Today marks the peaceful transfer of power between Eric Schmidt and Larry Page (pictured in his official Google photo at right). Page is now the CEO and Schimdt the Executive Chairman.
We don’t know if Schmidt will be nominated for the post of US Commerce Secretary (as rumored) and have to leave Google. But Page returns to the position he held before Schmidt arrived to lead Google through an IPO and to the position it’s in today: dominant yet vulnerable.
A trio of articles this weekend sought to size up Page and lay out the challenges facing Mountain View. However the fanfare and analysis is much more low key than when Schmidt announced that Page would be taking over during Google’s earnings call in January.
The “consensus” of these articles and others published earlier is that Page has a strong vision for the company and will help take Google back to its “roots,” but that Page himself doesn’t have the personality or the political instincts of a traditional CEO.
While Page has been criticized by some as “aloof” he may turn out to be considerably less aloof than Schmidt, who could be evasive in public settings. Indeed, Page may be able help remake the company’s image with politicians and regulators, all now seemingly angling to “take Google down a notch.” (The recent FTC privacy settlement with Google is an example.)
Below is a video from 2008 featuring Larry Page speaking about the White Spaces (wireless broadband) initiative in Washington DC:
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