Google Gets A New CEO
HOLMES: Thirteen minutes past the hour now. It was a parade route. All right. It's a parade that's, of course, like any parade you've ever seen. You've got children going down the street, innocent folks in the community. The FBI is trying to figure out why somebody would put a bomb on a parade route on MLK Day. We're talking about Spokane, Washington. This investigation continues now. A lot of talk was about neo-Nazi, whether or not they had something to do with this. But the FBI saying so far saying no evidence of that but they are at this point looking into it. Local human rights advocates are suspecting that, but again, that is not the case right now so far as the evidence is showing. The bomb was diffused. Nobody was hurt. It did have a remote detonator attached to it, however, and the FBI says this could have killed several people.</s>CHETRY: Well, sometimes a hot air balloon has a different plan. And this was the case in Melbourne, Australia, where -- what they were supposed to try to do is land on the beach, then the winds picked up and it forced a splash down in the middle of Port Phillip Bay. None of the 11 people on board the hot air balloon were hurt. But there were no lifejackets in the basket. The balloon company says it will now consider adding them. Yes, when you're sailing around in the air that close to the water, maybe you need them.</s>HOLMES: An idea. I don't know what you do about this situation, though. Take a look at this video. Take a look at this boat. Somebody is on it. They are trying to get home. Now when I first saw this and maybe you're thinking too, why in the world would they do this? They had another option here. This is down off the coast of New Zealand, actually. The boat had another route it could have gone but it chose to go through these treacherous waters. Why? The guy had been out fishing for a week. They were itching to get home to their wives and to their families, so they took the most dangerous and treacherous route available. They did make it through, but just barely as you see with two boats. Nobody was hurt amazingly.</s>CHETRY: Wow. If you get seasick, that's not a pretty sight. A glimmer of good news when it comes to the economy. According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, which we're seeing for the first time this morning, more Americans are feeling optimistic about the economy. Here's look. This month, 24 percent of those polled say that the economy is in good shape. That's a - that's a good thing? I guess far less people felt like that last time. Seventy-five percent say they don't think the economic conditions are good right now. But, last year, only 18 percent thought the economy was in good shape and 81 percent thought the economy was poor. So, I guess, some baby steps.</s>HOLMES: Some baby steps, but a lot of cities and towns, we've been talking about this week, are just in the red. We know this. But now, we got more evidence of it, in Iowa, in particular, and what they've had to cut now, free preschool is the situation there. $1.1 billion budget gap there. They're trying to make up some of that money. Republicans there said this is a way to do it. It was tough, it's tough for a lot of families, certainly, to deal with, but $500 million is going to be saved over the next three years, but a lot of states and cities trying to figure out what to do. And sometimes programs like that end up having to go, unfortunately. But those are the ones that have so much money attached to them. You can nickel and dime here and there, but unfortunately programs like that end up getting cut.</s>CHETRY: Well, with so many states struggling to stop the red ink, especially California, they have a $17.9 billion budget gap, in fact the largest in the country right now. Policy makers in Washington are reportedly meeting behind closed doors to consider whether states should be able to declare bankruptcy. Proponents say that for some states it is the only way for them to get out from under these crushing debts. Critics, though, say it would impact pensions and, of course, the municipal bond market.</s>HOLMES: I want to turn to Google now, a big shakeup at the top. The CEO is stepping down, being replaced. Our Stephanie Elam, "Minding Your Business" this morning, and you hear this initially, Stephanie, you think, well, he must not have been doing a good job, or they must be in some kind of trouble. Not really?</s>STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Not really. If you take a look at SEC filing, it's - this is where this news sort of was hidden in there. You take a look, you also see that they reported their earnings, they - fourth quarter earnings, they came in at $8.4 billion, up 26 percent. Sounds like they're doing OK.</s>HOLMES: They might be doing OK.</s>ELAM: I think the scope's OK.</s>HOLMES: Well, so they - they just have a high bar if he wasn't getting it done, right?</s>ELAM: They really wanted $10 billion.</s>HOLMES: OK. Maybe that's it.</s>ELAM: No. I'm just kidding. But when you take a look at what's going on at Google, you know, they've said for a long time that they've run the company like a triumvirate between the co-founder Sergey Brin and also Larry Page. At this point, Eric Schmidt says, you know, he has some other things he wants to do. In his tweet that he put out about it, he put, quote, "Day-to-day adult supervision is no longer needed," is what he said. Larry Page will now become CEO. He held that title before and Sergey Brin would no longer be president, but they're saying at this point they want to work on different things and the - to get things approved at the company was taking too long and so, because of that, they feel like they can go ahead, make these changes, things can get through the chain faster, and it's more competitive out there in Silicon Valley. They've had a lot of top Google people leave the company recently, going to competitors, even like Facebook, which is pretty much right across the way there. So it's - it's really a case of where they're making changes to see how this is going to make it better. As you know, Larry Page, who was CEO before, he is a billionaire, and he makes $1 a year, you know, just ceremonially. I mean, you know -</s>CHETRY: $1 a year, salary a year (ph).</s>ELAM: Right, because, you know, you don't really - you don't really need money when a billionaire, and he owns a helicopter and he knows how to fly it.</s>CHETRY: That's awesome.</s>ELAM: I think it's at Moffett Field, actually, since - T.J., since</s>HOLMES: Yes. It's there, right there.</s>ELAM: Right there off the highway.</s>ELAM: Well, and also, you want to keep that growth going, no matter how much you make.</s>CHETRY: Right.</s>ELAM: You don't want to stop growing, right? You want to keep the business moving forward. Of course, as the days move forward we're probably going to hear more about what exactly was going on with Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.</s>CHETRY: Right.</s>ELAM: You know, people are going to want to know -</s>CHETRY: There's always a back story.</s>ELAM: There's always a back story.</s>CHETRY: But they're also trying to expand in the smartphone market, with the Android very popular. So, moving beyond just -</s>ELAM: Right. Beyond the search engine.</s>CHETRY: --</s>ELAM: Right. Exactly. You got to innovate to stay on top, right? So that's what we're seeing.</s>HOLMES: Stephanie, good to see you this morning.</s>ELAM: Good to see you, too.</s>HOLMES: All right. We'll talk to you again.</s>ELAM: All right.</s>CHETRY: And still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, the Metrodome's roof has fallen. We know that part. Remember this? We saw when that 17 inches of snow just came rolling through. But it might actually take a lot longer than they initially expected to get it back up any time soon.</s>HOLMES: Also, this morning, President Donald Trump? Well, why not? It's 19 minutes past the hour.