Eric Schmidt, Google CEO
Position: 3 Last year: 3
Why? Keeping Google fresh and those billion dollar acquisitions
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It's been another big year for Eric Schmidt, who maintains his position in the top 3 Agenda Setters, as the global rise and expansion of Google marches unstoppably onwards.
Acquisitions has been the big theme, with the $1.65bn deal to buy video-sharing website YouTube, a proposed $3.1bn purchase of web advertising supplier DoubleClick and the $625m acquisition of web security company Postini.
The YouTube acquisition brought with it the threat of lawsuits from content providers and other copyright-holders whose material was being uploaded onto the website.
But Schmidt has successfully brokered deals with broadcasters such as the BBC to make their content available on the site. Google has also created a filtering service to prevent copyrighted material being uploaded.
The key issue is turning YouTube's massive popularity and the traffic from its 130 million subscribers into dollars, and to this end Google has just launched an advertising format it hopes will work by not being too obtrusive. The 10-second mini-commercials appear at the bottom of a video.
The Postini buy further bolsters Google's move into the hosted web application market by adding security and encryption protection to Google's range of web-based email, messaging and office suite of applications.
The Google Apps range has also been expanded to include an enterprise version for businesses and an online version of Microsoft's PowerPoint.
The DoubleClick deal, however, could yet face obstacles when it comes under the scrutiny of the European antitrust regulator later this year.
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