Eric Schmidt

Jobs and Schmidt connect at the introduction of the iPhone, 2007 businessweek.com: The Google executive chairman admired Jobs’s passion, courage, and smarts When he went to Apple, he was basically down to 1 percent market share. Apple was near bankruptcy, the company had been for sale, there were a series of management changes. I talked to him about it. He said, “The thing that I have that no one else has is very loyal customers.” He had these fanatical people who would line up all night for a product that wasn’t any good. He figured correctly that by upgrading and investing in and broadening the portfolio, he could do it. At some level he foresaw the next 10 years. ...

Google has given all of its employees $1,000 cash “holiday bonuses” and 2011 salary increases of at least 10%, a loyal reader tells us. The 10% company-wide raise will take effect on January 1, 2011. In addition, Google will also give each employee an additional raise equivalent to 1X the employee’s target bonus for the year. And employees will be eligible for additional “merit increases” based on their individual performance. ...

Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin considered hiring Apple CEO Steve Jobs as the company’s first CEO, according to a new documentary. After interviewing a dozen unsuitable candidates during Google’s early years, Page and Brin went to meet Jobs, a personal “hero” of theirs. The pair then asked investor John Doerr, “Why can’t he be our CEO?” The anecdote comes from an episode on Page and Brin from the Bloomberg documentary series “Bloomberg Game Changers.” Earlier this month, the Bloomberg series, which looks at “today’s most influential leaders,” aired an episode on Jobs. ...

In a CNN interview Monday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt responded to questions about what Google knows about people by saying that if people don’t like having their homes photographed for Google Street View for the world to see, they can “just move.” The comment came during an interview on the Parker Spitzer show. “With Street View, we drive by exactly once, so you can just move,” said Schmidt, eliciting uncomfortable laughter from interviewer Kathleen Parker. “The point is, we only do it once. This is not a monitoring situation.” ...

Google just took a jab at Microsoft. Oh, the search giant already did that last week, and it wasn’t the first time? Yes, you’re right, but now it’s Google CEO Eric Schmidt targeting the software giant’s biggest product, the latest version of which is particularly successful. Schmidt recently made comments about Windows 7 during a question and answer session at the 25th anniversary celebration of MIT’s legendary Media Lab. In a wide-ranging discussion with National Public Radio journalist John Hockenberry, Schmidt proclaimed that the goal of great technology is to get people to use computers less so they can be more productive. That’s fine, but he didn’t stop there. “The hours I spend reprogramming my PC in Windows 7 is not a very good use of my time,” he told students in the MIT Media Lab auditorium according to CRN. “Why I choose to do that in the first place is a problem with judgment,” he added. ...