Oops. Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, was talking in London this weekend, at a lecture sponsored by TLG, the Thought Leadership consultancy. Among the audience were former Facebook executive and Tech City boss Joanna Shields and schoolboy Nick D’Aloisio, who recently sold his Summly app to Yahoo! for $30 million.
Schmidt was cross-examined by journalist Bryan Appleyard, who asked him to comment on a quote by Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page, that laws can’t be right when they’re 50 years old because they were made pre-internet.
The usually composed Schmidt was somewhat taken by surprise and queried the comment. When he asked the audience to Google the said quote, it did show up and was correctly attributed to Page. But rather than a long-lost quote from Page’s youth, it was in fact from a talk by Page at this month’s annual Google developer conference. Schmidt was a little lost for words.
Note to self, Eric: Google what the co-founders are saying and doing.
