Chairman of the Board of Directors, Google, Inc. & Novell, Inc.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recruited Eric Schmidt from Novell, where he led that company’s strategic planning, management, and technology development as chairman and CEO. Since coming to Google, Schmidt has focused on building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum. Along with Page and Brin, Schmidt shares responsibility for Google's day-to-day operations. His Novell experience culminated a 20-year record of achievement as an Internet strategist, entrepreneur and developer of great technologies. His well-seasoned perspective perfectly complements Google's needs as a young and rapidly growing search engine with a unique corporate culture.

Prior to his appointment at Novell, Schmidt was chief technology officer and corporate executive officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc., where he led the development of Java, Sun's platform-independent programming technology, and defined Sun's Internet software strategy. Before joining Sun in 1983, he was a member of the research staff at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and held positions at Bell Laboratories and Zilog.

Schmidt has a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University, and a master's and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California-Berkeley. In 2006, Schmidt was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, which recognized his work on "the development of strategies for the world's most successful Internet search engine company."

• Keynote: Eric Schmidt in Conversation with John Battelle

See all sessions presented by Eric Schmidt.