Google chief Eric Schmidt at first thought the company was a sham.
“I was convinced they would never be successful because who would want a search engine whose ad revenue would never work?” he told Stephen Colbert at 92nd Street Y Tuesday at a talk for his new book with Jonathan Rosenberg, “How Google Works.” “I was quite convinced the whole thing was a sham . . . I actually asked to see the cash in the bank to make sure the money was actually being collected from these advertisers.”
Schmidt said of Google’s 2010 shutdown in China after being cyber-attacked: “You have to have a process for such an important decision. We sat there, we looked at the decision and we had a vote.”
He also said it’s important for women to talk in meetings: “If you look at the studies . . . men talk first and they interrupt each other . . . Inevitably, if you call on a woman she’ll give a more thoughtful and, more likely, correct answer.”
Colbert kept the jokes coming, asking, “Do you have to wear pants?” to work at Google.