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Talking Schmidt: Google advisor/ former CEO says Elon Musk ‘exactly wrong’ on AI, doesn’t understand benefits

We haven’t done a Talking Schmidt in a while, not because the former Google CEO and current Alphabet Board member Dr. Eric Schmidt has been quiet with his sometimes outlandish commentary, but because of his reduced role at Google and its now parent company Alphabet. In February Schmidt stepped down as Chairman, taking an innovation role at MIT and was replaced by John Hennessy.

But back to the matter at hand…


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Eric Schmidt tells Google employees that Trump administration will do ‘evil things’

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Executive Chairman of Google Eric Schmidt testifies before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing called "The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?" on Capitol Hill, September 21, 2011. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS)

Executive chairman of Google parent Alphabet Eric Schmidt last week told employees that the Trump administration will do ‘evil things,’ reports Buzzfeed.

Schmidt’s remarks were made during the company’s weekly meeting at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, on January 26 [when he said the Trump administration] is “going to do these evil things as they’ve done in the immigration area and perhaps some others” …


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Eric Schmidt attended a ‘Burning Man for the 1%’ desert party with ‘unabashed luxury’

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Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt recently attended what many call “Burning Man for the 1%” with a handful of fellow tech and entrepreneur colleagues (via The Guardian). The festival is called Further Future and covers 49 acres of land right outside of Las Vegas. While Burning Man hides its lavishness, Further Future touts that it offers “unabashed luxury.”


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Talking Schmidt: The new Raspberry Pi is just $5 because of the Alphabet Inc. chairman

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Raspberry Pi Zero launched today, touted as “the $5 computer,” and it turns out (via The Wall Street Journal), that its existence — or at least its announcement today, before the launch of a more expensive Raspberry Pi — is partly thanks the words of none other than ex-Google CEO and now Alphabet Inc. chairman Eric Schmidt…
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Talking Schmidt: Google has so many companies lined up they are going to use names like ‘pi’ – you think I’m kidding?

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Back in the summer, Google announced a major new restructure and rebranding, with Google itself just one of many companies now owned by Alphabet. The move caught us all by surprise, and seemingly, caught Eric Schmidt by surprise too. Re/code was able to get hold of some recordings where the former Apple man stated he was on vacation when the company announced the move.

I wake up, and I’m the chairman of Alphabet. We sort of announced it without actually knowing which companies it would be. So we’re still working the details.

With Alphabet, each company within the group is given its own letter. Google, for instance, is ‘G’, and ‘L’ stands for Life Sciences. With there only being 26 letters in the alphabet, you might wonder what they’ll do when they’ve used all 26 of them. Schmidt’s answer: “After 26, we’re going to probably transcendental numbers”. Numbers like pi… “You think I’m kidding?”

Alphabet may have to start using them soon if Schmidt’s other comments are to be taken seriously. We’re to expect “a lot” of new companies: ““I’ve been meeting with the current CEOs of the Alphabet companies and the proposed ones. So you’ll see a lot coming.” He didn’t say what those new companies would be, but he apparently praised the innovation within the self-driving car move.

Schmidt was talking at the Virtuous Circle conference in Menlo Park, California when he made the comments. He spoke on many matters, including policy issues like encryption, the ‘Right to be Forgotten‘ policies in Europe and bandwidth regulation among others.  Like many, he’s worried about the tech scene in Europe, especially the Safe Harbor ruling which sees each country have its own digital borders, and their own set of regulations.

Alphabet is still in its early days, and like many of us, it seems Schmidt is excited to see what lies in the future.

Talking Schmidt: Google Glass is a long-term project, too important to scrap

Eric Schmidt

If you’ve been following the facts behind the situation with Glass, you know that the project is not seen as even close to being dead within the Mountain View company. Despite the Explorer Program being shut down earlier this year, Google clearly sees potential in the platform. And according to comments recently made by Google’s Eric Schmidt, Glass is just far too important to scrap…
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Talking Schmidt: I’m happy for you Megan, but men have the most valuable input on gender equality in tech

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Eric Schmidt spoke today on gender equality in the tech industry at SXSW along with United States Chief Technology Officer (and former Google exec) Megan Smith. During the panel, Schmidt was kind enough to chime in on a number of topics, such as which questions he thought Smith should answer, and his thoughts on the Raspberry Pi.

Schmidt’s frequent interruptions were highlighted by an attendee who questioned the executive on his behavior during the panel. Without responding to the woman’s concerns about cutting off Smith, Schmidt did agree that the lack of women in the industry is “a tragedy.”


