Schmidt, Schmidt, Page, Schmidt: An Ode to Google’s Breaking News

By now you’ve no doubt heard the news: Eric Schmidt is stepping down from his position as Google CEO and will be replaced by Google co-founder Larry Page. Schmidt joined Google in 2001, and has guided the company towards huge growth and tremendous profits (and by tremendous, I mean $25 billion in a year). Schmidt will now be taking on the role of Executive Chairman.

Since every blog on the internet is repeating the same basic facts about yesterday’s Google Executive Shuffle (™?), I’ve decided to take a different approach. I have personally scoured The Twitter to find you some of the best commentary to give this event more… context. Enjoy!

(Note to those of you reading the RSS feed: You might want to check out the original article for this one, these embedded tweets probably won’t work for you.)

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ericschmidt/status/28196946376130560″]

The man himself announces the news. Schmidt came to Google after holding positions as CTO at Sun Microsystems and CEO of Nortell, but he’s no typical suit; he has a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. When Sergey Brin and Larry Page invited him to join Google, it was just as much about “adult supervision” as it was about engineering talent, vision, and business acumen.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/edbott/status/28202828098961408″]

Newspapers must celebrate when puns basically hand themselves over like this.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/pourmecoffee/status/28198140209270784″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/kellan_standley/statuses/28256545108131841″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/Yashou/statuses/28254958243553280″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/qhardy/status/28209626067509248″]

And a few responses after I asked my followers what they thought about Schmidt leaving the company:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/Oinos/statuses/28260292416770048″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/pbvinge/statuses/28260834174042113″]

Wired did a great piece on Schmidt’s “Decade of Google” which talks about his accomplishments and challenges as CEO. You can also check out Schmidt’s official announcement, with a picture of himself, Larry, and Sergey with one of Google’s self-driving cars.