During Eric Schmidt’s talk on stage here at Web 2.0 Summit, John Battelle asked the Google CEO about the origin of the 10% raise leak that eventually led to the firing of a Google employee last week.
Schmidt explained that the decision to give a raise was made in the spring, and that the company is still carrying residue of the recession, “We wanted to share our success and knew even upper-level workers are struggling with real estate costs.” Along with the increase in employee salary, Google made the commitment to focus on further acquisitions that lead to core products like Android and Maps.
While Schmidt chalked rumors of Google’s brain drain to “poor story writing” by the media, he did say that “It is a war for talent” and that the company is now hiring hundreds of people a week. Said Schmidt, “Any company of scale is subject to the following narrative, ‘Big fat dumb and happy,’” implying that this is not the case with Google.
When asked about Google’s M&A failures, Schmidt granted that Google’s had both successes and failures in terms of acquisitions. “People are ecstatic to work for Google, and people are dying to work for Google,” he insisted.
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recruited Eric Schmidt from Novell, where he led that company’s strategic planning, management and technology development as chairman and CEO. Since coming to Google, Eric has focused 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. Along with Larry and Sergey, Eric shares responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations. Eric’s Novell...
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