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Talking Schmidt: the Internet will disappear

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Asked at the World Economic Forum to predict the future of the web, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said that “the Internet will disappear.”

The somewhat surprising prediction isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds. What he means is that the Internet of Things will become so ubiquitous, that much of our interaction with the web will be invisible.

“There will be so many IP addresses…so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it,” he explained. “It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room. A highly personalized, highly interactive and very, very interesting world emerges.”

It’s clearly hyperbole: none of us are going to stop viewing webpages anytime soon. And as Gizmodo wryly insinuates, that “with your permission” part is far from certain when a company makes its money from the data rather than the devices. But there’s certainly a core truth here: with more and more smart devices, we won’t need to interact with them so directly.

Google is, though, not taking its dominant position for granted. Schmidt said that at a time when new apps can spring out of nowhere and become billion dollar businesses, “all bets are off.”

Check out some other Talking Schmidt quotes.

Talking Schmidt: Our biggest search competitor is Amazon

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Business Leaders Meet In Sun Valley, Idaho For Allen And Co. Annual Conference

Eric Schmidt has been busy pounding the pavement promoting his new book How Google Works, but today the Google chairman switched gears and made a stop in Berlin to visit the headquarters of Native Instruments, a major producer of hardware and software for digital music production. In front of an intimate group of company founders, scientists and economists, Schmidt touched on important topics like innovation, tech and the future of the internet.


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Talking Schmidt: We’re not focused on advertisers or competitors, we’re focused on users

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Google chairman Eric Schmidt and company advisor Jonathan Rosenberg have been on the road promoting their new book How Google Works and the duo recently spoke with Steven Levy and recapped several familiar events in Google’s illustrious history, however one morsel of newer information managed to standout.


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Talking Schmidt: Know your competition, but don’t copy it

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talking schmidt how google works

“Know your competition, but don’t copy it.” Those words of wisdom come from the image above accompanying a message put on the entirely original – not a copy of Facebook – Google+ by Google executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt. Schmidt is promoting his new book with Jonathan Rosenberg called How Google Works due out next month where the billionaire lays out the principles that made Google what it is today.

Included with the lemonade stand image and ‘don’t copy’ caption is another Schmidt line on originality and competition. “Playing catch-up with the competition will never help you get ahead by creating something new,” Schmidt says. Google would be the “hard” boozy lemonade to the competitions’ fresh lemonade. In the case of Google Plus, the booze could be the hangouts or perhaps the photo editing features or integration with other Google products.

Now picture this tidbit from Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs:

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

It’s hard to deny that Android started looking a lot more like iOS after the iPhone’s introduction, and iOS has clearly borrowed its fair share of features from Google’s mobile operating system, but there’s no denying that Schmidt’s message could be challenged. File this one with the rest under Talking Schmidt.

Talking Schmidt: If you want to have fun, then go to college!

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Inside The South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival

Photo via Bloomberg

Finally some wisdom from Schmidt that I can’t dispute: “If all you care about is having fun, you should go to college.”

You know, the Google chairman has a point. He did include a number of other reasons for attending college as well, but that was really just sugar coating:

If all you care about is money, you should go to college. If all you care about is culture and creativity, you should go to college. If all you care about is having fun, you should go to college. Go to college. I can’t be any clearer.

His comments were made during a session at last week’s SXSW (South by Southwest) Festival (via TechCrunch) in Austin, Texas, in yet another appearance to promote his book The New Digital Age.
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Talking Schmidt: Robots will become omnipresent in our lives

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Our mentor and life coach (and Google chairman) Eric Schmidt is back to enlightening us as only he can. While both exciting the geek in us and deeply concerning the sci-fi movie watcher among us, Schmidt spoke yesterday about Google’s work on automation and experimenting with technology to replace common, repetitive behaviors. You know, like in The Jetsons. Per Bloomberg‘s report of his discussion at the Oasis: The Montgomery Summit, Schmidt shared his vision for the future: “Robots will become omnipresent in our lives in a good way.”


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Talking Schmidt: Mobile devices serve as a check and balance on terrible things

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Eric Schmidt B&W

In a recent video interview with The World Post, Google’s Eric Schmidt sounded off on how he thinks smartphones and mobile devices are impacting global politics.

Schmidt describes the positives and negatives of smartphone prevalence across the world (naturally thinking of many more benefits, of course). He addresses government’s ability to use our mobile devices against us, likely referring to recent controversies around NSA practices.

