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Google Offers rolling out in Portland, Oregon tomorrow, SF and NYC this summer
If you've been watching our liveblog of Eric Schmidt at D9, you'll know that the Floyd's Coffee ad above isn't just a mockup -- this evening, the Google chairman announced his company's Groupon-like Google Offers service will launch in Portland, Oregon tomorrow. We'll also see it in San Francisco and New York City this summer, delivering daily deals directly to our NFC-equipped Nexus S smartphones.
Live from D9: Google's Eric Schmidt takes the stage
We're settled in here at D9, and while it's probably past your bedtime back east, a couple of bigwigs are about to say quite a few interesting things at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. According to our schedule here, we've got Robert Thomson (Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal) and Eric Schmidt (Executive Chairman, Google) on deck, and we'll be bringing you the blow by blow as the unscripted interviews unfold.
The Protect IP Act: Google's Eric Schmidt squares off against RIAA and MPAA
Protecting intellectual property sounds like such a noble cause that you'd have to be a anarchistic free-market extremist to be against the idea, right? Actually, we don't think Google CEO Eric Schmidt is particularly extreme in any definable way, yet this past week he spoke with gusto, railing against the proposed Protect IP Act, which was designed to "prevent online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property." If passed into law, it would give the government the right to shut down any "Internet site dedicated to infringing activities" -- "infringing activities" largely being of the sort that allows dude A to download copyrighted item B from dude C when it's unclear whether dude C has legal rights to be distributing B in the first place. So, you know, it's targeting the Pirate Bay and its ilk, giving government officials greater power to sweep in and snag the domains of such sites. Schmidt calls this approach a set of "arbitrarily simple solutions to complex problems" that "sets a very bad precedent." The precedent? That it's okay for democratic governments to go and kill any site they don't like, something Schmidt says would only encourage restrictive policies in countries like China. While we don't think China really needs any sort of encouragement at all to keep on building up its Great Firewall, we tend to agree that this is a much more complicated problem than the Act makes it out to be. That said, one must admit that Schmidt's opinions are necessarily somewhat swayed by the knowledge that any such law would also have a negative impact on the business of search engines in general. But of course no such volley of words could go unanswered from the two shining knights of copyright protection, the MPAA and RIAA, which mounted up their corporate blogs, rode down from twin castles full of lawyers, and collectively told Schmidt he's full of it. The MPAA spun Schmidt's comments into some sort of act of civil disobedience, saying that "Google seems to think it's above America's laws." Meanwhile, the RIAA called the statement "a confusing step backwards by one of the most influential internet companies." Obviously it's only going to get nastier from here, so buckle your seatbelts, place your bets, and hang on to your BitTorrent clients.
The unanswered questions about Jobs, Schmidt and iOS features
I'm in the midst of reading Steven Levy's book about Google, In the Plex, and I was fascinated with the account of Steve Jobs hiding the iPad's development from Google CEO Eric Schmidt while Schmidt was sitting on the Apple board. We noted this striking example of corporate confidentiality last week. Jobs was reportedly angry with Google for allegedly ripping off iPhone features, like pinch to zoom that eventually wound up in the Android phone. Eventually, Schmidt stepped down from his position on the Apple board, and the rest is history. Or maybe not.... Our former colleague Nilay Patel, ex of Engadget, says in his personal blog that the story can't be that simple. First, he says Apple didn't have a patent on pinch to zoom until October of 2010. The Android G1 shipped in October 2008, and it didn't have pinch to zoom, but it finally made it to the Google Nexus One in February 2010. Now all Android phones have the feature.
Steve Jobs was top choice for Google CEO
Steven Levy's new book, In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, has some interesting insights regarding the relationship between Steve Jobs and Google throughout the years. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that when Sergey Brin and Larry Page were looking around for a new CEO, their first choice was Jobs. Jobs turned them down, but he saw enough in Google to see that it could be a success; he offered to mentor the two founders, going so far as to provide them with access to his closest advisers. After Jobs declined the Google CEO position, Brin and Page chose Eric Schmidt as CEO, and Schmidt also later joined Apple's board of directors. That's when things quickly took a turn for the worse. As Levy states in the book, Jobs was "furious" when he visited Google's Mountain View headquarters and saw that the Android OS sported iOS features like pinch to zoom, among others. Shortly after that visit, Jobs told an Apple town hall meeting what he really thought of Google: "We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them [...] This don't be evil mantra? It's bullshit." The book also states that after Jobs found out about Android's similarities to iOS, he felt betrayed enough to somehow keep the development of the iPad hidden from Eric Schmidt while he was still a board member of Apple. [via The Daily Mail]
Larry Page takes over as Google CEO today, ready to show Tim Cook how it's done
The Page-machine, the Larry-meister, the chief of all Google execs. As announced in late January, Google's top decision-making position is today changing hands from the trusty grip of Eric Schmidt to the slightly less proven hold of co-founder Larry Page. Monsieur Page should be familiar with the role, having performed it until Schmidt was hired back in 2001, but the Google of a decade ago was quite a different beast from the multi-tentacled, omnipresent one it is today. It's probably a good thing, then, that Schmidt is remaining on Google's board in the role of Executive Chairman, with a focus on outward-facing deals and partnerships, while Page takes care of strategic and product development decisions. The other original Google gangster, Sergey Brin, is still a big part of the company's triumvirate at the top, but his attention will be dedicated to developing new projects -- things like that gigabit broadband network Google's just started building in Kansas City, Kansas. As to us, our undivided focus will be placed on coming up with fresh "do no evil" jokes.
