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Eric Schmidt has made sure he won't be hanging around cluttering up the house when he finishes his stint as Google CEO, by immediately seeking to have someone jot down his words of wisdom for a book. A real one, apparently on paper.

An auction for the book is expected to close today, according to reports.

Even more seriously, Schmidt has settled on a writer, sorry co-writer, in the shape of Jared Cohen. Cohen already has two books of his own under his belt, as well as experience at the US State Department, and running the Google Ideas think tank.

Crains said the planned volume has been described as seriously wonky.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the book will examine "the challenges that technology poses to authoritarian regimes".

This is of course a subject Schmidt knows much about, having overseen Google's own fearless challenge against a number of authoritarian regimes, including the European Commission's competition authorities and assorted rights holders' and publisher groups.

Schmidt famously thinks we should all enjoy the freedom to move house if we don't like our homes being paraded on Street View, or change our names in a bid to erase our digital footprints.

Quite why Schmidt needs a co-writer is a mystery. Surely a combination of Google Apps and Translate would've done most of the heavy work of translating his wisdom into words on a screen.

In fact, with the technology presumably at his disposal, Schmidt could've neatly spat out the words and had them loaded straight into Google Books, leaving him with the simple decision of whether to bitch about his work being buried by an authoritarian regime or praise the world's largest book depository for bringing his work to a wider audience. ®

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