Asked later in the session about his biggest regrets as Google CEO, Facebook was again top of mind. Tellingly, Schmidt said the social problem Google is grappling with today is largely his fault. He said he recently looked up memos he wrote four years ago about Google needing to address online identity. “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.”

…

Don’t worry though he did manage to put together a quote that had me running to dictionary.com. It was regarding Facebook.

 

“Facebook’s done a number of things which I admire,” Schmidt said during his Tuesday evening D9 interview. “It’s the first generally available way of disambiguating identity. Historically, on the Internet such a fundamental service wouldn’t be owned by a single company. I think the industry would benefit from an alternative to that….Identity is incredibly useful because in the online world you need to know who you are dealing with.”

More from Google on regrets in the social space. 

Schmidt Plays Google’s Social Whipping Boy: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2011/06/schmidt-plays-google%e2%80%99s-social-whipping-boy.html