Eric Schmidt at LeWeb
During LeWeb in Paris this afternoon, Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt took the stage together with Loic Le Meur to discuss a wide variety of topics, including the state of local and mobile development, the state of Google Android and the role of technology in society.
Context & Ripple Effects
Schmidt has spent 2011 working the conference circuit as Google's most visible voice — promising 1,000 new European hires at DLD11 in January and defending Google+'s "millions" of users that summer. LeWeb Paris, where he sits down with organizer Loic Le Meur, is the latest stop in that campaign, now focused on local and mobile development and the state of Android.
The timing matters: two days earlier, Google confirmed that Verizon's Galaxy Nexus will receive software updates directly rather than through the carrier, and critics were already flagging the irony that Google Wallet stays closed on the same wireless airwaves Google lobbied the FCC to keep open. Schmidt's stage appearance lands squarely in that argument over who controls the mobile stack.
First-order effects
- Schmidt's remarks put Google's official framing on Android's carrier dynamics just as the Galaxy Nexus ships with direct-from-Google updates — a visible test of whether carriers still sit between Google and its users.
Second-order effects
- The Wallet-versus-FCC-lobbying critique gives carriers and rivals a ready-made counter-narrative to Google's openness rhetoric, raising the cost of any future 'open airwaves' advocacy from Google.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, handset launches become the battleground where platform owners and carriers renegotiate control of the update path — with each flagship device either reinforcing or eroding the carrier middleman role.
The trend: Mobile platforms are shifting control of the user relationship from wireless operators toward the software companies whose executives now carry the argument onto conference stages like LeWeb.