Eric Schmidt the company and act as an adviser to co-founders Page and Brin. Google gave him a $100 million equity award in 2011 when he stepped down as CEO. On 4 April 2011, Page replaced Schmidt as the CEO. On December 21, 2017, Schmidt announced he would be stepping down as the executive chairman of Alphabet. While working at Google, Schmidt was involved in activities that later became the subject of the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation case that resulted in a settlement of $415 million paid by Adobe, Apple, Google and Intel to employees. In one incident, after receiving a complaint
Executive compensation in the United States Dennis Graham) found "an extremely high correlation" between CEO pay and stock market prices between 1973 and 2003, while a more recent study by the liberal Economic Policy Institute found nominal CEO compensation growth (725 percent) "substantially greater than stock market growth" from 1978 to 2011. According to Fortune magazine, the unleashing of pay for professional athletes with free agency in the late 1970s ignited the jealousy of CEOs. As business "became glamorized in the 1980s, CEOs realized that being famous was more fun than being invisible". Appearing "near the top of published CEO pay rankings" became a "badge of