Following a blowout quarter and entering a year where most expect Android to take over the world, Eric Schmidt is out at Google. It\u2019s a bombshell that raises a ton of questions and speculation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no question in my mind that Schmidt was no longer welcome \u2014 perhaps also no longer comfortable \u2014 as CEO. Nicholas Carson says he was\u00a0not always in charge anyway<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why is this happening at all, let alone now? A lot of us wonder if this will result in Google being more or less \u201cevil.\u201d I don\u2019t know enough about the company or its leaders to decide that right now, but I do believe that Google has finally become image-conscious, and the \u201cevil\u201d controversies of late play into that. I also think the founders are concerned enough about the company\u2019s focus and direction to make this change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2010 was a rough year for Google\u2019s image. As head of the company, Schmidt was beyond unapologetic, and borderline obtuse when discussing Street View, your driving privileges, and your privacy in general. PC World has\u00a0a nice recap<\/a>, nearly all of it from the last ten months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even Schmidt\u2019s\u00a0parting words<\/a>\u00a0were eye-opening until reading Scott Austin\u2019s flashback. In the worst case it\u2019s just another awkward comment from a Ph.D. with a history of making awkward comments. Either way, I find it representative of Google\u2019s current PR problems, no thanks to the CEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what of Sergey? The\u00a0announcement<\/a>\u00a0says he \u201cwill devote his energy to strategic projects, in particular working on new products,\u201d but features no quotes from him. While it\u2019s not unusual for technical folks to roll their sleeves back up, this arrangement strikes me as what I\u2019ll call \u201cthe Wozniak treatment\u201d: thanks for getting us here, now go play in your lab and don\u2019t worry about anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think focus has become a big issue. Google is an engineering-driven organization that publicly announces more doomed products in a year than most companies do in their lifetimes, all ostensibly in the name of research and creativity. Perhaps the stated goal to \u201cstreamline decision making\u201d refers to inefficiencies at a lower level that led to these failures. To me, Google\u2019s decision making needs more no\u2019s; I haven\u2019t decided whether or not this is what they mean by \u201cstreamline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the meantime, the flagship product is suffering. Bing is rapidly gaining share (at Yahoo\u2019s expense<\/a>\u2026 for now) while Google search\u00a0takes shots<\/a>\u00a0on quality and relevance.\u00a0The Groupon incident<\/a>\u00a0suggests that Google is starting to get uncomfortable with its one-dimensional cash cow: yesterday\u2019s earnings report shows advertising steadily hovering around 96% of annual revenue. It would seem that way too many hours are being wasted while there\u2019s real business to be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is Google in trouble? Hardly, as the quarterly results tell us. But I don\u2019t think Larry and the board believe everything is right either, and I don\u2019t think they want to wait until the trouble is big. If that\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing here, then I think it\u2019s very good for Google\u2019s future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Following a blowout quarter and entering a year where most expect Android to take over the world, Eric Schmidt is out at Google. It\u2019s a bombshell that raises a ton of questions and speculation. There\u2019s no question in my mind that Schmidt was no longer welcome \u2014 perhaps also no longer comfortable \u2014 as CEO. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}