Eric Schmidt home of Blacksburg, Virginia. This came on the heels of Schmidt making a two million dollar donation to Virginia Tech's College of Engineering. Schmidt’s philanthropy is the result of his long standing friendship with Virginia Tech's former president Paul Torgersen. His donation funded the Paul and Dorothea Torgersen Dean’s Chair in Engineering. Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer. He is known for being the Executive Chairman of Google from 2001 to 2015 and Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017. In 2017, "Forbes" ranked Schmidt as the 119th-richest person in the
James Murdoch October 2011 resignation of another Dow Jones executive, Andrew Langhoff, after a company whistleblower revealed an editorial scam and questionable circulation dealings at The Wall Street Journal Europe. In February 2012, News Corp announced that Murdoch would be stepping down as executive chairman of its British newspaper arm. The company said he would remain deputy chief operating officer of News Corp and focus on the company's international TV business, including continued responsibility for BSkyB. He stepped down also from the GlaxoSmithKline board. In April 2012, he stood down as chairman of BSkyB, but remained on the board. He was replaced