In this BBC interview, Google’s Eric Schmidt discusses his new role as Executive Chairman and why the decision was made to hand-over his CEO role to Google co-founder, Larry Page.

All interesting stuff, particularly, his response to suggestions that Google is ‘straining to innovate’, that it missed out on social networking (anyone remember Google Buzz) and that it is attempting to copy Facebook…though he does admit that Google ‘was late in adding social capabilities to its core products (i.e search) and we’re working to add that.’

He also expresses his concerns over ‘walled-gardens’ such as Facebook that don’t let the search engines index their content and calls on them to be more open. Well he would, wouldn’t he?