Eric Schmidt on its list of the 50 most important people on the Web, along with Google co-founders Page and Brin. Schmidt is one of a few people who became billionaires (in United States dollars) based on stock options received as employees in corporations of which they were neither the founders nor relatives of the founders. In its 2011 'World's Billionaires' list, "Forbes" ranked Schmidt as the 136th-richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $7 billion. On 20 January 2011, Google announced that Schmidt would step down as the CEO of Google but continue as the executive chairman of
Eric Von Schmidt Eric Von Schmidt Eric Von Schmidt (May 28, 1931 – February 2, 2007) was an American singer and guitarist, songwriter, painter and illustrator, and Grammy Award recipient. He was associated with the folk boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s and a key part of the Cambridge folk music scene. As a singer and guitarist, he was considered to be the leading Cambridge specialist in country blues at the time, thus the Cambridge analogue of Greenwich Village's Dave Van Ronk. Von Schmidt co-authored with Jim Rooney "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down: The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk