Google’s 2009 shareholder meeting is today at 2 p.m. pst. As usual they’re holding a press event prior to the shareholder meeting. Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, SVP Corporate Development David Drummond, VP Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer and VP Product Management Susan Wojcicki are attending and taking questions.
Key topics discussed:
Apple: In response to a question about the FTC inquiry about overlap with the Apple/Google boards of directors, Schmidt says Apple doesn’t see Google and Apple as a primary competitor, and so there shouldn’t be issues with him being on the Apple board.
Antitrust: Drummond says he expect to see increasing antitrust scrutiny as Google continues to be successful. Schmidt says information is incredibly important. Governments will pay attention to what Google does, he says, and will hold Google to their core principles. Schmidt says Google understands that there are consequences to mistakes. Schmidt says Google is always trying to find a balance between what their end users need and other concerns. “We are more careful about when and how we do things that are going to raise concerns of any party.” He brings up book search, says careful planning has lead to a historic agreement that is winding its way through the court system.
Monetization of social networks: Susan “we’ve learned a lot about how to monetize this inventory, we believe there are ways to monetize over time but different from search because by nature different from search.” Says they’ve been working on how to serve those ads differently, talks about ads in activity streams.
Google selling AOL stake: Drummond – it was a financial decision to sell the stake. Eric quips “we love aol, we sent our best guy there to run it.”
Plans for customized news: Marissa, who just testified on news to congress, says they have a team looking at how news will evolve. how stories are presented. navigation. finding and traversing news. some things aren’t as good in online news. comments. what to suggest next after a story is read. presentation of stories and how people move from one story to the next. Marissa is talking about the recent google labs products around news.
YouTube: question on estimated YouTube losses this year. Eric says he “believes youtube will eventually be a successful and profitable business. I don’t know how long it will take. it is a huge traffic phenomenon.” Susan says the huge amount of traffic has attracted lots of advertisers. They’ve monetized hundreds of millions of videos, she says. Preroll formats are being tested, she says, and there’s an opportunity to serve ads in different formats. On music videos, need a click to buy next to the video.
Cost cutting v. innovation: Question on how google keeps innovation going with cost cutting so aggressively. Eric says they’re focused on being more precise in their actions. Susan says Google is focused on small teams that act like startups. Eric says its too early to speculate on what Google looks like post recession. Says Internet growth not slowing and people spending more time online.
Google Ventures Drummond says they’ve made initial investment and hired partners. Goal is to go early stage, professional investing in areas they care about, which is a wide variety of areas.
Cost per click decline: 10Q showed a 14% CPC decline, asked to comment. Eric says they won’t comment much beyond the public statements.
Android: Is android an open platform for innovation v. carriers trying to splinter. Eric says this is a problem with any open source project.
China situation: Drummond says it is an ongoing challenge to operate there. YouTube continues to be blocked. issues with google.com from time to time. Says there’s a preference for local businesses there. It’s a difficult road, he says.
Google and Twitter: Marissa says lots of interesting things happening. Interesting from a search perspective. Some overlap with google trends. “we’re interested in being able to add microblogging into search, but no specific plans.”
Android on Netbooks: Eric says no announcement on netbook strategy but says that netbooks are very real, and that people are using netbooks that are consistent with the cloud computing model. client device to access cloud services, google wants their services to work with netbooks and to keep an eye on this space.
Live blogging continuing…
tell marissa mayer i said hi
wow Google even has cool Kleenex boxes
All the best to marissa from Germany
Didn’t Susan Wojcicki do a s..tape on jeanjean.c.la a while ago?
Good notes, Mike. Appreciate the summary and reporting.
hii
“Drummond says he expect to see increasing antitrust scrutiny as Google continues to be successful”
Does this mean Microsoft is in the clear?
Googl Ventures will be very exciting. I think with the right “talent scouts” the venture fund will be game changing. The fund clearly shows that they are on the prowl. I cant wait to see there first investments. Hope to hear from them soon.
VentureLocator.com – appreciation matters
They can’t wait to invest in your proprietary ning redirect technology and 5,000 locator domains.
MyLocator.mobi – find yourself
Wow. It’s sad when someone believes their own hype.
video anyone?
quote: … increasing antitrust scrutiny as Google continues to be successful…
Since Mr. Schmidt is a mate of President Obama, he should lobby his administration to kill this beast, the anti-trust. It is a hindrance to anyone’s growth (including Google) and not only that it is anti-capitalism & anti-property rights.
I doubt that Mr. Schmidt favors in lobbying for the killing of the anti-trust beast, since he would like to use it to slow down anything that Microsoft does that may possibly threaten Google’s interests. Google has expressed interests recently in joining the EU anti-trust case against Microsoft. This action by Google (on the approval of Mr. Schmidt) is pathetic. If anyone who is demanding that someone can’t do what he likes with what he/she owns (property) is a thug. Mob agents do this all the times to other property owners, so they’re thugs. Google (and other parties) use the anti-trust laws to coerce Microsoft to stop it being bundling its own products (IE browser & others) with its own operating system, therefore Google is also a thug. So, the mob is a bunch of illegal thugs and Google using the anti-trust against Microsoft is a legalized thug.
Microsoft is also guilty of using the anti-trust to hinder Google from acquiring DoubleClick.