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.