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Comment by toisanji | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much of this is due to some of the bad decisions Eric Schmidt has made with google.

Eric Schmidt has been CEO of google for ten years. In that time it's gone from (maybe) a $200 million company to a $200 billion company. I think any bad decisions he might have made along the way can be forgiven.

While true there might be a slight portion of outcome bias -- the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made (source: List of cognitive biases, Wikipedia) -- involved in that analysis.

What decisions made by Eric Schmidt would you consider "bad"?

Leading a decade of mediocre home-grown products (save for Gmail)?

EDIT: Name one hit Google product Schmidt oversaw (again, save for Gmail) that wasn't an acquisition. This is supposed to be a company of innovation.

EDIT 2: I regret the use of mediocre. I'm sure the technology, like everything that comes out of Google, was top notch. Certain products though, like Buzz, Wave, and TV, and the bizarrely bifurcated-from-Android Chrome OS, lacked a degree of oversight and discipline before launch that ended up hurting their brand in the space of consumer products. I also think something to consider is that this culture of acquisition has to be very bad for their employee turnover rate.

Being able to execute upon acquisitions and bring them to Google-scale is nothing to scoff at. Example, Android. Despite the Gruber's of the world thinking it is an iPhone rip off, Google made the acquisition (of a very small company--the Android we know today was quite simply built by Google) in 2005.

Update: Also, thought of a few... Translate, Chrome, Talk, and Reader. I'm sure there are more, definitely if you include ones based on acquisitions (Analytics, Earth, Apps, etc).

You have seen Android pre-iPhone, right? At that time it was a Blackberry ripoff.

http://news.cnet.com/2300-1037_3-6230132.html

Google Reader?

Google Maps is impressive

Yes. But: acquisition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Development_history

Google maps has advanced so much (in positive ways) since 2004.

And as the article you point to states, it radically changed under Google, from a C++ standalone application to a in-browser application.

Yeah I think you're grossly underestimating the success of Android, and confusing the genius of the two separate operating systems with bifurcation. Android was a BRILLIANTLY timed play that stopped an Apple monopoly in modern smartphones in its tracks. Just think for a second what the current mobile landscape would look like had android not come out exactly within the quarter that it did.

While we have yet to see the effects of ChromeOS, its release will no doubt be massively disruptive, and the ability to recognize the different functionality both operating systems serve and launch both consecutively despite the fact that it looks like a very odd play to the naive masses, takes balls and isn't something I would say ANY other company even a twentieth the size of Google would attempt, and I predict this will pay off in the end.

I also disagree that Wave, TV and Buzz lacked discipline and oversight. Not everything a company can do is going to be a revolutionary success. A lot of times markets just need to be probed or explored, and if there's a hit great but if not there's no huge loss of resources and returns will still be made in some form or another (eg. wave code being reused in Docs or buzz maybe showing up as part of another social product in the future). For Google TV in particular, it really hasn't been outperformed significantly by competitors, and really the world just isn't ready for that type of media. But when it is Google will be there.

I mean, I don't know Shcmidt's exact role in all these products but sometimes I think people are too quick to dismiss the Google products that don't live up to the expectations of Gmail, Maps, etc, when really they are minuscule investments by the company among many others, and even if one in ten is the next Gmail then that's a damn solid business model.

It would have been very easy for Google to cave to criticism about Chrome OS and Android. Instead, they're letting things play out. Having used both, I think it's going to turn out to be a pretty smart bet. At the very least, you have to applaud that they're willing to take risks like this.

I don't know about bad business decisions, but he certainly had a bad year for putting his foot in his mouth.

And there's certainly no shortage of unpopular, not-classically-Google-like decisions (though thoroughly defensible business-wise) in the recent past: Buzz Privacy, StreetView WiFi debacle, Net Neutrality reversal, the WebM reversal, the Scan-First-Ask-Later library project and settlement process, etc.

If we put any weight into the rumors that the entire triumvirate didn't see eye to eye on all those things, mixed in with publicly-recognized conflicts (such as the way that Sergey clearly trusted Schmidt on the China deal, which backfired spectacularly) I think you can make a pretty good argument for "Schmidt Messed Up".

"the Scan-First-Ask-Later library project and settlement process" that move was pure genius in my book. Evil genius maybe but asking for permission in these type of things leads to stalemate. Google to a huge risk but a calculated one. I think it's defensible more than just business-wise. At the end of the day, publishers have always tried to put sticks in the wheels of anything new in the book world. Google's move is good for man kind in a way and I think it was also helpful to groups like the Internet Archive.

His role just changed to Executive Chairman to handle more of the business operations and be less product decisions

He wasn't fired, his role is just changing

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