No trouble at the top
Google's soon-to-be ex CEO, Eric Schmidt has rubbished media speculation that Google's reshuffle had anything to do with China or its competitors.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Schmidt disputed claims that his move to exec chairman was because Facebook's success has rocked the search giant or that he and Sergey Brin had argued about the situation with China, Fortune reported.
He insisted the exec reshuffle's aim was to clarify and tighten lines of authority at the growing company, the reason he gave for the move in the first place.
"This has nothing to do with competitors. I publicly said the next 10 years will be as successful as the past 10. We're going to run this way for a while," Schmidt reportedly said.
He confirmed that he will now deal with ‘all the external stuff' like customers, deals, partners, M&A, marketing, press, publicity and government, leaving Brin, who will take over as CEO in April, to focus on products.
Schmidt apparently said Brin will focus on a trio of ‘big initiatives,' which he did not elaborate on, but which are believed to be: fast mobile networks like LTE, mobile payments and the growth of cheap smartphones, according to previous reports.
Some members of the media had suggested that Google is locked in a competitive war with Facebook, but Schmidt reportedly told the forum that Facebook has clearly said it has no interest in the search business and its ads business does not replace Google's advertising. "I'm somewhat perplexed by the obsession because I don't think the facts support it. Things are going great for Google," he added.
However, he apparently said: "We have a competitor called Microsoft [that] has more cash, more engineers, more global reach. We see competition from Microsoft every day."
He then addressed competition with Apple, which Google partners with on YouTube, maps and search, but of course the two companies are smartphone rivals. Schmidt reportedly said that Google could theoretically compete with Apple's Mac business, if Google launches its Chrome OS hardware, which it hopes ‘to announce later this year'.
However, despite the rivalry, Schmidt reportedly described Apple's CEO Steve Jobs as ‘absolutely brilliant' and ‘the most successful CEO in the world anywhere'.
He also apparently said that Apple has ‘managed to build an elegant, scalable, closed system' for its iPhone and iPad platform, but ‘Google is attempting to do something with a completely different approach' with Android.
