Eric E. Schmidt

Eric Schmidt is chairman and CEO of Google. Previously, he was chairman and CEO at Novell, where he was responsible for the company's strategic planning, management and technology development. Schmidt's 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 B.S. in electrical engineering from Princeton University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. He is also an avid pilot and political junkie who never tires of debating the great issues of our day and the relative merits of small plane jet propulsion systems.