Eric Emerson Schmidt was born on April 27,1955 and is a former American business executive and software engineer who served as the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's executive chairman from 2011 to 2015, as executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc from 2015 to 2017, and Technical Advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020.
58 Facts About Eric Schmidt
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Eric Schmidt was born in Falls Church, Virginia, and grew up in Falls Church and Blacksburg, Virginia.
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Eric Schmidt is one of three sons of Eleanor, who had a master's degree in psychology, and Wilson Emerson Schmidt, a professor of international economics at Virginia Tech and Johns Hopkins University, who worked at the US Treasury Department during the Nixon Administration.
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Eric Schmidt spent part of his childhood in Italy as a result of his father's work and has stated that it had changed his outlook.
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Eric Schmidt graduated from Yorktown High School in the Yorktown neighborhood of Arlington County, Virginia, in 1972, after earning eight varsity letter awards in long-distance running.
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Eric Schmidt attended Princeton University, starting as an architecture major and switching to electrical engineering, earning a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree in 1976.
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From 1976 to 1980, Eric Schmidt resided at the International House Berkeley, where he met his future wife, Wendy Boyle.
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Early in his career, Eric Schmidt held a series of technical positions with IT companies including Byzromotti Design, Bell Labs, Zilog, and Palo Alto Research Center.
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In 1983, Eric Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems as its first software manager.
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Eric Schmidt rose to become director of software engineering, vice president and general manager of the software products division, vice president of the general systems group, and president of Sun Technology Enterprises.
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In March 2001, Eric Schmidt joined Google's board of directors as chair, and became the company's CEO in August 2001.
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At Google, Eric Schmidt shared responsibility for Google's daily operations with founders Page and Brin.
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Eric Schmidt was granted 14,331,703 shares of Class B common stock at $0.30 per share and 426,892 shares of Series C preferred stock at purchase price of $2.34.
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Eric Schmidt did not receive any additional stock or options in 2009 or 2010.
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Eric Schmidt is one of a few people who became billionaires based on stock options received as employees in corporations of which they were neither the founders nor relatives of the founders, such as Meg Whitman.
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On December 21,2017, Eric Schmidt announced he would be stepping down as the executive chairman of Alphabet.
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In February 2020, Eric Schmidt left his post as technical advisor of Alphabet after 19 years with the company.
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From 2019 to 2021, Eric Schmidt chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence with Robert O Work.
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Eric Schmidt's email led to a recruiter for Google being "terminated within the hour" for not having adhered to the illegal scheme.
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Under Eric Schmidt, there was a "Do Not Call list" of companies Google would avoid recruiting from.
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Eric Schmidt is currently Chair of the Board of Directors at Broad Institute.
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Eric Schmidt sat on the boards of trustees of Carnegie Mellon University and Princeton University.
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Eric Schmidt taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business in the 2000s.
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Eric Schmidt serves on the boards of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Khan Academy, and The Economist.
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Eric Schmidt succeeded founding chairman James Fallows in 2008 and served as chairman until 2016.
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In July 2020, Eric Schmidt started working with the US government to create a tech college as part of an initiative to educate future coders, cyber-security experts and scientists.
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In December 2021, Eric Schmidt joined Chainlink Labs as a strategic advisor.
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In 2023, Schmidt was a part of an investment group led by Josh Harris that reached an agreement to purchase the Washington Commanders, an American football team belonging to the National Football League, for $6.05 billion.
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Eric Schmidt was an informal advisor and major donor to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, and began campaigning the week of October 19,2008, on behalf of the candidate.
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Eric Schmidt was mentioned as a possible candidate for the Chief Technology Officer position, which Obama created in his administration, and Obama considered him for Commerce Secretary.
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Eric Schmidt has proposed that the easiest way to solve all of the domestic problems of the United States at once is by a stimulus program that rewards renewable energy and, over time, attempts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.
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Eric Schmidt is an investor in The Groundwork, a start-up company associated with Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
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Eric Schmidt is an investor in Timshel, another start up company associated with Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
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Mrs Eric Schmidt offered the prize purse of the Wendy Eric Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE, a challenge award for the efficient capturing of crude oil from seawater motivated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
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Eric Schmidt has claimed that Google's use of artificial distinctions to avoid paying billions of pounds in corporation tax otherwise owed by its UK operations is "capitalism" and that he was "very proud of it".
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At the Techonomy conference on August 4,2010, Eric Schmidt expressed that technology is good.
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In 2013, Eric Schmidt stated that the government surveillance in the United States was the "nature of our society" and that he was not going to "pass judgment on that".
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In January 2013, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas visited North Korea along with former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson.
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In March 2013, Eric Schmidt visited Myanmar, which had been ruled by a military junta for decades and was transitioning to a democracy.
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In January 2015, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas, met with Pope Francis to discuss technology and society.
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In 2013, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, director of the Google Ideas think tank, published The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business, which discusses the geopolitical implications of increasingly widespread Internet use and access to information.
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In 2014, Eric Schmidt co-authored the New York Times best-selling book How Google Works with Jonathan Rosenberg, former Senior Vice President of Products at Google and current advisor to Google CEO Larry Page, and Alan Eagle.
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Eric Schmidt argues that the traditional business rules that make a company successful have changed; companies should maximize freedom and speed, and decision-making should not lie in the hands of the few.
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Eric Schmidt emphasizes that individuals and small teams can have a massive impact on innovation.
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In October 2020, Eric Schmidt stated that social networking services are "amplifiers for idiots and crazy people" and that this was not what the Big Tech firms intended when creating them.
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Eric Schmidt was on the list of ARTnews's 200 top art collectors in 2008.
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Eric Schmidt denied that he was an art collector, despite his involvement in art, in 2019.
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Eric Schmidt is a member of the Bilderberg Group and attends the annual Bilderberg conferences regularly.
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Eric Schmidt has a listed membership with the Trilateral Commission.
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Eric Schmidt is an active member of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council, and its board of directors.
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Eric Schmidt had a cameo appearance in the HBO show Silicon Valley.
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In January 2013, Eric Schmidt visited North Korea with his daughter Sophie, Jared Cohen, and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson.
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Eric Schmidt is an investor in CargoMetrics, another quant hedge fund.
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Eric Schmidt's philanthropy is the result of his longstanding friendship with Virginia Tech's former president Paul Torgersen.
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Eric Schmidt's donation funded the Paul and Dorothea Torgersen Dean's Chair in Engineering.
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In September 2020, Eric Schmidt purchased Montecito Mansion, a 22,000-square-foot estate overlooking Santa Barbara, for $30.8 million.
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In November 2020, Recode reported that Eric Schmidt is finalizing his plan to become a citizen of Cyprus.
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Eric Schmidt is one of the highest-profile people to take advantage of the immigrant investor programs that offers a "passport-for-sale".