Certainly part of the reason that Mr. Schmidt is willing to step into a circle of reporters is company's status as a defendant in a massive suit from Viacom. Mr. Schmidt is a careful and considered talker, never a bad policy when surrounded by ankle-biting reporters, but he was very clear about the fact that he thinks the suit from Viacom is ill-considered and ill-motivated.
Maybe his spidey sense told him that Sumner Redstone, Viacom's chairman, would finally make an appearance Friday after being absent the first few days.
He said that Google has followed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to the very letter and that it is up to Viacom and others to let the company know when copyrighted content shows up on YouTube. He finds the $1 billion dollar figure in the lawsuit preposterous and said that there are already appropriate mechanisms in place to safeguard copyrighted content, including Viacom's. And he dropped the whole contemplative engineer/thinker mien when pressed on Viacom's motivations.
"Just look at their history, they built their company on lawsuits," he said, taking a long, slow sip of decaf coffee. He then pointed out that one of the chief architects of that strategy now runs the place. "Look who they hired as CEO, Philippe Dauman, who was the general counsel for Viacom for 20 years," he added.
When he did arrive in Sun Valley on Friday, Mr. Redstone, Viacom's chairman, didn't take long to fire back.