Google's Schmidt named Cannes Lions 2011 Media Person of the Year

By Arif Durrani, campaignlive.co.uk, Thursday, 19 May 2011 03:00PM

Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt will be presented with The Media Person of the Year Award at this year's Cannes Lions Festival.

Eric Schmidt: Google's executive chairman

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is the world's largest celebration of creativity in communications and its media person award is designed to recognise an influential figure who has made an outstanding contribution to the industry.

Last year's Media Person of the Year Award was presented to Facebook's founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Schmidt joined Google as chief executive in 2001 and is credited with helping to grow the company over the past decade from a Silicon Valley start-up to a global leader in technology.

He has overseen much of the company's technical and business strategy and helped Google dramatically scale its infrastructure and diversify its offering.

He stepped back from the day to day running of the internet giant at the start of the year, making way for Google co-founder Larry Page to take the helm.

Prior to joining Google, Schmidt was the chairman and chief executive of Novell and chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems.

He is a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and is part of the prime minister's Advisory Council in the UK.

He will be honoured during the Press, Cyber and Design Lions awards ceremony on the 22 June in the Palais des Festivals, Cannes, France.

Previous winners of the Cannes Lions Media Person of the Year Award include: Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft Corporation; Sir Anthony O’Reilly, chief executive of Independent News & Media; and Tsuneo Watanabe, chairman and editor-in-chief of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings.

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk