That's a reasonable statement, and it's supported by parts of his interview. However, most people are complaining about this quote: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." It's really a different sentiment.
Sometimes a pronoun refers to a wrong antecedent. This problem usually occurs because the wrong antecedent comes between the pronoun and the real antecedent. To correct this error, place the pronoun as close to its antecedent as possible.
So this is not a case of English failing any more than it is Schmidt failing at English (if you believe he is pro-privacy).
Since Schmidt seems like a smart man, it is far more likely that he really did mean that "it" to be "the thing you don't want anyone to know".
1. Intelligence in one area does not imply intelligence in another. I don't know all of Schmidt's areas of expertise are but I doubt it includes English. (Don't link me to wikipedia, already read it)
2. Even if he is an expert at English, people are very sloppy with their native language. All you need to do is go to a university for a couple of weeks to figure out most PhDs make the same grammatical errors as the rest of us.
Please stop treating this simple rule of grammar as some piece of esoteric knowledge.
It is common sense that the antecedent of a pronoun defaults to the closest noun.
You don't get through college or even a PhD as Schmidt has (where you write many papers) by repeatedly making ambiguity mistakes like these. A research paper is useless if no one can make any sense out of it. Not to mention that he is a CEO: a job where you live or die by how well you communicate.
Firstly the others are right: even smart guys write & speak "wrong" English :)
Secondly don't forget this is spoken - emphasis and so forth change in the spoken language. I haven't heard it myself (anyone got a link to a recording?) but it could well be dependant on how it was spoken :)
And finally I think applying strict grammar words to what someone has to say does them a lot of injustice :) people just dont work like that do they. Essentially it is saying were going to ignore any meaning or connotation or mistake and take everything literally - god forbid that becomes a fad! :)
The quoted sentence is not normally interpreted in the latter way, even if the topic from previous sentences was typing it (the thing done) into the search engine.
In order to be outraged about this quote, you have to ignore the fact that ES is a smart guy and interpret the sentence as literally as possible (while simultaneously ignoring the implications of the word "maybe"). Then you have to take it out of context, and apply it to situations that ES obviously wasn't referring to.
People are making Eric Schmidt into the bad guy here, because they want him to be the bad guy. And that matters more to them than whatever his true intentions might have been when he uttered that statement.
And that matters more to them than whatever his true intentions might have been when he uttered that statement.
No it's much more than that. You forgot the wiretapping advocates and corporations like AT&T who will most likely use this quote to support their position.
I was actually under the impression that was the statement we were interpreting?
I've read it over about 50 times and I think he is giving an example - only a really unclear one, and a really bad one too. I do think it does read like the "worst case" guys are interpreting it: but I also am not convinced that was what he means at all.
Im still in the camp of Assume Good Faith for the moment.
