Do you want to know what Eric Schmidt did this summer? Public policy has been the name of the CEO’s game.
Like everyone else who follows the search industry, I found the official Google blog post titled, “What Eric Schmidt did this summer,” intriguing. I thought it would be about the CEO’s sell-sell-sell of his stock in May: 114 transactions, 97,519 shares, over $46.6 million in proceeds at an average of $478.32 per share.
That wasn’t it. Instead, Google wanted to highlight his participation in various public policy ventures around this great US of A. Recently, Schmidt ventured to Traverse City, Michigan, and told the National Governors Association that “education must evolve” from rote memorization to teaching them how to “research and access information.”
I wonder what online resource he might recommend as a starting point for teachers?
A video of his chat with the Governors has been posted on the Google Public Policy blog. Alan Davidson, senior policy counsel for Google, also noted the CEO joined YouTube’s co-founders, Steve Chan and Chad Hurley, in South Carolina for the CNN/YouTube Presidential Debate.
If any of the videos CNN selected for the debate asked a substantive question that elicited an original answer from the Democratic hopefuls, please page Jon Stewart. And the rest of America.
From steamy Charleston, Mr. Schmidt traveled to Washington to visit a more wretched hive of scum and villainy Capitol Hill to chat up members of both Houses about “health care, patent reform, immigration, privacy and consumer issues.”
No net neutrality discussions? No pressing the Senators and Representatives to prod the FCC on adopting Google’s four platforms of openness for the 700 MHz auction?
Let’s hope his trip in August to the Aspen Summit proves more entertaining.
