Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt yesterday in an interview at the D9 conference said that he was responsible for why Google did not do well in the social networking business. Eric in an interview with Kara Swisher of All things Digital said that the industry took Google by surprise, especially Facebook and he failed to foresee the world of social networking.
Eric also called technology world as a “Gang of Four” indicating four companies that dominate the industry in their own special way. These companies are Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon. He did not mention Microsoft. When asked about Facebook, he said, “Facebook’s done a number of things which I admire. It’s the first generally available way of disambiguating identity. Historically, on the Internet such a fundamental service wouldn’t be owned by a single company. I think the industry would benefit from an alternative to that.”
He also said, “Identity is incredibly useful because in the online world you need to know who you are dealing with.” And if Google had access to the kind of identity information Facebook has on file, “we could compute a better answer, because we’ll know more about you,” he said. “From Google’s perspective, it would be useful to have the information; it would make our products better.”
Taking responsibility for his role, “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.”