14 DAY TRIAL // Today is the first day of a new era at Google. As we reported January 20th, long time Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, will be replaced by Larry Page, one of the two original founders.
After 10 years as the main man at Google, Eric Schmidt has handed over his CEO duties to the person from which he took them from in 2001.
Larry Page returns as the main headmaster at Google after he ruled over the company since its official birth in 1998 till 2001 when the board of directors decided they would need the help of a business educated professional.
When Larry left, the company was on the rise and the most hot thing on the market. Now Google faces more privacy lawsuits than it can count, and let's not forget that Facebook's breathing down Google's back like nobody ever did since it became the number one site in the world.
Google has grown tremendously, but as Eric Schmidt told the media several times “I am enormously proud of my last decade as CEO, and I am certain that the next 10 years under Larry will be even better! ... Larry, in my clear opinion, is ready to lead.” (source: Huffington Post and others).
But why did Eric Schmidt say that. The fact is that Larry Page dropped out of Stanford to develop Google, never earning a business degree.
Coupled with accounts when Larry constantly was late to meetings and not always interested or following in non-technical conversations, made investors force him to relinquish his CEO position with the company.
He stayed in charge alongside Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt as the most succesful management trio in history, but now, he officialy returns to his previous role as CEO.
This maturation as a business man is what everyone has been praising him about. Larry is being credited as the force that pushed Google into renewable energy, robotics and hybrid cars, move that shocked lot of business analysts, but not his close friends, who know much about his automotive passions.
Google rules the Internet for a couple of years, but Larry's return as CEO tends to show a future trend in the company's development.
While Google is being pummeled by privacy lawsuits from all sides, the company is moving from Web 2.0 to pure software and technology.
Projects in robotics, the automotive industry, the energy sector and the OS market are showing that the next frontier for Google is beyond the Web's realm.
And what better man to lead all these than a Michigan alumni that created an ink-jet printer from Lego blocks. We just hope that he keeps the company's former slogan on his desk all the time: “Don't Be Evil!”