Google's Former CEO: Amazon Is Biggest Rival

Google’s former CEO said Monday that the tech giant’s biggest rival is Amazon.

“Many people think our main competition is Bing or Yahoo. But, really, our biggest search competitor is Amazon,” Eric Schmidt, currently serving as Google’s executive chairman, told a crowd in Berlin. “They are obviously more focused on the commerce side of the equation, but, at their roots, they are answering users’ questions and searches, just as we are.”

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Larry Ellison stunned the tech world in September by announcing he's stepping down as CEO of Oracle, the enterprise software company he co-founded in 1977. Since Oracle doesn't sell products to the public like Apple or Microsoft, Ellison's a little less-known outside Silicon Valley: But he's a hugely important figure, having heavily influenced Steve Jobs and a host of other tech leaders.

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Satya Nadella just took over the reins at Microsoft earlier this year from now-Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, but he's already making his presence known through sizable layoffs and simultaneous acquisitions. Nadella's Microsoft has let go of nearly 15,000 employees this year — a chunk of whom were made redundant when Microsoft closed an approximately $7.2 billion deal for Nokia's device wing. Also on Microsoft's tab? $2.5 billion for the Swedish gaming company behind top-hit Minecraft.

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John Donahoe has been president and CEO of eBay since 2008. He's now guiding the company in a time of deep uncertainty: In early 2014, eBay settled a nasty public feud with activist investor Carl Icahn, who wants eBay to spin off payment service PayPal as an independent business — and Icahn isn't the only one who thinks that's a good idea.

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Don Mattrick became CEO of Zynga, the social gaming company that brought us FarmVille, in 2013, coming over from Microsoft. He's been tasked with leading Zynga through a tumultuous period — the now publicly-traded company hasn't been able to replicate its FarmVille success, leaving many to wonder about the company's future.

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Google is the most-visited site on the Internet, with 233 million unique visitors in August. According to the same ranking, 172 million visited Amazon, making it the sixth most visited.

But while Schmidt may see Amazon as Google’s biggest competitor right now, the CEO said that there’s competition brewing from unknown entrepreneurs.

“Someone, somewhere in a garage is gunning for us,” Schmidt said. “The next Google won’t do what Google does, just as Google didn’t do what AOL did. Inventions are always dynamic and the resulting upheavals should make us confident that the future won’t be static.”

Write to Justin Worland at justin.worland@time.com.