about eric schmidt

Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer. He is currently technical advisor to Alphabet and chair of the US Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Advisory Board.^[3] He is known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015^[4] and executive chairman of Alphabet Inc.^[5][6][7] from 2015 to 2017.^[4] In 2017, Forbes ranked Schmidt as the 119th-richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of US$11.1 billion.^[8]

As an intern at Bell Labs, Schmidt did a complete re-write of Lex, a software program to generate lexical analysers for the Unix computer operating system. From 1997 to 2001, he was chief executive officer (CEO) of Novell.^[9] From 2001 to 2011, Schmidt served as the CEO of Google. He has served on various other boards in academia and industry, including the Boards of Trustees for Carnegie Mellon University,^[10] Apple,^[11] Princeton University,^[12] and Mayo Clinic.^[13]

Early life[edit]

Schmidt was born in Falls Church, Virginia, and grew up in Falls Church and Blacksburg, Virginia.^[7][14] He is one of three sons of Eleanor, who had a master's degree in psychology, and Wilson Emerson Schmidt, a professor of international economics at Virginia Tech and Johns Hopkins University, who worked at the U.S. Treasury Department during the Nixon Administration.^[7][14] Schmidt spent part of his childhood in Italy as a result of his father's work and has stated that it had changed his outlook.^[15]

Schmidt graduated from Yorktown High School in the Yorktown neighborhood of Arlington County, Virginia, in 1972, after earning eight varsity letter awards in long-distance running.^[16][17] He attended Princeton University, starting as an architecture major and switching to electrical engineering, earning a BSE degree in 1976.^[18][19] From 1976 to 1980, Schmidt stayed at the International House Berkeley, where he met his future wife, Wendy Boyle. In 1979, at the University of California, Berkeley, Schmidt then earned an M.S. degree for designing and implementing a network (Berknet) linking the campus computer center with the CS and EECS departments.^[20] There, he also earned a PhD degree in 1982 in EECS, with a dissertation about the problems of managing distributed software development and tools for solving these problems.^[21]

Career[edit]

Early career[edit]

Early in his career, Schmidt held a series of technical positions with IT companies including Byzromotti Design, Bell Labs (in research and development),^[14] Zilog, and Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

During his summers at Bell Labs, he and Mike Lesk wrote Lex,^[18][22] a program used in compiler construction that generates lexical-analyzers from regular-expression descriptions.

Sun Microsystems[edit]

In 1983, Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems as its first software manager.^[14] 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.^[23]

During his time at Sun, he was the target of two notable April Fool's Day pranks.^[24][25][26] In the first, his office was taken apart and rebuilt on a platform in the middle of a pond, complete with a working phone. The next year, a working Volkswagen Beetle was taken apart and re-assembled in his office.

Novell[edit]

In April 1997, Schmidt became the CEO and chairman of the board of Novell. He presided over a period of decline at Novell where its IPX protocol was being replaced by open TCP/IP products, while at the same time Microsoft was shipping free TCP/IP stacks in Windows 95, making Novell much less profitable. In 2001, he departed after the acquisition of Cambridge Technology Partners.^[9]

Google[edit]

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin interviewed Schmidt. Impressed by him,^[27] they recruited Schmidt to run their company in 2001 under the guidance of venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz.

In March 2001, Schmidt joined Google's board of directors as chair, and became the company's CEO in August 2001. At Google, Schmidt shared responsibility for Google's daily operations with founders Page and Brin. Prior to the Google initial public offering, Schmidt had responsibilities typically assigned to the CEO of a public company and focused on the management of the vice presidents and the sales organization.^[28] According to Google, Schmidt's job responsibilities included "building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while the product development cycle times are kept to a minimum."^[29]

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 $0.30 per share and 426,892 shares of Series C preferred stock at purchase price of $2.34.^[30]

In 2004, Schmidt and the Google founders agreed to a base salary of US$1 (which continued through 2010) with other compensation of $557,465 in 2006,^[31] $508,763 in 2008, and $243,661 in 2009. He did not receive any additional stock or options in 2009 or 2010.^[32][33] Most of his compensation was for "personal security" and charters of private aircraft.^[33]

In 2007, PC World ranked Schmidt as the first on its list of the 50 most important people on the Web, along with Google co-founders Page and Brin.^[34]

Schmidt is one of a few people^[who?] who became billionaires (in United States dollars) based on stock options received as employees in corporations of which they were neither the founders nor relatives of the founders.^{[35][failed verification]}

In its 2011 'World's Billionaires' list, Forbes ranked Schmidt as the 136th-richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $7 billion.^[36]

On January 20, 2011, Google announced that Schmidt would step down as the CEO of Google but would take new title as executive chairman of the company and act as an adviser to co-founders Page and Brin.^[37] Google gave him a $100 million equity award in 2011 when he stepped down as CEO.^[38] On April 4, 2011, Page replaced Schmidt as the CEO.^[39]

On December 21, 2017, Schmidt announced he would be stepping down as the executive chairman of Alphabet.^[40][41] Schmidt stated that "Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet's evolution for this transition."^[42]

Department of Defense[edit]

In March 2016 it was announced that Eric Schmidt would chair a new advisory board for the Department of Defense,^[43] titled the Defense Innovation Advisory Board.^[44] The advisory board serves as a forum connecting mainstays in the technology sector with those in the Pentagon.^[45]

To avoid potential conflicts of interest within the role, where Schmidt retains his role as technical adviser to Alphabet, and where Google's bidding for the multi-million dollar Pentagon cloud contract, the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, is ongoing: Schmidt screens emails and other communications, stating, "“There’s a rule: I’m not allowed to be briefed” about Google or Alphabet business as it relates to the Defense Department".^[46]

Role in illegal non-recruiting agreements[edit]

While working at Google, Schmidt was involved in activities^[47] that later became the subject of the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation case that resulted in a settlement of $415 million paid by Adobe, Apple, Google and Intel to employees. In one incident, after receiving a complaint from Steve Jobs of Apple, Schmidt sent an email to Google's HR department saying; "I believe we have a policy of no recruiting from Apple and this is a direct inbound request. Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening? I will need to send a response back to Apple quickly so please let me know as soon as you can. Thanks Eric".^[48] Schmidt's email led to a recruiter for Google being "terminated within the hour" for not having adhered to the illegal scheme. Under Schmidt, there was a "Do Not Call list" of companies Google would avoid recruiting from.^[49] According to a court filing, another email exchange shows Google's human resources director asking Schmidt about sharing its no-cold-call agreements with competitors. Schmidt responded that he preferred it be shared "verbally, since I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?"^[47][50]

Apple[edit]

On August 28, 2006, Schmidt was elected to Apple Inc.'s board of directors, a position he held until August 2009.^[11][51]

Other ventures[edit]

Schmidt sat on the boards of trustees of Carnegie Mellon University and Princeton University.^[10][12] He taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business in the 2000s.^[52][53] Schmidt serves on the boards of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Khan Academy, and The Economist.^[54][55]

New America is a non-profit public-policy institute and think tank, founded in 1999. Schmidt succeeded founding chairman James Fallows in 2008.^[56]

Founded in 2010 by Schmidt and Dror Berman, Innovation Endeavors is an early-stage venture capital. The fund, based in Palo Alto, California, invested companies such as Mashape, Uber, Quixey, Gogobot, BillGuard, and Formlabs.^[57][58]