Eric Schmidt
Eric Schmidt at the 37th G8 summit in 2011.
Born	(1955-04-27) April 27, 1955 (age 57) Washington, D.C., United States
Residence	Atherton, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Princeton University University of California, Berkeley
Occupation	Software engineer, businessman
Salary	$1.25 million in 2012[1]
Net worth	US$ 6.9 billion (2012)[2]
Title	Executive Chairman of Google
Website
Google.com - Eric Schmidt

Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American software engineer, businessman and the current executive chairman of Google.^[3] From 2001 to 2011, he served as the chief executive of Google.

Additionally, Schmidt was a former member on the board of directors for Apple Inc. and sat on the boards of trustees for both Carnegie Mellon University and Princeton University.^[4][5][6]

Along with Mike Lesk, Schmidt co-authored the lex analysis software program for the Unix computer operating system.

Biography[link]

Schmidt was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. After graduating from Yorktown High School,^[7] Schmidt attended Princeton University where he earned a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1976.^[8] At the University of California, Berkeley, he earned an MS in 1979 for designing and implementing a network linking the campus computer center, the CS and the EECS departments,^[9] and a PhD in 1982 in EECS with a dissertation about the problems of managing distributed software development and tools for solving these problems.^[10] He was joint author of lex (a lexical analyzer and an important tool for compiler construction). He taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business as a part time professor.^[11]

Schmidt and his wife Wendy lived in Atherton, California in 1999.^[12] In 2011, he was reported to be dating Lisa Shields, a communications executive for the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based foreign policy think tank.^[13].

He was on the list of ARTnews 200 top art collectors in 2008.^[14]

He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland.^[15][16]

The Eric Schmidt Family Foundation[link]

The Eric Schmidt Family Foundation addresses issues of sustainability and the responsible use of natural resources. Wendy and Eric Schmidt, working with Heart Howerton, a San Francisco architectural firm that specializes in large-scale land use, have inaugurated several projects on the island of Nantucket that seek to sustain the unique character of the island, and to minimize the impact of seasonal visitation on the island's core community. Wendy Schmidt offered the prize purse of the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE, a challenge award for efficient capturing of crude oil from seawater motivated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.^[17]

Career[link]

Early career[link]

Early in his career, Schmidt held a series of technical positions with IT companies, Byzromotti Design, including Bell Labs, Zilog and Xerox’s famed Palo Alto Research Cente (PARC).

From Sun to Google[link]

Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems in 1983 as its first software manager. He 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.^[18]

During his time at Sun he was the butt of two notable April Fool's Day pranks. In the first his office was taken apart and rebuilt on a platform in the middle of a pond complete with working phone. The next year a working Volkswagen Bug was taken apart and re-assembled in his office.

In April 1997, he became CEO and chairman of the board of Novell. Schmidt left Novell after the acquisition of Cambridge Technology Partners.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin interviewed Schmidt. Impressed by him,^[19] they recruited Schmidt to run their company in 2001 under the guidance of venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz.

Google[link]

Schmidt joined Google's board of directors as chairman in March 2001 and became the company's CEO in August 2001. At Google, Schmidt shared responsibility for Google's daily operations with founders Page and Brin. As indicated by page 29 of Google's 2004 S-1 Filing^[20] Schmidt, Page, and Brin ran Google as a triumvirate. Schmidt had legal responsibilities typically assigned to the CEO of a public company and focused on management of the vice presidents and the sales organization.

According to Google's website, Schmidt also focuses on "building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum."^[21]

In 2007, PC World ranked Schmidt as the first on the list of the 50 most important people on the web, along with Google co-Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.^[22]

In 2009, Schmidt was considered one of the "TopGun CEOs" by Brendan Wood International, an advisory agency.^[23][24]

On January 20, 2011, Google announced that Schmidt would step down as CEO of Google, but continue as the executive chairman of the company, and act as an adviser to co-founders Page and Brin. Page replaced Schmidt as CEO on April 4, 2011. ^[25]

The 2011 book In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy claims that in 2001, Schmidt requested that a political donation he made be removed from Google search results. The request was not fulfilled. Schmidt has denied this ever occurred.^[26]

Apple[link]

Schmidt was elected to Apple's board of directors on August 28, 2006.^[27] On August 3, 2009, it was announced that Schmidt would resign from the board of directors at Apple due to conflicts of interest amid the growing competition between Google and Apple.^[4]

President Barack Obama[link]