Heads of Google, eBay, Facebook and Twitter will advise G8 summit on how to search, sell, poke and RT
So what if Barack Obama managed to bring the vast majority of US tech leaders in for a private meeting recently? Nicolas Sarkozy can do it too! The French président and soon-to-be host of the next G8 gathering is said to be preparing some rather handsome invitations to Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt and a few other big timers from the internet in order to discuss the world wide web's future direction. The input from these web sages is to be filtered down into a volume of extremely precious wisdom, which is to then be conveyed to the multinational meeting taking place in Deauville near the end of May. Sarkozy just needs to make sure the other seven participating nations don't object before sending out the official invites. We have a pretty good idea of what Eric Schmidt thinks our future will involve, but Zuckerberg and the others? That'll be interesting to hear.
Caption Contest: Obama has dinner with tech industry CEOs
Barack Obama is a president well known for being in touch with technology, so it's no surprise to see him wining and dining the industry's biggest decision makers. Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt, Carol Bartz, Mark Zuckerberg, and yes, even Steve Jobs joined el presidente for an informal dinner on Thursday to discuss important things like jobs, education, and research spending. We're not here for that, though, we're here to drop zingers about one all-powerful dude and his big-time CEO buddies. Thomas: "Here's to project Soylent Green." Joe: "This sure beats the Four Loko Summit we held last summer on the White House lawn." Chris: "So let's just jam through this dinner real quick." Josh T: "I hope no one authorizes a 'kill switch' on this party." Paul: "At this very moment we're millions of miles from a doomed planet Earth!" Nilay: "Gentlemen, Ballmer has neutralized the Finnish threat." Richard Lai: "Drink up, kids -- it's Dance Central time!" Tim: "Zuck, it's like Final Club, except with the President."
Steve Jobs to meet with President Obama today
According to ABC News, President Obama's West Coast field trip is going to kick off in San Francisco with dinner. Not just any dinner, mind you. This happens to be dinner with the outgoing CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, Mark Zuckerberg (who built some sort of newfangled website) and our own Uncle Steve. According to the White House, they are meeting as part of an "ongoing dialogue with the business community on how we can work together to win the future, strengthen our economy, support entrepreneurship, and get the American people back to work." After dinner, there is no further published information on the official White House schedule, so I don't know who will get to put up their "The President Slept Here" sign. However, once he's wrapped things up in the Bay Area, it's been announced that Obama is spending Friday in my neck of the woods, visiting one of Intel's plants in Hillsboro, Oregon. He'll be there with Intel CEO Paul Otellini talking about Intel's investments in educational programs and manufacturing upgrades at their plants in Oregon and in Arizona. This is the second time the President has formally met with Jobs. Their first publicized get-together took place in October of 2010. [via AppleInsider]
Eric Schmidt: 'We certainly tried' to get Nokia to use Android
No big surprise here, but Eric Schmidt just told the crowd at Mobile World Congress that Google "certainly tried" to convince Nokia to pick Android as its future platform over Windows Phone 7. Schmidt said Google "would've loved" having Nokia on board, and that although they'd been rebuffed this time around, the offer to adopt Android later "is still open." Look like Vic Gundotra might have to get down with a turkey after all.
Next version of Android will combine Gingerbread and Honeycomb, arrive on a six-month cycle
Eric Schmidt didn't give a ton of details about the future of Android during his MWC 2011 keynote, but he did drop one interesting tidbit: the next version of Android will "start with an I, be named after a dessert" and combine Gingerbread for phones and Honeycomb for tablets into a cohesive whole. We'll just go out on a limb and say that he's talking about Ice Cream, and that we'll see that Fragments UI construct used to bridge the phone / tablet display size gap. Unfortunately, Eric didn't say anything about timing -- just that updates have been happening on a "six month cycle." Considering that Honeycomb has yet to officially launch on any devices, we'd say that's not so long to wait -- but of course we're also dying to know more as soon as possible. We'll let you know if we hear anything good.
