Eric Schmidt 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 world, with an estimated wealth of US$11.1 billion. As an intern at Bell Labs, Schmidt did a complete re-write of Lex, a software program to generate lexical analysers for the UNIX computer operating system. From 1997 to 2001, he was Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Novell. From 2001 to 2011, Schmidt served
William Clay Ford Jr. focused on maximizing corporate profits and shareholder value, while Ford was noted for valuing people and tradition. With the retirement of Ford president and chief operating officer Jim Padilla in April 2006, Bill Ford assumed those roles as well. On September 5, 2006, Ford announced that he was stepping down as president and CEO, naming former Boeing senior executive Alan Mulally as his replacement. Ford continues as the company's executive chairman. At the time of his stepping down, Ford was ranked 264th on "Forbes"' list of top-earning CEOs, at $10,000,000.00 per year. In 2000, he announced that the company would