Schmidt was a campaign advisor and major donor to Barack Obama, and when he announced he was leaving that perch, he planned to remain at the forefront of Google’s government relations team. Obama has even considered him for Commerce Secretary.^[28] Schmidt was an informal advisor to the Obama presidential campaign and began campaigning the week of October 19, 2008, on behalf of the candidate.^[29] He had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the chief technology officer position which Obama created in his administration.^[30] After Obama won, Schmidt was a member of President Obama's transition advisory board. He proposed that the easiest way to solve all of the problems of the United States at once, at least in the domestic policy, is by a stimulus program that rewards renewable energy and, over time, attempts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.^[31] He has since become a new member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology PCAST.^[32]

New America Foundation[link]

The New America Foundation is a non-profit public policy institute and think tank, founded in 1999. Schmidt is the current chairman of the board of directors. He succeeded founding chairman James Fallows in 2008.^[33]

Innovation Endeavors[link]

Founded in 2010 by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Dror Berman, Innovation Endeavors is an early stage venture fund focused on advancing the world by providing high-impact entrepreneurs with the capital, coaching and network to build game-changing ventures. Innovation Endeavors has invested in more than 30 companies around the world in various industries. The firm is based in Palo Alto, USA. ^[34]

Compensation[link]

Upon being hired at Google, Eric Schmidt was paid a salary of $250,000, and an annual performance bonus. He was granted 14,331,703 shares of class B common stock at 30 cents per share, and 426,892 shares of Series C preferred stock at purchase price of $2.34.^[35]

Schmidt and the Google founders agreed to a base salary of $1 in 2004 (which continued through 2010), with other compensation of $557,465 in 2006,^[36] $508,763 in 2008 and $243,661 in 2009. He did not receive any additional stock, or options in 2009 or 2010.^[37][38] Most of his compensation was for "personal security" and charters of private aircraft.^[38] Schmidt is one of the few people who became billionaires (in United States dollars) based on stock options received as an employee in a corporation of which he was neither the founder nor a relative of the founder.^[39] In its 2011 'World's Billionaires' list, Forbes ranked Schmidt as the 136th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $7 billion.^[2] Google gave him $100 million in 2011 as a parting gift.^[40]

Views[link]

During an interview which aired on December 3, 2009, on the CNBC documentary "Inside the Mind of Google", Schmidt was asked, "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?" His reply was: "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that, that information could be made available to the authorities." ^[41][42] At the Techonomy conference on August 4, 2010, Schmidt expressed that technology is good, but he said that the only way to manage the challenges is "much greater transparency and no anonymity." Schmidt also stated that in an era of asymmetric threats, "true anonymity is too dangerous." ^[43]

In August 2010, Schmidt clarified his company's views on network neutrality: "I want to be clear what we mean by Net neutrality: What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don't discriminate against one person's video in favor of another. But it's okay to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video, and there is general agreement with Verizon and Google on that issue."^[44]

According to PCWorld Schmidt also expressed the following sentiment: "if you don’t have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear" ^[45]

See also[link]

• List of billionaires
• 70/20/10 Model — business model advocated by Schmidt^[46]
• RechargeIT

References[link]

• "Google Boss Dates P.R. Beauty". New York Post. July 28, 2011. http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/google_boss_dates_beauty_nb2QK0SyBVOuJ4ZNlV5gCP. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Eric E. Schmidt

• Eric Schmidt on Google+
• Eric Schmidt on Twitter
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Eric Schmidt on Charlie Rose
• Eric Schmidt at the Internet Movie Database
• Eric Schmidt collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Eric Schmidt collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Eric Schmidt collected news and commentary at The Wall Street Journal

Speeches

• Eric Schmidt and Larry Page speaking at Stanford (May 1, 2002)
• Eric Schmidt talks about innovation on Executive Talks, November 2006
• Schmidt-ceo-of-google.html Eric Schmidt interview by iinnovate, March 2007^{[dead link]}
• YouTube: Eric Schmidt at the Seoul Digital Forum. (2007.06.05)
• Eric Schmidt speaks as part of NASA 50 years Lecture Series, January 17, 2008
• Mobile World Congress 2010 Keynote: Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google(Feb 2010)
• iTunes: Google making of a modern company.^[when?]

