zlacker

>>davidb+(OP)
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google has this to say:

https://x.com/ericschmidt/status/1725625144519909648?s=20

Sam Altman is a hero of mine. He built a company from nothing to $90 Billion in value, and changed our collective world forever. I can't wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- it's going to be simply incredible. Thank you @sama for all you have done for all of us.

Making such a statement before knowing what happened, or, maybe he does know what happened, make this seem it might not be as bad as we think?

>>gzer0+nk
Eric Schmidt is also the person that said Google's old "do no evil" slogan was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard. Given that there's apparent tension at OpenAI over non profit vs for profit goals I'd not draw any particular conclusions from Schmidt's statement.

>>jasonw+Xl
He was also against the creation of Chrome to the point where it had to be done in secret, according to him.

From a total outsider/uninformed pov, he really seems like a fail upward story.

>>consum+a01
But that was fair. Page wanted to do a browser super early, like years before the IPO, and Schmidt was brought in specifically to try and bring some focus to the company and balance out the founder's ambition with more "adult" execution. Yes eventually Chrome became a successful project and Schmidt wisely didn't pick a fight over it, but he wasn't wrong to insist the company try to avoid getting distracted with that so early in its life.

>>nvm0n2+SO2
Again, I am an outsider and uniformed. But the established money printer was already going brrrrr...

I would imagine that it's arguable that a pheasant could have ridden that rocket to the moon.

My bias and stupidity may be showing here, but I just don't think that he is very smart. Maybe that was the point of his position: to keep the company from going beyond the imagination of Wall Street normies.

>>consum+204
I was an insider at that time and I didn't disagree with that decision, especially as Google were funnelling money to Firefox and at that time Firefox was executing well and had a lot of support across the community. Part of why the money printer was going brrr was a relentless effort on optimizing it and growing it, which did benefit from the executives actually focussing on it. The idea it all just happened automatically just isn't so.

>>nvm0n2+K04
Ok, thanks for the insight!