Eric Schmidt does not have good insight into anything happening on the factory floor at Google post-2013/2014. I'd take anything he says with a huge grain of salt.

I was at Google march 2011- dec 2018 and when I tried reading Schmidt's "How Google works", I had to put it down coz it was obviously so disconnected from the realities.

I think highly of Eric as a leader, and a smart person, but he has no clue about why Google has struggled to innovate from 2014-2015 onward.