Has he issued a clarification elsewhere that contradicts the parent's interpretation? He could, easily.
The oft attempted interpretation of the original quote is that Eric doesn't believe anything should be private online, and that anyone who wants privacy must be doing bad things.
As the context makes clear, his point was more that for better or worse, things generally aren't private online, and even if they wanted it to be, plenty of retention is legally required.
But you are certainly welcome to your opinion. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Let's try a hypothetical parallel. "If you really don't want to go to jail, maybe you shouldn't be smoking pot in front of American cops." See how in my statement, there's no value judgement about smoking pot, and there's no value judgement about wanting to stay out of jail, there's just an observation about the realities of the world. This is NOT the same as "only bad people want to stay out of jail", nor "only bad people smoke pot", NOR EVEN "only bad people want to smoke pot and also stay out of jail". It's just "people who want to smoke pot and stay out of jail may be at the mercy of forces beyond their control."
I have no idea what Eric actually thinks. Maybe he does actually think that privacy should be outlawed or some other hilariously socially-unacceptable belief. But in the much-quoted quote, he said nothing of the kind. Protestations to the contrary are simply "I want to believe he's evil" paranoia.
Disclaimer: Googler
Why didn't he say, for example, "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know then don't publish it publicly and non-anonymously and don't use a cloud service like Google."
I haven't seen him say anything that would suggest that he holds an opinion different than the popular interpretation of the quote in question. And you would think, given the criticism, that he would have taken the opportunity to correct that interpretation if it was not what he meant.
I found it's surprising that you interpret the quote this way. Here's my interpretation: privacy on the Internet is an illusion.
It most definitely changes the substance. From Google being the perpetuator of the said privacy problem, it becomes a participant that is legally bound to participate by YOUR legal system.
Disclaimer: Googler.
I think if you met Eric you'd realize he's just another hacker who ended up becoming a CEO. If he was posting here, he would be indistinguishable from most people in terms of his views, concerns, etc.
It sounds like you're saying that the first part of the quotation doesn't accurately describe Schmidt's views on privacy. I don't know him, but, sure, most people have more than one sentence's worth of opinion on most issues. :)
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/252514/hey_employers_my_faceb...
DDG doesn't do that. It's a participant in the same legal system.
If he wanted to make your point unambiguously, he could/should have left off the first sentence.