Lesk
Michael E. Lesk is a computer programmer.In the 1960s, Michael Lesk worked for the SMART Information Retrieval System project, wrote much of its retrieval code and did many of the retrieval experiments, as well as obtaining a PhD in Chemical Physics....

, Schmidt co-authored the lex analysis software program for the Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 computer operating system.

Biography

Schmidt was born in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, and grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia
Blacksburg, Virginia
Blacksburg is an incorporated town located in Montgomery County, Virginia, United States, with a population of 42,620 at the 2010 census. Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and Radford are the three principal jurisdictions of the Blacksburg-Christiansburg-Radford Metropolitan Statistical Area which...

. After graduating from Yorktown High School,
Schmidt attended Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 where he earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 in 1976. At the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, he earned an MS
Master of Science
A Master of Science is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in the sciences including the social sciences.-Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay:...

 in 1979 for designing and implementing a network
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

 linking the campus computer center, the CS and the EECS departments, and a PhD
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 in 1982 in EECS with a dissertation about the problems of managing distributed software development and tools for solving these problems. He was joint author of lex
Lex programming tool
Lex is a computer program that generates lexical analyzers . Lex is commonly used with the yacc parser generator. Lex, originally written by Mike Lesk and Eric Schmidt, is the standard lexical analyzer generator on many Unix systems, and a tool exhibiting its behavior is specified as part of the...

(a lexical analyzer and an important tool for compiler
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...

 construction). He taught at Stanford Business School as a part time professor.

Schmidt and his wife Wendy lived in Atherton, California
Atherton, California
Atherton is an incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States. Its population was 6,914 at the 2010 census. In September 2010, Forbes magazine placed Atherton's zip code of 94027 at #2 on its annual list of America's most expensive zip codes, with a median home price of $4,010,200...

 in 1999.
In 2011, he was reported to be dating Lisa Shields, a communications executive for the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...

, a New York-based foreign policy think tank.

He was on the list of ARTnews 200 top art collectors in 2008.

He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group
Bilderberg Group
The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an annual, unofficial, invitation-only conference of approximately 120 to 140 guests from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are people of influence. About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from...

 and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz
St. Moritz
St. Moritz is a resort town in the Engadine valley in Switzerland. It is a municipality in the district of Maloja in the Swiss canton of Graubünden...

, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.

The Eric Schmidt Family Foundation

The Eric Schmidt Family Foundation addresses issues of sustainability and the responsible use of natural resources. Wendy and Eric Schmidt, working with Heart Howerton, a San Francisco architectural firm that specializes in large-scale land use, have inaugurated several projects on the island of Nantucket that seek to sustain the unique character of the island, and to minimize the impact of seasonal visitation on the island's core community. Wendy Schmidt offered the prize purse of the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE
Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE
The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE is a challenge award offered by the X PRIZE Foundation, for efficient capturing of crude oil from ocean water. It was announced on July 29, 2010, and the official one-year competition begins on August 1, 2010...

, a challenge award
Award
An award is something given to a person or a group of people to recognize excellence in a certain field; a certificate of excellence. Awards are often signifiedby trophies, titles, certificates, commemorative plaques, medals, badges, pins, or ribbons...

 for efficient capturing of crude oil from seawater
Seawater
Seawater is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% . This means that every kilogram of seawater has approximately of dissolved salts . The average density of seawater at the ocean surface is 1.025 g/ml...

 motivated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which flowed unabated for three months in 2010, and continues to leak fresh oil. It is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry...

.

Early career

Early in his career, Schmidt held a series of technical positions with IT
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 companies, including Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

, Zilog
Zilog
Zilog, Inc., previously known as ZiLOG , is a manufacturer of 8-bit and 24-bit microcontrollers, and is most famous for its Intel 8080-compatible Z80 series.-History:...

 and Xerox
Xerox
Xerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...

’s famed Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

From Sun to Google

Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

 in 1983 as its first software manager. He rose to become director of software engineering, vice president and general manager of the software products division, vice president of the general systems group, and president of Sun Technology Enterprises.
In April 1997, he became CEO and chairman of the board of Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...

.

Schmidt left Novell after the acquisition of Cambridge Technology Partners
Cambridge Technology Partners
Cambridge Technology Partners was founded by John J. Donovan in 1991 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA as a division of Cambridge Technology Group, is a leading consulting firm with focus on solving complex business problems with technology based solutions.Today, the headquarters are based in Nyon...

. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....

 interviewed Schmidt. Impressed by him, they recruited Schmidt to run their company in 2001 under the guidance of venture capitalists John Doerr
John Doerr
L. John Doerr is an American venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California, in Silicon Valley. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed as a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the president and his administration with advice and...

 and Michael Moritz
Michael Moritz
Michael Moritz is a Welsh-American venture capitalist with Sequoia Capital in Menlo Park, California in Silicon Valley, and a former member of the board of directors of Google Inc.-Life and career:...

.

Google

Schmidt joined Google's board of directors
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...

 as chairman in March 2001 and became the company's CEO in August 2001. At Google, Schmidt shared responsibility for Google's daily operations with founders Page and Brin. As indicated by page 29 of Google's 2004 S-1 Filing Schmidt, Page, and Brin ran Google as a triumvirate
Triumvirate
A triumvirate is a political regime dominated by three powerful individuals, each a triumvir . The arrangement can be formal or informal, and though the three are usually equal on paper, in reality this is rarely the case...

. Schmidt had legal responsibilities typically assigned to the CEO of a public company and focused on management of the vice presidents and the sales organization.

According to Google's website, Schmidt also focuses on "building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum."

