Eric Emerson Schmidt, born in 1955, is a former CEO of Google, a former executive chairman of Alphabet (the parent company of Google), and a famous computer engineer.
In 1979, Schmidt received his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from Princeton University, and his doctor's degree in electronic engineering and computer science (EECS) from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982. After graduation, he first worked for Ziglo and Bell Laboratories, the former is a famous design company of Z80 series CPU in IT industry, and the latter is the R&D base of Bell, a giant in telecommunications industry.
He also worked in the computer science laboratory of Xerox, the holy land of IT technology. He is also a co-author of the program compiler lex. In 1983, Schmidt joined Sun as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Executive Officer. He led the development of Sun's independent programming technology platform, turning Java into Sun's most powerful market weapon ever. He actively pursued the network software strategy, laying the foundation for Sun's rapid development in the early 1990s.
In 1997, Schmidt was employed by Novell as the chairman and CEO of Novell, in charge of strategic planning, management and technology research and development. Schmidt soon rebuilt Novell into a profitable company, but with the collapse of the Internet foam, Novell fell back into the situation of huge losses. In the quarter he left, Novell lost $142 million. Out of respect for Schmidt, Novell suggested that Schmidt still serve as the chairman of Novell's board of directors after going to Google.
In 2001, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, hired Dr. Eric Schmidt from Novell as the CEO. Eric, together with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, was responsible for the daily operation of Google. Since joining Google, Eric has focused on two aspects: strengthening the necessary corporate infrastructure construction and maintaining the rapid development of Google; Ensure that the product development cycle is minimized and the quality level is maintained.
Google is a young and rapidly developing search engine enterprise with a unique corporate culture. Eric's rich experience can perfectly meet the development needs of Google. Under his leadership, Google's performance continues to grow rapidly. Today, Google has become the largest search engine in the world.
Schmidt was one of the first group of people to become a billionaire by acquiring equity as an employee (Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was the first person to achieve this goal).
Forbes magazine ranked him 129th on the 2006 World Rich List.
In January 2010, when asked by Newsweek whether he was going to give up the Chinese market, Eric Schmidt said: "We may withdraw from China or continue to stay in China through negotiation with China."
In April 2010, Eric Schmidt transferred the CEO position to Larry Page, and then continued to serve as the executive chairman of Google.