Success Quote by Eric Schmidt

Schmidt is doing something executives rarely admit outright: conceding that the power shift to tech wasn’t just about better software, but about unmet human demand. The line flatters Silicon Valley as a civic repair crew - not merely building search engines and marketplaces, but supplying attention and infrastructure where newspapers, TV, and radio left blanks. It’s a moral argument disguised as a market observation.

The phrase "people seem to miss" positions critics as naive about scale and sociology. Schmidt isn’t defending Google alone; he drags in "competitors, Yahoo, eBay" to widen the claim from corporate self-interest to an industry mission. That choice matters. If everyone in the sector is addressing the same gap, then the critique can’t be solved by singling out Google. It reframes regulation and suspicion as misunderstanding.

"Communities that have never been served" is the engine of the quote. It nods to immigrant networks, niche fandoms, rural small businesses, marginalized identities - groups for whom traditional media either didn’t bother or couldn’t profitably tailor coverage. In the early web era, the promise was simple: connection at the edges. Schmidt taps that promise to legitimize platforms as democratizing forces.

The subtext is also a warning: if you treat internet companies as mere media firms, you’ll misdiagnose both their reach and their consequences. Communities are not just audiences; they are producers, organizers, and markets. Of course, that framing conveniently skips how platforms monetize those same communities, and how "serving" can become surveillance. The brilliance is in the pivot: critique us if you want, but first admit we’re filling a vacuum you helped create.