Eric Schmidt said on CNBC’s Jim Cramer show today that even if asked he will not accept a position in the Obama administration that is expected to be something of a chief technology officer for the USA.
Reuters reports on the statement
Technology remains a vital US concern in terms of economy, national security, and offers the potential to extricate us from at least some of the pressing problems of the day.
Who would be a great choice for this position?
Mr President Elect Obama, I’d like to nominate Craig Newmark. Craig’s technology credentials are superb, he’s got global vision, and … his website is so successful he’ll never be bothering you for a raise in pay.
Here’s a good discussion of the CTO issue and potential qualifications. I hope Obama realizes how important it is that this person comes from Silicon Valley, deeply understands the internet from both a technical and business perspective, and has the ear and respect of many other major players. Schmidt and Newmark meet this test.
Other good choices might be Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina. Both which would help cross the party line and the conspiculous tech gender line as well.
Joe Duck 
ObamaCo shows its corporate colors once again. Progressive politics has, historically, implied a certain anti-corporate ideology–that was pushed to the side sometime during the Clinton era, like when BC agreed with the Gingrich/Gramm GOP and dismantled the New Deal regs on lending and speculation.
The progressive ideology included not only New Deal sort of Democrats, but progressive republicans as well, such as Teddy Roosevelt. TR would have most likely opposed the Silicon Valley techno-oligarchies such as Google, Yahoo and Apple (Jobs btw has made numerous hefty donations to Raum Emanuel slushbucket).
Which is to say, if ObamaCo were sincerely interested in advancing a legitimate progressive agenda, Schmidt, Brin, Yangoo, Jobs/McApple, Bill and Melinda Gates, Buffett, and the rest of the Forbes 400 mob would be headed for trial, and the Feds would break up their corporate and financial empires (and that needn’t imply marxist-socialism, but a certain levelling of the playing field: a point even Adam Smith agreed to).
Horatiox a really interesting point that trustbuster TR would likely have worried a lot about Google dominance. My view is that we need a lot of new definition to the relationship between Govt, people, and biz. Companies like Google may have monopolistic designs but they also believe in obligations to the public that don’t fit the old industrial models. The bailout is so massive that Govt must play a huge and aggressive role or opportunistic biz will fleece us of most of that money.
You may want to support my Craig Newmark nomination. Like many Silicon Valley folks he breaks many conventional molds – supporting the role of profit as well as assigning significant social responsibilities to the company. Simply flipping a few switches at Craiglist to add PPC advertising would increase their revenues by a huge factor – I’d guess about 3-5x current revenue. They choose not to do that because they want to keep things very friendly for users. I don’t even agree with that decision but I think it’s a powerful sign that Craig is a virtuous player.
I think that’s a great idea. I don’t know a whole lot about what would make a good CTO, but it would be sweet if it was someone i’d heard of who actually has a name in internet news and technology circles.