Eric Schmidt reveals his biggest failure as Google CEO
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt identifies his failure to capitalize on the early lead in social media as his biggest professional regret. He acknowledges that despite early efforts like Orkut and Google+, the company failed to compete effectively against Facebook.
Why it matters
This admission provides a rare, high-level retrospective on the strategic missteps that allowed Facebook to dominate the social media landscape.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has once again named social media as the one that got away. Speaking on In Good Company, the podcast hosted by Norges Bank Investment Management CEO Nicolai Tangen, the 71-year-old said Google briefly led the space during his time in charge. Losing that lead, he said, was his biggest mistake as CEO.It is a regret Schmidt has voiced before. He ran Google from 2001 to 2011, and weeks after handing the top job to co-founder Larry Page, he admitted he had seen the Facebook threat coming. “I clearly knew I had to do something and I failed to do it,” he said at a tech conference that year. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.”“There was a moment when Google was ahead of everybody else in social media. It was fairly short,” Schmidt told Tangen. “I was CEO at the time.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in