Articles

• CNET: Google balances privacy, reach (July 14, 2005), which uses Eric Schmidt as an example of the personal information held by Google.
• Princeton University Board of Trustees^{[dead link]}

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (November 2011)

Cohen at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival Vanity Fair party

Jared Cohen (born November 24, 1981 in Weston, Connecticut) is the Director of Google Ideas, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, an author, and an artist.^[1] Previously he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff and a close advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and later Hillary Clinton.^[2][3] Initially brought in by Condoleezza Rice as one of the youngest members in history, he was one of the few people kept on under Hillary Clinton.^[4] In this capacity, he focused on counter-terrorism, counter-radicalization, Middle East/South Asia, Youth, and Technology.^[5] According to New York Times Magazine, Cohen was one of the principal architects of what became known as "21st century statecraft."^[6] Prior to his work at the State Department, Cohen received his BA from Stanford University and his M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.^[7] In September 2010, Cohen was named by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 game changers of the year and by Devex as one of the top 40 people under 40.^[8] In 2011, Vanity Fair named Cohen to its list of the “Next Establishment”^[9] and the Washington Post and Harvard Kennedy School of Government honored him with one of their six “Top American Leader” awards.^[10] He is author of the books One Hundred Days of Silence, Children of Jihad, and is co-authoring a book with Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt about how technology is changing international relations, slated to come out in early 2013.^[11]

Iran[link]

In the midst of the June 2009 post-election protests in Iran, Cohen sought to support the uprising by reaching out to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, urging the company to reschedule its planned maintenance of the website so that Iranians could keep tweeting. His reasoning was that, given that many other forms of communication had been blocked or shut down, Twitter was one of the only ways for people inside of Iran to get information to the outside world. He also considered it an important way for people around the world to join the protests by disseminating proxy and circumvention tools. When the New York Times broke the story, it came at a time when the Obama administration declared that there would be no meddling in Iran. According to a former Obama administration official, "White House officials were so mad that somebody had actually ‘interfered’ in Iranian politics... [i]f it had been up to the White House, they would have fired him."^[12] Previously, Cohen had spent time in Iran and written about the possibility of technology being used for social upheaval in his book Children of Jihad.

Egyptian Revolution[link]

Cohen was in Egypt during the January 25, 2011 revolution. He had dinner with the Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim the night before the revolution and was the last person to see him before his arrest. According to Ghonim, the Egyptian security forces interrogated him about his relationship with Cohen during his initial days of incarceration.^[13]

State Department, 2006-2010[link]

Cohen served as a Member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff from 2006-2010. He was brought in at the age of 24 years old, making him, at the time, the youngest person to ever serve in this capacity. (Former staffer Mara Tchalakov served with Cohen in 2008, and is a year younger.) He was one of the few members of Policy Planning kept on by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and helped develop what became known as "21st century statecraft." He also played an instrumental role in helping shape counter-radicalization strategies and advised on U.S. policy towards Iran and the broader Middle East. Beginning in April 2009, Cohen led technology delegations, which focused on connecting technology executives with local stakeholders in Iraq, Russia, Mexico, Congo, and Syria with the aim of developing new and innovative initiatives. Cohen had the third largest number of Twitter followers in the U.S. government behind Barack Obama and John McCain.^[6]

In her book No Higher Honor, Condoleezza Rice writes of Cohen:

"When he [Steve Krasner] came to the State Department, Steve brought together a terrific staff of 'young guns' to push new ideas. One of his most inspired appointments came in 2006, when he hired the twenty-something Jared Cohen, who'd been a student at Stanford and had taken a four-month sojourn on his own in Iran. He would use his position at Policy Planning to begin to integrate social media into our diplomatic tool kit. That would pay off handsomely some years later, when Twitter and Facebook became accelerants of democratic change in the Middle East."^[14]

Rice also refers to Cohen as "my advisor" in the context of discussion on Iran.

Books[link]

Cohen is author of several books. His first, One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide, was published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and chronicles U.S. policy toward Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide. His second book, Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East, was published by Penguin Books (Gotham) in October 2007 and has also been published as an audio book and translated into Dutch and Italian. Cohen's work on Children of Jihad was selected as one of the "Best Books of 2007." He is also author of "Iran's Passive Revolution: Is Political Resistance Dead or Alive in Iran? (Hoover Digest), "Iran's Young Opposition: Youth in Post-Revolutionary Iran (SAIS Review), and "Diverting the Radicalization Track" (Policy Review).

According to the Financial Times, Cohen is co-authoring a book with Google Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, which is due out in 2012 and to be published by Knopf. ^[15] The book grew out of an article, The Digital Disruption,^[16] which the pair published in Foreign Affairs magazine in November 2010 that predicted technology would rewrite the relationship between states and their citizens in the 21st century, and went some way towards predicting the revolutions a few months later in Tunisia and Egypt. The second sentence of the article reads, "Governments will be caught off-guard when large numbers of citizens, armed with virtually nothing but cell phones, take part in mini-rebellions that challenge their authority."^[17]

Google[link]

After he left the State Department, Cohen was hired as the director of Google Ideas, a new branch within Google.^[18][19] Google Ideas is a global initiatives think/do tank run out of New York. Cohen spearheads initiatives to apply technology solutions to problems faced by the developing world.

