Just a few days after the Galaxy Nexus landed in the United States, it appears that Google’s next foray into the consumer electronics space may be a little bigger. According to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Google’s Eric Schmidt has let slip that Google plans to throw its considerable weight behind a tablet within the next six months.
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A surprising piece of news was buried in an article this week. Friday, The Mercury News reported the three top executives at Google, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, are offering to pay $33 million to finish the restoration of the historic airship hangar at Moffett Field. The giant structure, built in the 1930s and called Hangar One, sits a few miles from the Googleplex and it’s well known the Google executives have special permission from NASA to park their jets at Moffett. → Read More
“Six months from now you’ll say the opposite. Because ultimately applications vendors are driven by volume. And the volume is favored by the open approach that Google is taking.”
That was Google Chairman Eric Schmidt speaking at LeWeb a couple days ago. Specifically, he was addressing a question from the audience wondering why most big application developers are still choosing to develop for the iOS platform first instead of Android.
First of all, if you haven’t watched Schmidt’s entire talk with Loic Le Meur yet, you really should. They cover a range of topics important to both Google and the broader tech space. Plus, it will avoid the small situation that arose yesterday when Schmidt was misquoted, making him sound much more arrogant about the Android platform than he actually was. → Read More
Microsoft may be preparing for a big Mango push here in the States, but the Wall Street Journal reports that Google chairman Eric Schmidt recently took them to task at a press conference for claiming that Android devices infringe Microsoft-owned patents.
“Microsoft is not telling the truth on this issue, and they are using tactics to scare people because they are scared of the success of Android,” Schmidt said. → Read More
Even though Larry Page has been CEO of Google for just about 6 months now, he hasn’t been as visible as many other high-profile CEOs. In fact, the most we’ve heard from him has been during earnings calls. But today during Google’s annual Zeitgeist conference, Page took the stage to address the audience. Watch the entire 45-minute talk above.
Page talked about a range of things — everything from Search to Android to YouTube to Chrome to Google+ to Nikola Tesla (the great inventor who “failed”). But things got more interesting when Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman who, of course, preceded Page as CEO, joined Page on stage for a Q&A. They talk the Motorola deal (while it will nearly double the size of Google’s workforce, Page jokes that he wished it doubled their market cap too), patents (Page notes Google has never sued anyone over patents), innovation (the self-driving cars), and agility (changing the company every year). → Read More
The Gillmor Gang -— Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — calmed down after a week of Dreamforce, the annual salesforce.com user conference. As the editorial independence of TechCrunch is questioned, let us be clear that Dan Farber is editor in chief of CBSNewsOnline, Robert Scoble is Chief Scobleizer Officer of Rackspace, and the rest of us are Salesforce.com employees. Let me be clear that I support and appreciate Michael Arrington and his evolution for a very simple reason, namely that the horse he rode in on is the very reason why TechCrunch exists and is so valued.
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Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman and former CEO, took the stage at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco today to talk about a host of topics, including the success of Google Apps, his feelings about Steve Jobs, Google’s recent acquisition of Motorola, with the conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff even ranging into Schmidt’s thoughts on the current landscape facing the U.S. patent market.
The executive chairman began by addressing the purchase of Nortel Networks’ roster of patents by a group of buyers that included some of Google’s rivals, including Microsoft and Apple. Fellow TechCruncher MG Siegler covered the back-and-forth between Google and Microsoft that unfolded in regard to the supposition that the group that bought the Nortel patents was effectively attempting to cut the legs out from underneath Android. → Read More
During conversation with friend yesterday (in which he was trying to figure out how he would hypothetically accept payments for a pizza he delivered via mini-drone helicopter) I realized how dinky our current mobile payment options are; Should he attach a iPhone and Square dongle to the delivery box? Make customers sign up for Venmo? Set up a PayPal account and/or only deliver to people who have a Nexus S?
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Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt sat down and talked to reporters at the Sun Valley conference in Idaho last week, dropping all sorts of science about Google +, Google China and whether or not we are in a tech bubble, among other things. One of the most interesting nuggets of info relayed was the fact that Schmidt could envision startups wanting to build on top of the Google+ platform, which now has 10 million users in its beta but no API in sight. → Read More
Earlier this week, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt gave an over 70 minute long talk to press at the Sun Valley conference here in Idaho. Towards the end of the talk, a reporter asked the former Google CEO whether he, like many in the media world, thinks we are presently in a tech bubble and what Google’s $1.67 billion 2004 IPO at a $23 billion valuation (Google’s current valuation is 171.43 billion) means in light of today’s IPO valuations. → Read More
What do Lady Gaga and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt have in common? Well according to a very interesting piece in the New York Times by former TCr Evelyn Rusli, they’ve both invested in Backplane, a new startup founded by Lady Gaga’s business manager Troy Carter.
Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures and Gaga have partnered up to finance Cartier’s still in stealth startup, with Gaga being a 20% shareholder. Tomorrow Ventures is leading the angel round, which is currently at over $1 million. It is not clear yet as to whether it has closed. → Read More
It was a surprising way to kick off a technology conference at a moment in time where any piece of news– big or small– cues up the BUBBLE-OR-NOT Greek chorus of wailing and chest beating. Tech valuations, while almost universally sky-high, are nowhere near as high as the paranoia that we’re in a bubble. Or worse: The fear that you aren’t on the record having called this one out. A lot of tech commentary today has all the sophistication of a schoolyard game of “NOT IT!”
But the man on stage opening All Things Digital’s ninth conference wasn’t a player in the Valley’s central Web 2.0 psychological drama like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook or Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn. CEO Dick Costolo of Twitter would wait until day two. Hearing from Marc Andreessen, the puppet master behind many of those soaring valuations, would have to wait too.
The man in All Things D’s ergonomic red hot seat was Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google– the last company everyone said would incite a public market tech bubble. (It didn’t.) The last company Wall Street watchers claimed was insanely overvalued. (It wasn’t.) The company that has been on top for much of the last decade, as the older generation of Web 1.0 giants have failed to innovate and up and comers have declined to go public.
So why didn’t he seem more happy? → Read More
It was only this past December that local business guide Backyard launched, backed by a few big-name early-stage investors. Now, less than five months later, they’re exiting and providing a nice, quick return for those investors.
PixelFish, a creator of local video marketing solutions for businesses, has snapped up Backyard in a deal that is roughly half stock and half cash, we’ve learned. The deal is for between $3 to $5 million — and again, is a nice exit since the service had raised just $150,000 in seed money from 500 Startups, Jason Calacanis, and Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures. Notably, this marks the second exit for Schmidt’s venture wing in as many weeks (after MindJolt acquired SGN last week). → Read More
TomorrowVentures, the investment firm founded by Google chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt has partnered with Digital October, a Moscow, Russia-based tech startup incubator.
According to local reports (via Quintura blog), Schmidt’s investment vehicle will team up with Digital October, a center in the heart of Moscow established by billionaire Mikhail Abyzov (chairman of Russian business group RU-COM), its investment arm Bright Capital and Telemarker, to find interesting opportunities for technology startup financings in the country. → Read More
All great CEOs have presentation secrets. Apple CEO Steve Jobs says “boom!” a lot — and other superlatives. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer loves to repeat certain words three times — often while clapping his hands. But what about departing Google CEO Eric Schmidt? What’s his secret?
It’s the use of the word “literally”, literally. → Read More
In the closing keynote of the DLD Conference in Germany, soon to be former Google CEO Eric Schmidt took the stage, notably less than a week after passing on the reins of the company to Google co-founder Larry Page.
These are my live notes from the keynote: → Read More
On May 1, 2002, two men took the stage at a Stanford University event to answer some questions about their startup. The startup? Google. The two men? Eric Schmidt and Larry Page.
That was less than a year after Schmidt officially became CEO of the company, taking over the role from Page. Yesterday, after a decade of success, the two announced they would be switching back. And while some answers are starting to trickle out as to why such a change is taking place now, it’s fascinating to look back in time and see how it all began. Luckily, Stanford captured the talk in 24 short videos clips found here. → Read More
We’re still digesting the huge news today that co-founder Larry Page will be replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO of Google on April 4. It’s a move that no one saw coming — or did they? After reading over his statements and listening to his comments during the earnings calls, Schmidt does give some insight into the move.
Most notably, Schmidt says that he got together with Page and fellow co-founder Sergey Brin over the holidays to figure out how to best run the company going forward. In other words, this decision was made very recently, and hasn’t been a long-time coming. But why now? It’s pretty clear from Schmidt’s comments (as well as Page’s) that there was a feeling that Google has been moving too slowly recently. Specifically, Schmidt notes discussions the three have had about “how best to simplify our management structure and speed up decision making.” → Read More
Google has just announced their Q4 2010 results. Oh, and they announced that co-founder Larry Page would be replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO on April 4. Obviously, the earnings call is going to be interesting.
Find our live notes below (paraphrased):
Eric Schmidt: Thanks everyone for getting on our call. We jumped on to talk about the other announcement this afternoon. We had a very strong quarter and year. Our outlook is very bright. Larry, Sergey and I have spent a long time talking about how to run things. But we thought about how to run things even better. After discussions, we decided to change things. We’ve been doing it one way, but we think this way will be better. Larry will run things day-to-day, I’ll be elevated. And Sergey will do what he does best. → Read More
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