Live from Eric Schmidt's MWC 2011 keynote
Ballmer and Elop were quite the pair during the Microsoft keynote yesterday, so let's say the bar's been set pretty high for Eric Schmidt. But that's fine, the now-former CEO of Google has a knack for lively (if not downright controversial at times) speeches. This is the first time we've seen him talk since he stepped away from Babysitter (his words) to Executive Chairman, and the Android of today is a few flavors improved from the 2.1 Eclair that had launched a little before his MWC 2010 keynote -- so needless to say, we're excited for what he has to say today. We'll be reporting live from Fira, so stay tuned -- the fun should start around 11:45AM ET!
Google refocuses under Larry Page; Eric Schmidt says Microsoft is bigger competition than Facebook
Now that the dust has settled from the Google CEO shuffle that will see Larry Page take the top spot from Eric Schmidt in April, it's time for the profiles of the company to hit -- and Bloomberg BusinessWeek is up first with a piece that examines the company's past and future challenges, as well the key leaders of what it calls "Google 3.0": Vic Gundotra, who's heading up a now-not-so-secret social networking initiative called Google +1, Android chief Andy Rubin, YouTube head Salar Kamangar, advertising lead Susan Wojcicki, Chrome head Sundar Pichai, and search leads Udi Manber and Amit Singhal. It's all very fascinating, and it includes some great anecdotes, like Vic Gundotra and Phil Schiller getting into an argument about user location-tracking so heated that Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs had to intervene. Yeah, it's like that. Speaking of Eric Schmidt, he was in Davos this week, and he had some choice words for reporters on Google's competition -- and it's not Facebook. "Microsoft has more cash, more engineers, more global reach. We see competition from Microsoft every day," says Eric, while Facebook "has clearly stated they don't want to get into the search business. Facebook users tend to use Google search." As for Apple, he gave the usual line about both partnering with and competing with Cupertino, while taking a moment to laud Steve Jobs as "the most successful CEO in the world anywhere," who's built an "elegant, scalable, closed system" while "Google is attempting to do something with a completely different approach." Spoken like a true frenemy, we suppose. Check out the source links to read both pieces.
Engadget Podcast 230 - 01.24.2011
This week in consumer electronics was full of culture. Or maybe it was full of color -- we're not quite sure what the difference might be, but there was a lot of weird / cool news in the CEO, handheld gaming, and tablet worlds. The point is, we've got another weird / cool podcast on our hands that you haven't listened to yet and you need to take care of that, like, five minutes ago.Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, #1 Digitimes bestselling author Paul MillerProducer: Trent WolbeMusic: Superstition00:04:15 - Steve Jobs takes medical leave from Apple, Tim Cook taking over daily operations in his absence00:10:22 - Apple turns in record Q1: $6b profit on $26.7b revenue, 16.2m iPhones sold00:23:20 - Apple's invested in a 'very strategic' $3.9b component supply agreement, but what is it?00:25:10 - Asahi Glass introduces Dragontrail for consumer electronics, puts the Gorilla on notice (video)00:25:48 - Larry Page taking over as Google CEO, Eric Schmidt will remain as Executive Chairman00:35:30 - Google Voice now lets you port your own phone number, maybe (update)00:44:53 - Exclusive: HP / Palm's webOS tablets -- pictures, plans, and more00:45:42 - HP / Palm tablet to feature Touchstone dock, cloud storage, Beats audio and Tap-to-Share smartphone integration00:49:30 - HP calls us out, implies it's got even better scoops at February webOS event00:53:20 - HP's first webOS tablet may start shipping in March, fulfill longstanding promise01:06:00 - Motorola Xoom launching February 17th at Best Buy (update: priced at $700)01:06:22 - Motorola Xoom priced at $800 at a minimum, according to Verizon leak01:14:52 - Nintendo 3DS coming to US March 27th for $249.99, Europe first on March 25th (video)01:19:10 - Live from Nintendo's 3DS preview with Reggie Fils-Aime01:23:22 - Bloomberg: Sony PSP2 to debut next week, PlayStation Phone at MWC01:23:47 - This fan-made PSP redesign is sexy01:25:15 - PSP2 to be based on iPhone-esque PowerVR GPU, rival original Xbox in power?01:27:52 - The Engadget Show returns next Sunday with Steve Wozniak!Hear the podcastSubscribe to the podcast[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC).[RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.[RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator.[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune MarketplaceDownload the podcastLISTEN (MP3)LISTEN (AAC)LISTEN (OGG)Contact the podcast1-888-ENGADGET or podcast (at) engadget (dot) com.Twitter: @joshuatopolsky @futurepaul @engadget @reckless
Eric Schmidt stepping down as Google CEO
Looks like Steve's (former?) BFF Eric Schmidt is stepping down as CEO of Google, leaving co-founder Larry Page in charge of the company as the new CEO. A rather astounding rearranging of the deck chairs, but also the logical progression of affairs. Larry and Sergey Brin (who either drew the long or short straw here) are the brains behind Google's mighty algorithm, and there's little doubt they are smart guys who know how to get things done. Brin "has decided to devote his time and energy to strategic projects," including "new products." Neat! Where does this leave Apple and Google in terms of frenemies? With Google entering the mobile space with a vengeance, only time will tell. We think Apple is looking to extricate itself from their partnership, given moves towards possibly replacing the default Google Maps app (while also extending their deal a while longer), but there's no denying Google's influence in tech has impacted even our favorite fruit-flavored consumer electronics maker.
