Terry Semel and Eric Schmidt: Do I smell a buddy movie?
Matchmakers of the Valley, you have a mission.
Terry Semel: The Yahoo CEO (known by some as "Forrest Gump") is known for puttering around, hanging out with his buddies, and taping his passwords to his computer.
Eric Schmidt: What does the Google CEO do all day? Nothing at all. A reader expands on the "Eric putters around" theme:
It was funny to see Eric's "speaking course" video after all these years. I used to work at Sun and that video did float around a bit there. Eric was rich fodder for jokes at Sun.
Eric was not very highly regarded at Sun, the engineers did not at all respect his technical ability and basically wrote him off as a doofus. [...] Honestly I suspect that Eric does very little at Google and probably has little power or authority.
More of that after the jump. But for now: Can we get Terry and Eric together for a playdate? They could watch some cartoons, play Legos...
Earlier: What does Eric do all day? [Valleywag]
And: Terry Semel tapes his passwords to his computer [Valleywag]
And: Eric Schmidt learning not to be spontaneous [Valleywag]
More Schmidt dirt from the tipster reader:
Friends of mine who new him at Novell were not so kind. They considered him a totally incompetent fraud and could not comprehend why he was made CEO since he really didn't have the business credentials.
Many of us were quite shocked when he became the CEO of Google. Most of us figured he was going to be an interim CEO brought in by his buddies at Kleiner Perkins to baby-sit Sergey and Larry and basically look after Kleiner's investment.
I think Google's success surprised everyone and somehow Eric ended up staying since to replace him might have disrupted Google's momentum in the minds of the VC's and Wallstreet. Honestly I suspect that Eric does very little at Google and probably has little power or authority since I'm sure that everyone has discovered that he is basically a moron who was in the right place at the right time. But hey, like I've always said, I would rather be lucky than smart!