14 DAY TRIAL // Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Google's outgoing CEO Eric Schmidt wanted to set the record straight on his move to become Executive Chairman as Google cofounder Larry Page takes over as CEO. He insisted that this in no way diminishes his role at Google and that he will have his hand full dealing with governments, partners, the media and other companies.
He also insisted that the move had nothing to do with the perceived lack of direction, or rather lack of execution, at Google. He believes that Facebook and other players, like Apple, are not direct competitors to Google and that their businesses are not mutually exclusive.
"This has nothing to do with competitors," Schmidt told reporters. "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," he added, according to Fortune.
He continued by saying that the areas on which he will focus on, external relationships as he stated in the blog post announcement, are more than enough to keep him busy.
His focus will be on "all the external stuff: customers, partners, deals, M&A, government, press, publicity and marketing. It was misinterpreted by many people who didn't understand what I was doing."
It's true that, as Google becomes an ever increasing part of the web and clashes with more companies or government agencies, handling the company's relationships with the outside world and how Google is viewed is not easy.
That said, some of his comments from 2010 don't exactly qualify him as the best person to quell people's concerns about Google.
As for the Facebook "threat," Schmidt reiterated an old argument, Google's competition is Microsoft since it's the only other company offering a search engine in a position to challenge Google.
Facebook, he said, has no intention to compete in the search market. What's more, all the ads Facebook keeps on serving are not taking away from Google's revenue, which is still on the rise.
Of course, while the online ad market may be growing as a whole, along with Google's riches, the company's share of the ad revenue pie may be decreasing as advertisers flock to Facebook.