Google surprised everyone yesterday with a game of executive musical chairs, shifting Eric Schmidt to the executive chairman slot, and moving Larry Page into the CEO spot, effective April 4. But how big a shift is this, really? What will Page bring to the table?

Page previously served as CEO of Google from 1998 to 2001, when Schmidt stepped in. In a 2000 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Page discussed the challenges of being a young CEO, saying that his age – 27 at the time – was "certainly a handicap in the sense of being able to manage people and to hire people … maybe more so than it should be."

"I certainly lack experience there, and that's an issue," he said.

That being said, Page said he was confident that where he lacked in experience, he made up for it "in terms of understanding the industry I am in, and what the company does."

Schmidt said Thursday that Page is now ready to lead.

In 2004, Page told BusinessWeek that running a company collaboratively produces better results "because you have more bandwidth and checking and balancing going on."

"I think [co-founder] Sergey [Brin] and I have remarkably similar views on things, largely because we've spent a lot of time together. I can usually predict when we're going to disagree, and we make sure to talk those things out explicitly," he said. "And we've had a very good relationship with Eric as well."

When Schmidt first took over as CEO, "there was a learning curve for us," Page told Time in 2006. Schmidt said it took him six months "to understand how Google works. The subtleties took a year."

Larry Page: Risk Taker?

Page has spoken several times about fear of failure, telling CNN in 2008 that he and Brin almost didn't start Google. "We thought, 'Oh we might fail,'" he said. "The reason we started is that Stanford said, 'You guys can come back and finish your Ph.D.'s if you don't succeed.'"

In that same interview, however, Page said he was "baffled" by how hard it is to get people to work on risky projects. "My experience is that when people are trying to do ambitious things, they're all worried about failing when they start," he said. "But all sorts of interesting things spin out that are of huge economic value."

A year later, during a commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Michigan, Page told students that "it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. I know that sounds completely nuts. But, since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition."

As a result, don't expect Google under Page to back off from risky projects. Brin said Thursday that his primary role will be the development of new projects, though he had few details. In recent months, Google has launched Google eBooks, a service for buying and reading digital books, pushed forward on a tablet-ready version of Android, and moved into television with Google TV, among other things.

Tackling Emerging Tech

Over the years, Page has expressed interest in a number of emerging technologies – from artificial intelligence to renewable energy and advanced car tech.

"Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google," he said in that 2000 Academy of Achievement interview, meaning the Web "would understand exactly what you wanted." In recent years, Google has moved toward that vision slightly, unveiling Google Instant, which predicts and shows search results as you type.

In 2007, Google announced "RE < C," an effort intended to produce affordable renewable energy. "We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades," Page said at the time. Solar power is "currently substantially more expensive than coal, depending on the type," Page said. "It's an ambitious goal to get it cheaper than coal, but it's attainable."

In 2010, Google entered into a 20-year green power purchase agreement with a wind farm in Iowa, and later invested in a wind farm initiative that will fund 350 miles worth of wind farms off the East Coast.

Page has also talked several times about automated cars, an interest he has held since his Ph.D. days in 1995. In October, Google announced that it is developing - and has extensively tested - technology to build an autonomously self-driving car.

For his part, Schmidt is not going anywhere. As executive chairman, he said Thursday that he'll have a more external role – getting out and talking to users, clients, and lawmakers about what Google does, and what it plans to do in the future.

In terms of his strategy with government activity, Schmidt said "the simple answer is that we're talking to them."

"An awful lot of the problem that we're having is that people don't understand what we do, [so] part of our core strategy is literally to communicate," Schmidt said. "We're trying to be as transparent as possible."