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Eric Schmidt

File:Eric_Schmidt_at_the_37th_G8_Summit_in_Deauville_037_(cropped).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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Eric Schmidt

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Also known as Eric Emerson Schmidt, Eric E. Schmidt

software engineer, businessman, former Google CEO

AI overview

Eric Schmidt is a software engineer and businessman who served as CEO of Google during a critical period of the company's growth and expansion into new technologies. His leadership is significant because he helped establish Google as a dominant technology company and shaped many of the practices that became standard in the tech industry.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Works
27

Top works

  • How Google Works
  • Five Little Carolers
  • O Christmas Tree
  • Genesis
  • Arduino Programming for Beginners

via Open Library + Wikidata

Film & TV

Acting · Falls Church, Virginia, USA

Eric Schmidt is an American businessman, best known as a former CEO of Google.

Known for

  • The Thinking Game2025
  • Silicon Valley — Self2014

via TMDB

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Origin
Austria
Active from
1955
austrian composerclassicalcomposer

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
84
Total plays
269

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Eric+Schmidt">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Eric Schmidt

Quotes

  • When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do. Well, that’s a bug. We have more bugs per second in the world. We should be able to give you the right answer just once. We should know what you meant. You should look for information. We should get it exactly right and we should give it to you in your language and we should never be wrong. That’s our challenge.
  • Technology will move faster than governments, so don't legislate before you understand the consequences...
  • If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.
  • I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.
  • Ultimately, in the Internet, openness has always won. I cannot imagine that the current competitive environment would reverse that.
  • I fundamentally believe that disinformation becomes so easy to generate, because complexity overwhelms knowledge, that it's in people's interests, if you will, over the next decade, to build disinformation-generating systems. This is true for corporations, for marketing, for governments, and so forth." (Eric Schmidt in dialogue with Julian Assange, June 2011 c.f When Google Met Wikileaks, p. 174)

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born
Eric Emerson Schmidt , ( 1955-04-27 ) April 27, 1955 (age 71) , Falls Church, Virginia , U.S.
Citizenship
United States Cyprus
Education
Princeton University ( BSE ) University of California, Berkeley ( MS , PhD )
Occupation
Businessman
Years active
1985–present
Title
Co-founder, Schmidt Futures Founder and chairman, Special Competitive Studies Project CEO, Relativity Space Limited partner, Washington Commanders ( NFL )
Spouse
Wendy Boyle ​ ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1980 ) ​
Children
Sophie Schmidt Alison Schmidt
Fields
Computer engineering
Thesis
Controlling Large Software Development in a Distributed Environment (1982)
Doctoral advisor
Bob Fabry , Richard Fateman
Website
ericschmidt .com

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Official website
ericschmidt.com
Image
Eric E Schmidt, 2005 (looking left).jpg
Show 9 more facts
Commons category
Eric E. Schmidt
date of birth
1955-04-27
name in native language
Eric Emerson Schmidt
birth name
Eric Emerson Schmidt
name in kana
エリック・エマーソン・シュミット
start of work period
1982-00-00
net worth
12900000000
social media followers
2209021
affiliation string
Steel Perlot
Sources (15)

via Wikidata · CC0

~34 min read

Article

Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and technical advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. Since 2025, he has been the CEO of Relativity Space, an aerospace manufacturing company. As of 2026, he is one of the wealthiest people in the world according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index with an estimated net worth of US$64.3 billion.

As an intern at Bell Labs, Schmidt in 1975 was co-author of Lex, a software program to generate lexical analysers for the Unix computer operating system. In 1983, he joined Sun Microsystems and worked in various roles. From 1997 to 2001, he was chief executive officer (CEO) of Novell. Schmidt has been on various other boards in academia and industry, including the boards of trustees for Carnegie Mellon University, Apple, Princeton University, and the Mayo Clinic. He also owns a minority stake in the National Football League (NFL) team Washington Commanders.

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