How the Nicest Guy in Tech Will Take Over the World

I had no idea, but it seems that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is a really nice guy.  That’s not the usual sort of description you get about a CEO, but evidently Schmidt is both a fairly good person and a very intellectual businessman:

Schmidt doesn’t hide his grand vision. When he speaks, he comes off as a professor rather than a businessman, a guy who’s far less interested in consumer electronics than in big ideas. In October 2008, the week the U.S. economy had ground to a halt and Congress was poised to pass a $700 billion bailout plan, the Google CEO was talking up Google’s sprawling renewable-energy stimulus plan, which Schmidt believed could “solve all of our problems at once.” He didn’t seem the least bit worried that the crashing economy would sour his own company’s fortunes (and in fact, Google’s revenues barely slipped). Schmidt gives such big-idea talks all the time. He holds forth on the future of information with people in the newspaper industry; on the future of tech innovation with systems administrators; on the future of the country in his numerous chats with Barack Obama. (Schmidt endorsed Obama during the election and now sits on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.)

A lot of people worry about Google becoming too big and turning into an information hegemon, but as this article points out, the scarier people and firms are probably the nastier and more aggressive ones (like Apple and Steve Jobs, though don’t get me wrong – I love Apple).  In fact, the author of the article doesn’t think we really need to worry about Apple at all.  He thinks that while Apple is off worrying about the (relatively) narrow concern of cornering the mobile devices market, Google’s broad vision will carry it on to bigger and better accomplishments – which, surprisingly, I’m okay with.  Nothing against Steve Jobs, but I’d rather have a professorly nice guy running the world any day.

–Aaron Bekemeyer