Larry Page taking over as Google CEO, Eric Schmidt will remain as Executive Chairman
Google's Q4 financial results press release contains a bombshell: as of April 4, co-founder Larry Page (on the far right, above) will replace Eric Schmidt as CEO and assume responsibility for day-to-day operations and product development and strategy. That doesn't mean Schmidt is leaving -- he'll carry on as Executive Chairman and serve as an advisor to Page and co-founder Sergey Brin, focused on external things like "deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership." As for Sergey, he'll now "devote his energy to strategic projects, in particular working on new products," with the simple title of Co-Founder. Schmidt's clarified and explained the change in a blog post, saying that the idea is to make leading Google as efficient as possible, and that "Larry, in my clear opinion, is ready to lead." It's clear the idea is to frame this as a simple organizational shuffle -- Schmidt says that he, Brin, and Page "anticipate working together for a long time to come" -- but there's no question that Schmidt's reign as CEO set a clear tone for Google as the company expanded beyond search and into new markets like smartphones, connected televisions, and operating systems, and we're curious to see what Page's style is like. We're also very curious to hear more about why the change was made -- although Schmidt, Page, and Brin have worked together for over 10 years, there's always been some tension between the co-founders and their CEO, particularly over user privacy. In any event, this is a momentous change both for Google and the industry -- we'll see what happens next.
Eric Schmidt lays out three priorities for Google: LTE, mobile money, inexpensive smartphones
He didn't exactly go on at length about them, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt has laid out three clear priorities for the company in a brief guest article for the Harvard Business Review -- and, not surprisingly, they're "all about mobile." Those include focusing on "developing the underlying fast networks," or what Schmidt notes is "generally called LTE," pushing the development of NFC-based "mobile money" and, last but not least, increasing the availability of inexpensive smartphones in the poorest parts of the world. On that latter point, Schmidt seems to be especially optimistic, saying that he envisions "literally a billion people getting inexpensive, browser-based touchscreen phones over the next few years." Hit up the source link below to read Schmidt's take on the "big mobile revolution" for yourself.
Apple employees love Steve Jobs
Silicon Alley Insider has put together a chart that shows the approval ratings employees have for various CEOs at major tech companies. The chart is based on data from Glassdoor.com and reveals that Steve Jobs is the most-favored CEO, ranked by his own employees, followed closely by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Eric Schmidt of Google. Employees at struggling Yahoo give their CEO, Carol Bartz, a high-50s point rating, while outspoken Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, comes in last place out of the companies listed in the chart. Earlier this year Barron's published a list of tech's most-respected CEOs which put Steve Jobs in the number one spot and called him "the world's most valuable CEO."
Nexus S teaser by Eric Schmidt now available on video
Ah, the "unannounced product" that Eric Schmidt brought along for his latest interview -- you want to see more of it, don't you? We know you do, so we've naturally tracked down the full 44-minute marathon chat session between Eric and his Web 2.0 Summit hosts, which thankfully kicks off by delving right into the phone that we know and love under the Nexus S name. Notably, the Google chief never calls it that explicitly, though he takes a moment to stress that in the past he was quoted as saying there'd never be a Nexus Two, not that there'd never be a Nexus successor at all. See the whole thing unfold after the break. [Thanks, Thomas]
The Nexus S: a closer look
Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed the world the Nexus S from a distance just a little while ago, but we knew you'd want more, and so we managed to convince the man to show us the device in person just a few minutes ago. What should you know about the heir apparent to the Nexus One? Well, it's exceptionally thin -- we weren't able to compare, but we'd say it's at least comparable with an iPhone 4 if not slimmer still -- and it's thinner in the middle than at either end, giving it a mildly concave profile. There's a glossy plastic bezel up front housing an AMOLED screen, a pair of discrete volume buttons on the left side, and a black plastic back (textured similarly to the BlackBerry Bold, though patchier) which seemed too roughly manufactured to be anything but a prototype. We saw the handset for all of three seconds and weren't able to snap a single picture nor touch it for ourselves, but as Schmidt walked away he left us with one last lingering look at Gingerbread -- the screen shutting off. When he pressed the power button, the image winked out like an old CRT TV, an animation which you'll see a carbon copy of right after the break. %Gallery-107479%