But Schmidt focuses heavily on smartphones enabling young people to have access to more information and grow their voice in the political process, something he says he is working on.

Smartphones make it more difficult for politicians to lie to young people, Schmidt says, because it’s easier to fact check information. Schmidt also describes smartphones as a ‘check and balance’ against evil people and terrible things as cameras and GPS equip young people with tools to spread information. Check out the full video below:


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Talking Schmidt: Armies should have drones, not citizens

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Eric Schmidt has seen the future and he doesn’t like it. Private citizens remotely piloting drones to spy on one another? Not in his backyard!

That’s the message he offered to The Guardian when discussing the future of certain technologies:

“You’re having a dispute with your neighbour,” he hypothesised. “How would you feel if your neighbour went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their back yard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?”

Such a timely point in history to mention privacy, right? And from the executive chairman of Google of all places? The elephant in the room here, of course, is Google Glass, you know, the video camera-equipped heads-up display you wear on your face? Like a drone?
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Talking Schmidt: Drop smartphones, not bombs

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(Businessweek / Peg Korpinski)

(Businessweek / Peg Korpinski)

Eric Schmidt revealed today that he has figured out how to end war and conflict across the globe. His solution? Drop millions of smartphones into other countries instead of going to war. Nope, really, that’s his plan.

According to the executive, raining down smartphones on Iraq or Afghanistan could have dramatically altered the course of history and prevented war in both countries. He suggests that the United States “could have airdropped a million into Afghanistan or Iraq as a thought experiment.”

We can only thank Eric Schmidt for selflessly suggesting a deep, thoughtful solution to global conflict, which could in no way financially benefit his company (which holds a smartphone OS marketshare majority). Yeah… we’re not really expecting the Department of Defense to offer Schmidt a job anytime soon.

Talking Schmidt: “We can end government censorship in a decade”

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In our perpetually continuing series fondly known as Talking Schmidt, we catch up with the Google Chairman and mouthpiece in mid-speech in Washington courtesy of Bloomberg:

Schmidt described the coming of a “network age” in which Internet users communicate and organize socially through private channels shielded by encryption, which scrambles data with a mathematical formula that can be decoded only with a special digital key.

“We can end government censorship in a decade,” Schmidt said during a speech in Washington. “The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything.”

ENCRYPT. EVERYTHING. REALLY?!


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Talking Schmidt: Tired of Thinking? Google Says We Won’t Have To

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Tip o the hat on the title to the WSJ. The interview doesn’t really give us much new info except he’s obviously hinting at a Google Watch.

Talking Schmidt: Google Chairman says Android is more secure than the iPhone

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During a Q&A session at the Gartner Symposium, Eric Schmidt was asked for his response to people who say that Android’s security is lacking compared to competitors such as Apple’s iPhone. Schmidt’s answer was straightforward:

“Not secure? It’s more secure than the iPhone.”

This response understandably elicited laughter from the audience.

Sure, Google has created software to ensure that Android is more secure than it used to be, but that hasn’t stopped malware creators from exploiting holes in the operating system’s Play Store or creating fake apps for the purpose of phishing user information. Yes, Apple has had their share of security issues as well, but Schmidt’s assertion that Android is more secure than the iPhone seems just a bit on the ridiculous side.

Talking Schmidt: I’m rather perplexed by tax avoidance debate

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In the latest in our Talking Schmidt series, Google exec chairman Eric Schmidt has told the BBC that he is “perplexed” as to why anyone should debate why a company that “tries to do the right thing” would route all its UK adword sales via Ireland to halve its tax bill.

What we are doing is legal. I’m rather perplexed by this debate, which has been going in the UK for some time, because I view taxes as not optional. I view that you should pay the taxes that are legally required. It’s not a debate. You pay the taxes …
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Talking Schmidt: “Google is a capitalist country … company”

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Google's Eric Schmidt in Burma

In the fifth installment of our continuing series Talking Schmidt we bring you the most insightful lines from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Schmidt, who is promoting his new book The New Digital Age with his coauthor Jared Cohen, responded to UK politician Ed Miliband’s call for “responsible capitalism” earlier this week.

He reminded Miliband that Google is a country… ahem, company powered by profit and projects like wearable computing and self-driving cars better serve Google than forfeiting more of its profits to various governments.

“Google is a capitalist country … company,” he corrected himself, to laughter from the audience. “It’s easy to say you would like us to have to have less profits and have that somewhere else. We will comply with the letter of the law, but we’re trying to avoid being doubly and triply taxes, which would prevent us investing in some of the wilder things we do.”


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