In June 2011, Cohen convened the Summit Against Violent Extremism in Dublin, Ireland, to bring together more than 80 former jihadists, former gang members, former violent far-right fascists, and former violent nationalists. All of them had renounced violence and were actively working to help counter violent extremism. The formers came from countries that included Nigeria, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Libya, El Salvador, the U.S., and dozens of others. They were joined by survivors of terrorism, techies, and academics. Google Ideas also focuses on weak and failed states and issues of democracy and governance.^[17]

References[link]

1. ^ Google to open 'Google Ideas' global technology think tank/
2. ^ State Department Innovator Goes to Google
3. ^ Twitter post by @jaredcohen 'After 4yrs @statedept, I'm pleased to begin my new job as Director of Google Ideas, a new think/do tank'
4. ^ [1]^{[dead link]}
5. ^ Jessie Lichtenstein, "Condi's Party Starter" The New Yorker, November 5, 2007
6. ^ ^{a b} Lichtenstein, Jesse (2010-07-16). "Digital Diplomacy". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/magazine/18web2-0-t.html?_r=1. 
7. ^ Jared Cohen
8. ^ "Jared Cohen | Speaker Profile and Speaking Topics". Apbspeakers.com. 2010-07-18. http://www.apbspeakers.com/speaker/jared-cohen. Retrieved 2012-03-04. 
9. ^ http://www.vanityfair.com/business/new-establishment/2011/next-establishment-201110
10. ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/think-tanked/post/googles-jared-cohen-named-among-2011-top-american-leaders/2011/12/02/gIQAytU0KO_blog.html
11. ^ "PM Lee, Australia's Gillard meet on sidelines of APEC summit". Channel NewsAsia. 2011-11-12. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1165013/1/.html. Retrieved 2012-03-04. 
12. ^ Lizza, Ryan (2011-08-01). "How the Arab Spring remade Obama’s foreign policy". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/02/110502fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1Kt3uenUN. Retrieved 2012-03-04. 
13. ^ Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power: A Memoir (2011)
14. ^ Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor, (Crown, 2011)
15. ^ Vascellaro, Jessica E. (2011-07-11). "Google's Eric Schmidt Feels Pressure of His Book Deadline - WSJ.com". Online.wsj.com. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303678704576438543868992216.html. Retrieved 2012-03-04. 
16. ^ Schmidt, Eric (2010-11-01). "The Digital Disruption". Foreign Affairs. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66781/eric-schmidt-and-jared-cohen/the-digital-disruption. Retrieved 2012-03-04. 
17. ^ ^{a b} Donnan, Shawn (2011-07-08). "Think again". FT.com. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b8e8b560-a84a-11e0-9f50-00144feabdc0.html. Retrieved 2012-03-04. 
18. ^ "State Department Innovator Jared Cohen Goes to Google - Interview by Christina Larson". Foreign Policy. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/07/jared_cohen. Retrieved 2012-03-04. 
19. ^ http://www.gcf.org.sa/en/Speakers/Jared-Cohen/

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2010)

Kara Swisher
Born	(1962-05-09) May 9, 1962 (age 50)
Occupation	Columnist
Spouse	Megan Smith
Website
http://www.kara.allthingsd.com

Kara Swisher (born May 9, 1962) is an American technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal and an author and commentator on the Internet. She created and wrote Boom Town, a column which appeared on the front page of the Marketplace section and online, and now appears on All Things Digital, which she founded and currently serves as the co-executive editor of with Walt Mossberg.

Career[link]

Swisher wrote many stories about the World Wide Web and Internet policy issues and wrote feature articles on technology for the paper. During that period, she was cited as the most influential reporter covering the Internet by the Industry Standard magazine.^[1] She is the author of aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web, published by Times Business Print Books in July 1998. The sequel, There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future, was published in the fall of 2003 by Crown Business Print Books.

In partnership with her fellow Journal columnist Walt Mossberg, Swisher created, produces and hosts the Journal's annual D: All Things Digital conference, in which top technology leaders, such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs appear on stage with or without prepared remarks, or slides, and are interviewed by the two columnists.

Personal life[link]

Swisher is married to Google executive Megan Smith.^[2]

Bibliography[link]

• aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web, published by Times Business Books in July 1998.
• There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future
• Twelve things the world should toss out: Computer Keyboards published in the Washington Post online, May 7, 2010.

References[link]

External links[link]

• a recording of Kara talking at a Beta Gamma Sigma event in San Francisco
• Kara Swisher on Twitter