January 21, 2011, 11:18 AM —
Image credit: Google
It's a little disturbing to see perennially nice guy and effective tech-company manager Eric Schmidt "step aside" as CEO of Google, but it's not entirely clear that's what he's doing.
He's promoting Google co-founder Larry Page to CEO and becoming "executive chairman," a title so unusual it's not clear what it actually means.
It's probably some mix of Chairman -- who would normally lead the board of directors, pass on broad directives to the CEO and be the public face of the company to anyone needing a public face -- -- and Chief Executive -- who would make the day-to-day decisions about running the company.
Organizationally it looks more like a half-step in toward the CEO's job from that of Chairman, as opposed to "Chairman Emeritus," which is half-step between Chairman and retirement.
Schmidt said he will spend his time "focusing on relations with customers, partners and government, "
which is what a chairman normally does when not wining and dining the board, and what CEOs do when they're either Chairman and CEO, or when they have effective COOs and senior executives they can trust with the day-to-day.
Despite a reputation in the early 2000s for doing things in "unconventional" ways there's no real reason to think Page will try to make major changes in direction, destabilize the company, or become the kind of self-contradicting borderline sociopath Mark "Privacy Peddler" Zuckerberg appears to be.
Given 10 years of management tutelage under Schmidt, Page may be much more prepared to lead a major company than people assume.
