IP Democracy: Google's Schmidt: Look Who Viacom Hired as CEO

In the “dangers of drinking with reporters” category, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was hanging out in the hotel bar with members of the media during Herb Allen’s Sun Valley mogul meeting and made some biting remarks about litigation adversary Viacom. (Schmidt was apparently mingling with the press in the wee hours of the morning because Reuters’ Kenneth Li filed his piece early this morning but noted that Schimdt mocked the media conglomerate “Friday,” which is, of course, today.)

In his comments, Schmidt implied that Viacom would rather win through litigation than through shrewd business strategy.

“Viacom is a company built from lawsuits, look at their history,” Schmidt said early Friday.

“Look who they hired as CEO: Philippe Dauman, who was the general counsel for Viacom for 20 years,” he added.

Update: David Carr has a very fun read here about Schmidt’s late-night gab fest with the journos, which touched on not only Viacom but also the role of the Internet in crumbling business models of traditional media companies and whether Yahoo!’s Panama system will rescue the troubled Internet giant.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on July 13, 2007 12:07 PM to IP Democracy