Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on stage right now at Fortune’s Brainstorm conference being interviewed by Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick. Here are my notes live:
Q: What is Google’s next great revenue stream?
Schmidt: How about text ads?
Q: The biggest knock against Google is that it is a one-product company. how do you respond to that?
Schmidt: Google is a one-product company. It is called Google. We think about features, not products. People usually talk about text ads when they say that. While the vast majority of our revenues comes from text ads, there is no single large category of text ads or geography. It is well diversified. We serve text ads against content that is not searchable.
Q: We select for people who share our values. We don’t value experience very much. We also select for people who want to work with other people. Because it is collaborative.
Q: But you are known for saying that it is hard to manage larger groups?
Schmidt: If you look at the history of software development, all the interesting things that have been built have been built by two people. It is the nature of software technology.
Q: Isn’t working in larger teams going to be necessary?
Schmidt: this is an unsolved problem. You start small, then you have big projects. You follow a traditional S Curve, but the time you have become like this you are entirely predictable {talks about 20 percent time as driving creativity and helping to recruit top technical people]. It serves as pressure cooker release valve.
Q: Almost every challenge you have has to do with scale. I hear more people saying I don’t feel safe that Google should have so much information about me.
Schmidt: Because of the way technology works, all the technology companies are aggregating information about people. It is a political debate. Countries differ on this question. England has the largest number of closed circuit cameras by a factor of ten, but they also let you sue the papers if you feel you are defamed.
We get into constant problems with some prosecutor who subpoenas information we don’t want to give them, and we resist it. Which is why we don’t fully operate in China. Our argument is that information is not available in your domain. So countries are now trying to rewrite their laws to say this information cannot be available anywhere on the Internet.
Q&A from audience:
Q: What about mobile?
Schmidt: Our wireless initiative was a perfect outcome. It was the cost of an outcome. I am on the board of Apple. Last night I was in Palo Alto and there was a line outside. It shows the device is a step forward. IPhone’s competitors all have dec A phone is GPS, a camera, a computer, and a browser. The Phone is tehfirst one with a really functional browser. We show full ads, so that is a huge for revenues/
The new category of apps that have not come out yet really is a breakthrough. One winner of the Android apps, it looks around, names the buildings it sees and tells you what is happening inside of them. That is a really interesting product. In mobile there are a lot od product that have that WOW factor, because of the use of GPS.
I think all the most interesting next-generation social apps will be mobile.
Q: [Sam Whitmore asks if Google does any work for the government related to the Patriot Act]
Schmidt: Regarding the Patriot Act or any of the three-letter organizations, absolutely not. We do provide the federal government with some search and other services through our [government] sales group.
Q: enterprise plans?
Schmidt:
The easiest for us to enter the enterprise is to address high pain levels like e-mail, messaging, calendaring.We have something like a million companies using these services, mostly small. My view is that it will be a many-year process, but we will create tools that will eventually go to the top.
[Interview is over].
Schmidt has to be one of the smartest men on the planet at the moment. Im amazed at what those guys at Google have been able to achieve. Im looking forward to seeing where they will be in another 20 years.
Steven
http://crenk.com
“We do provide the federal government with some search and other services through our [government] sales group.”
Government will one day work secretly work with Google to arrest dissident. During WWII, America put the Japanese Americans in concentration camp. What the Japanese Americans don’t know is how the Americans manage to know where they live and what kind of ethnicity they are. It is the information they collect from you that you disclose to them that you are Japanese. And based on this information, they round you up and put you in concentration camp. Hitler did the same to the Jews.
Imagine, Google working with the government doing the same if something like WWII or of similar war that the Executive branch feels like going into to have this authority.
The government is an institution not to be trusted. And one these days, the government is what will cause the destruction of mankind. For this has been written by Adam Smith in his wealth of the nation.
We have to give credit to Google for being able to beat everybody in the industry which had large number of players already
Remember that infomercial where the guy told you to place “tiny text ads” in the classifieds as a way to generate millions of dollars? I think he’s on the Google board of directors.
Great quote…
“If you look at the history of software development, all the interesting things that have been built have been built by two people. It is the nature of software technology.”
Who cares if they get scrutiny for being a one product company (which they are not)… they are the dominant leader in that product category (search and search advertising), grossing billions upon billions each year. If you want to diss, look at the numbers first.
Jeff
http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
google is soooooooooo smart they bought digg. couldnt the geniuses over there create something on there own for about $10,000.
google is as creative as a number 2 pencil. the adslop they sling all over everybody elses website is garbage. Estimates 65% of there income from the adsense network with guesstimantes of up to 30% click fraud. Hail to the google gods for there ability to generate vast wealth with a website that is horrendous. When it comes to profits they are number one. User experience and in house creative innovation they are dead in the water. Boring.
Yeah, and these crapLocator sites you spam all the time have a great user experience.
Get a grip.
Not to hate, but how about fixing the punctuation and spelling?
That is in interesting comment “We don’t value experience very much.”. I am pretty sure that his value to the company comes mostly from his experience… he may also be one of the more experienced people in that company. Hope *he* satisfies the criteria that he is using to hire people.
“I think all the most interesting next-generation social apps will be mobile.”
I agree with that statement. The widespread of mobiles and almost as important, wireless internet access allows developers to reach users in new ways. The integration of GPS plus wireless internet will lead the way for most new applications, as that article points out.