Eric Schmidt, in Control | Hacker News Reader

Eric Schmidt, in Control

daringfireball.net

23 pointsbjonathan13 comments

How does this make it to the front page? Gruber cuts and pastes a third party quote from Schmidt and this make HN top stories? Perhaps linking to a more complete article would be more beneficial. Say the interview where the quote was taken out of context:

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20091007/live-from-new-york-...

The context is more along the lines of Schmidt was commenting on how Google was entering a buying phase again. They had a reputation of finding small start-ups that were interesting and absorbing them. He then points back to how some of these turned out to be big wins, like Android and Google Earth. Buying a startup for a couple million is peanuts to Google. I think they are more profitable by moving quickly on these "small" tech purchases than sitting and debating the logistics beforehand.

Sometimes less is more

Context is everything.

eh, I find the isolated quote interesting and relevant in light of the recent CEO change (surely the reason it was posted).

Well if you look at the interview, the next question is about large purchases and that those require review. I.E. These two items were very small when they were bought, Youtube (the example given) wasn't and requires evaluation to make sure it will pay off.

Pulling this quote out of context is trying to make it look like Schmidt wasn't in the know. When in reality at the time these were bought they were very tiny, and only grew into the "power-houses" they are now under Google's tenure.

While Gruber posts this to point out how little control Eric Schmidt has, I'm not that surprised. For a company the size of Google, a few millions is pocket change (they make that in profit every hour (!)). I'm not surprised the founders (who still control the company) can spend that without too much hassle.

It does seem a little strange that the founders could complete acquisitions without even informing, let alone getting the approval of, the CEO. Is that normal in corporate governance?

A few million dollar acquisition is so small, it's akin to a new hire or hardware purchase. Not worth debating with other members of management (provided you've all agreed to go out and make acquisitions).

(Written on Android, incidentally)

Not to mention the dual class thing.

Well, you know Google is dual-class, right?

Yes. The founders' voting control effectively means the board of directors reports to them, and Schmidt reports to the board. But I'm still surprised they can skip the chain of command on decisions like this. Maybe this is just my won ignorance.

Gruber pisses me off to no end. So much inaccurate analysis, it's mind boggling. He became particularly unbearable after Google went after Apple during the Gingerbread keynote. He just hates all things Google and you can almost always ignore anything he says about them.

Surely the founders have some leeway when it comes to purchases of this scale.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com