I often cringe when Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks, whether on analyst conference calls or to the media. Last year I registered the domain name "googlebabble.com" thinking that I might collect "Schmidtisms" the way some people collect Bushisms. The site isn't live because I don't have the time, not due to a shortage of material.

Google hasn't been known for their PR savvy, and Schmidt often makes things worse when he veers off-script. I'm sure that Schmidt is highly intelligent, and he may even be an effective leader (though I find that hard to believe since communication is so essential to leadership). I find Schmidt's speech to be opaque, evasive, smug, unrealistic, naive, and often empty of anything of substance.

Sometimes Schmidtisms are more dangerous than hilarious. For example, when Schmidt was in China last week he gave trite and fallacious answers to serious questions about Google censoring political expression in China. His words undermined Google's unusually frank and open communcations on the subject until now. Schmidt seemed to lose the sense of anguish over the China decision that typified other Google communications on their difficult decision, and he came off sounding flip and perky about a very weighty issue.

But it wasn't all bad news. At the same event in China, Schmidt actually said something quoteworthy about innovation:

Mr. Schmidt downplayed competition in the China market, sidestepping questions about Google's strategy vis-à-vis its main Chinese competitor, Baidu. "Everyone is focused on competition," he said. "Instead you should be focused on innovation.

"In a zero-sum market, competition is how you win," he added. "But in a market that is expanding this quickly, the way you win is through innovation. An innovator can come in and very quickly change all the dynamics. And that can be done by us, or to us."

The information business isn't a zero-sum market anywhere. So while some competitors throw chairs and want to kill Google, Google's relentless focus on innovation for users instead of running the competition into the ground will keep them ahead. Because if you can go fast, no one will ever catch up.

So I guess not all Schmidtisms are hilarious or dangerous. Some of them are actually written by others.

Update April 17, 2006 10:20 PM: Re-reading this 24 hours after posting, I think some of my criticisms of Eric Schmidt are out of line. While his style really rubs me the wrong way, and his smug indifference on the China question is dangerous for the Chinese and for Google, that last sentence wasn't warranted by any facts.