Google complained bitterly about its top guy being Googled, and, in retaliation, its public relations department declared that CNET reporters will get not so much as the time of day from Google for the next 12 months. The ensuing uproar has been consuming much oxygen in the blogosphere this week. All because the head of Google got Googled. Makes you wonder what kind of wine they serve in Atherton with such delicious irony.
Maybe the pressure of being the next Microsoft has finally gotten to Google and its mild-mannered CEO Eric Schmidt.
I’m not sure how else to explain Google’s recent nuclear detonation over a story published by CNET News.com last month. The online story – headlined “Google balances privacy, reach” – delved into issues emanating from the search leader’s phenomenal growth and its corresponding potential appetites for collecting and using information about those who collect and use information through Google.
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None of that is apparently what bothered Google, however, which after all has been the center of such discussions for some time. No, what set Google guns ablazing was that the story began with an example of the kinds of personal information that can be gleaned through a cursory Googling of a person’s name – in this case a Googling of one Eric Schmidt.
How personal? Not very, at least not by the standards of modern-day celebrity or what can be discovered about even ordinary people through Google. From the story you learn that Schmidt, age 50, was worth $1.5 billion as of last year, has sold $140 million worth of Google stock, lives in swanky Atherton, Calif., hosted a fundraiser for Al Gore, enjoys art and pilots airplanes.
No street address, no home phone, no Social Security number, not a clue as to whether he wears boxers or briefs.
Yet Google complained bitterly about its top guy being Googled, and, in retaliation, its public relations department declared that CNET reporters will get not so much as the time of day from Google for the next 12 months. The ensuing uproar has been consuming much oxygen in the blogosphere this week.
All because the head of Google got Googled. Makes you wonder what kind of wine they serve in Atherton with such delicious irony.
Now, leaping to the defense of another news organization is not generally what we do around here. But this episode says a heck of a lot more about Google and Schmidt than it does the CNET story, which, based on my 30 years of doing this kind of thing, didn’t warrant a peep of protest, never mind a year’s worth of the silent treatment.
This overreaction just doesn’t seem like Schmidt either. Steve Ballmer blows a gasket? If it hasn’t happened yet today, it can’t be lunchtime. Larry Ellison goes off the deep end? Wouldn’t cause a ripple. Scott McNealy lowers the boom on some meddlesome media outlet? Heck, I could see McNealy nuking CNET over that Google story just because Schmidt used to work at Sun.
But Schmidt is the Mr. Rogers of high-tech execs. The man just doesn’t strike me as the type to unleash the heavy cannons even if the offending party had actually committed an act of journalistic warfare. We’re talking about a very smart guy here, a technologist who climbed the corporate ladder based on his acumen, not his marketing or political skills, and a man who executed what is inarguably the single-best career move in the history of career moves: swapping the top spot at then-foundering Novell for his current gig atop the gold mine that is Google. (Readers should feel free to nominate other candidates.) For Schmidt to lose his cool over something as trivial as being hoisted by his own search engine, well, it’s simply inexplicable.
Which led me to at least suspect that maybe there was more to the story – there isn’t – or maybe Schmidt wasn’t personally responsible for the decision to whack the messenger. Maybe an overprotective public relations professional took the liberty of defending the boss’s nonexistent right to be protected from the fruits of his own search engine.
So I posed these questions in an e-mail to David Krane, Google director of public relations. Krane’s reply hit my in-box so quickly that I presumed it was an out-of-the-office notification. Not so.
“Paul, thanks for your note,” he wrote. “We’ll decline comment.”
Give him an A for manners and an F for helpfulness. Moreover, if that’s the advice he’s giving Schmidt, as opposed to an execution of Schmidt’s wishes, he’s doing his boss a serious disservice.
In either case, Schmidt really does have some explaining to do.
Good manners are always appreciated here. The address is buzz@nww.com.