In 2007, PC World
PC World (magazine)
PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...

ranked Schmidt as the first on the list of the 50 most important people on the web, along with Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 co-Founders Larry Page
Larry Page
Lawrence "Larry" Page is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. As of April 4, 2011, he is also the chief executive of Google, as announced on January 20, 2011...

 and Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....

.

In 2009, Schmidt was considered one of the "TopGun CEOs" by Brendan Wood International, an advisory agency.

On January 20, 2011, Google announced that Schmidt would step down as CEO of Google, but continue as the executive chairman of the company, and act as an adviser to co-founders Page and Brin. Page replaced Schmidt as CEO on April 4, 2011.

The 2011 book In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy
Steven Levy
Steven Levy is an American journalist who has written several books on computers, technology, cryptography, the Internet, cybersecurity, and privacy.-Career:...

 claims that in 2001, Schmidt requested that a political donation he made be removed from Google search results. The request was not fulfilled. Schmidt has denied this ever occurred.

Apple

Schmidt was elected to Apple's board of directors on August 28, 2006. On August 3, 2009, it was announced that Schmidt would resign from the board of directors at Apple due to conflict of interests amid the growing competition between Google and Apple.

President Barack Obama

Schmidt "was a campaign advisor and major donor to Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

, and when he announced he was leaving that perch, he planned to remain 'at the forefront of Google’s government relations
Lobbying
Lobbying is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by various people or groups, from private-sector individuals or corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or...

 team.' And Obama even has considered him for Commerce Secretary
United States Secretary of Commerce
The United States Secretary of Commerce is the head of the United States Department of Commerce concerned with business and industry; the Department states its mission to be "to foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce"...

." Schmidt was an informal advisor to the Obama presidential campaign
Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008
Barack Obama, then junior United States Senator from Illinois, announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Springfield, Illinois, on February 10, 2007. On August 27, 2008, he was declared nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2008 presidential election...

 and began campaigning the week of October 19, 2008, on behalf of the candidate. He had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the chief technology officer position which Obama created in his administration.
After Obama won, Schmidt was a member of President Obama's transition advisory board
Presidential transition of Barack Obama
The presidential transition of Barack Obama began when he won the United States presidential election on November 4, 2008, and became the President-Elect. He was formally elected by the Electoral College on December 15, 2008...

. He proposed that the easiest way to solve all of the problems of the United States at once, at least in the domestic policy, is by a stimulus program that rewards renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...

 and, over time, attempts to replace fossil fuel
Fossil fuel
Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, and sometimes exceeds 650 million years...

s with renewable energy.
He has since become a new member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology PCAST.

New America Foundation

The New America Foundation
New America Foundation
The New America Foundation is a non-profit public policy institute and think tank with offices in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, CA. It was founded in 1999 by Ted Halstead, Sherle Schwenninger, Michael Lind and Walter Russell Mead....

 is a non-profit public policy institute and think tank, founded in 1999. Schmidt is the current chairman of the board of directors.
He succeeded founding chairman James Fallows
James Fallows
James Fallows is an American print and radio journalist. He has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly for many years. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a...

 in 2008.

Compensation

Upon being hired at Google, Eric Schmidt was paid a salary of $250,000, and an annual performance bonus. He was granted 14,331,703 shares of class B common stock at 30 cents per share, and 426,892 shares of Series C preferred stock at purchase price of $2.34.

Schmidt and the Google founders agreed to a base salary of $1
One-dollar salary
Several top executives in large businesses receive a salary of one dollar. In place of a salary, the executives receive stock options. In the United States, this approach impacts personal tax liability because although stock and option grants are taxed at federal income rates, they are exempt from...

 in 2004 (which continued through 2010), with other compensation of $557,465 in 2006, $508,763 in 2008 and $243,661 in 2009. He did not receive any additional stock, or options in 2009 or 2010.
Most of his compensation was for "personal security" and charters of private aircraft.
Schmidt is one of the few people who became billionaires (in United States dollar
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

s) based on stock options received as an employee in a corporation of which he was neither the founder nor a relative of the founder. In its 2011 'World's Billionaires' list, Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

 ranked Schmidt as the 136th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $7 billion.
Google gave him $100 million in 2011 as a parting gift.

Views

During an interview which aired on December 3, 2009, on the CNBC documentary "Inside the Mind of Google", Schmidt was asked, "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?" His reply was: "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important to remember, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act
USA PATRIOT Act
The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of the U.S. Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001...

. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities." At the Techonomy conference on August 4, 2010, Schmidt expressed that technology is good, but he said that the only way to manage the challenges is "much greater transparency and no anonymity." Schmidt also stated that in an era of asymmetric threats, "true anonymity is too dangerous."

In August 2010, Schmidt clarified his company's views on network neutrality
Network neutrality
Network neutrality is a principle that advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers or governments on consumers' access to networks that participate in the Internet...

: "I want to be clear what we mean by Net neutrality: What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don't discriminate against one person's video in favor of another. But it's okay to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video, and there is general agreement with Verizon and Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 on that issue."

See also

  • List of billionaires
  • 70/20/10 Model — business model advocated by Schmidt
  • RechargeIT
    RechargeIT
    RechargeIT is one of five initiatives within Google.org, the charitable arm of Google, created with the aim to reduce CO2 emissions, cut oil use, and stabilize the electrical grid by accelerating the adoption of plug-in electric vehicles.-History:...


External links

  • Eric Schmidt on Google+
    Google+
    Google+ is a social networking and identity service, operated by Google Inc.The service was launched on June 28, 2011, in an invite-only "field testing" phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who were over 18 years of age to the service to create their own accounts....



Speeches

Articles
  • CNET
    CNET
    CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...

    : Google balances privacy, reach (July 14, 2005), which uses Eric Schmidt as an example of the personal information held by Google.
  • Princeton University Board of Trustees
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