Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today. He spoke briefly with John Battelle.
Of note, Brin said that he’s excited about Twitter’s success because it’s interesting for him to see entrepreneurs that succeed twice. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams first big break came when he sold Blogger to Google in 2003. It reaffirms the difference a good entrepreneur can make, Brin said.
When asked if he had anything to do with the Google/Twitter search deal yesterday, Brin said he was aware of it but wasn’t personally involved. He also noted that he hasn’t attempted to buy Twitter in the past, though it’s not clear if that just meant him or anyone at Google. He went on to say that Google talks to a lot of companies about partnerships and the idea to buy is always one of the options.
Battelle asked Brin to comment on whether Google would eventually make its own phone hardware. Brin said that was a better question for Andy Rubin (Google’s Android head) but noted that Google has worked closely with a number of phone makers since the G1 to closely tie the software to the hardware, which he believes is important.
Speaking of hardware, Brin said that is an area that keeps him up at night with excitement. He loves the pace of innovation and is always thinking about what Google can do with new and faster devices.
On Bing, Brin noted that he uses all the search engines (presumably to test them out against Google). He said that he thinks it’s good that Microsoft is bringing stronger competition in the market. He also expressed disappointment about Yahoo and Microsoft’s search deal. He wishes Yahoo would continue to go it alone.
Finally, someone asked him where Chrome for Mac is — a topic near and dear to our hearts. Brin says that he’s already using it, the unstable developer’s version. He said that it’s personally troublesome to him that it has taken this long to get it out. He wishes they could have launched it at the same time, and really wishes they had a beta out already.
Below find the Q&A (paraphrased):
JB: So you got to chat with Tim Armstrong. Do you miss him?
SB: Oh yeah it’s great to see him here. We miss him a lot. But it’s great for AOL to have a leader like him.
JB: So yesterday the Twitter deal, how did that go down?
SB: I was aware of it, but not personally. It’s exciting to see an entrepreneur be successful twice. Blogger was great, and I got to work with Ev for a while obviously. It reaffirmed the difference an entrepreneur can make. It’s nice to see him be successful. We have quite the alumni community, which is great for partnerships and trust.
JB: Did you try to buy Twitter.
SB: Um, I did not try to buy Twitter. But when companies approach us, we consider the opportunity to buy.
JB: We talked to Sheryl Sandberg yesterday, another alum. What’s Google’s response to Facebook and Twitter?
SB: I would dispute that Google dominates the economy of attention. From the beginning, it’s just about coming on and doing a search and find these other websites. The web has grown, but people don’t spend all the attention in the search box.
JB: But you can make money there.
SB: When we started, you couldn’t make any money there though. But we made a bet that this would be important. It took several years to make what is now something that’s very lucrative. There will be others that we don’t realize now.
JB: What about the push into premium display ads?
SB: I can’t forecast what it will be. But at a high level, the Internet as an ad platform is efficient. It’s a rising tide, rates will go up.
JB: Google has been criticized for doing too many thing. Boiling a lot of oceans, mobile, search, ads, etc. Can you succeed in all of them? Do you want to bat .350?
SB: I don’t know baseball, is that like 35%? I think we can do better than that.We started Gmail, it was a pain to deal with email. There were client solutions, but none were that great. The web offerings were toys basically. With Android, we were trying to use other platforms, but they were closed, different, etc.
JB: Will there be a Google hardware device for Android?
SB: I’ll leave that for Andy Rubin. But we have been very involved. Ever since the G1. We want to work closely with a few at any time. You can’t make software totally divorced from the hardware.
JB: Do you like Bing? You a Bing user?
SB: I use all search engines out there. Bing reminds us that search is a competitive market. There’s Powerset that Microsoft bought. There’s Cuil. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. It’s a shame Yahoo is abdicating.
JB: They would say they’re not.
SB: Sorry that was my impression.
JB: Do you have a comment on Microsoft/Yahoo search deal?
SB: I shouldn’t comment on that. But Yahoo had some interesting things, they should stick with it.
Audience Q&A
Q: What keeps you up at night?
SB: There are things that keep me excited at night. Primarily hardware. Moore’s law still continuing is amazing. 8 core processors, 2 terabyte hard drives, it’s incredible. Fiber optics too. Google looks at what we can do with this new powerful technology that we couldn’t do before.
JB: What do you make of the recent complaints about Google not paying their fair share to places like the AP and Rupert Murdoch?
SB: I think they’re just tying Google with change. The world is changing, the business models are changing. They’re making a leap that we’re causing that or we’re stealing from them, I think. I don’t agree with the conclusion, but I hear the pain.
Q: Where’s Chrome For Mac?
SB: I am using it. Anyone can. You have to go to a page that says you shouldn’t use it, but you should. To be fair, it’s not as stable as I’d like it to be. The timing has been an issue. I’d be much happier if we launched at the same time or had a beta now. We are all suffering from this. I do use it a lot now, but it’s somewhat unreliable.
Q: Give a 2 years or 3 years out vision of what Google Books will be?
SB: Yeah thanks for that question. I’ve been surprised about the controversy there. We want to make books available on a huge scale. We overcame tech challenges. We had to overcome the legal dispute, which we’re working on. These books have great content, even if they’re 50 years old. People need to access them and we need to pay them for that, we know that. I’m surprised by the resistance. But I’m optimistic that we’ll be successful and that we’ll provide access to tens of millions of books.
That’s a wrap
When he mentioned other search engines, did he really say Cuil? Are they still alive?
yeah he did.
He might know something we don’t or he is tactically laughing at the competition.
“SB: I shouldn’t comment on that. But Yahoo had some interesting things, they should stick with it.”
That is at odds with his CEO’s policy of not speaking about competitors. Am I missing something?
Look at the first sentence.
Sergey Brin is a man! What a nice article that inspires!
Actually, rumor is that brin is a chick. After his comment about baseball, there is no doubt that he throws like a girl.
When you read the answers by SB, you hear them in a cheap Russian voice like Boris & Natasha . . . amiright?
This is the most content-free interview transcript I’ve read since Sarah Lacy had Zuckerberg on stage.
What a smart dude. Quite efficient with his answers.
it’s probably a naive view but i think that google isn’t evil yet mainly becuase of him, he sounds like a nerd and that’s very comforting. it’s nice to have people like him in powerful roles to counter the rupert murdochs of the world.
Are you afraid of American Idol, the New York Post?…Oh, yeah, Fox News—yeah, that’s scary because it’s not MSNBC. Maybe the Obama Admin could just shut them down or something? Now that wouldn’t be scary.
i would disagree…i think that google is the most evil of them all. i have seen them several times kill a company’s traffic before making them an offer to buy them out at a lower multiple.
Which is genius!
genius….maybe, evil…definitely yes.
Is it me, or is the headline badly written? It implies that Chrome for the Mac keeps Sergey up at night, which is not what he said.
The entire article is badly written – I really wish MG Siegler had an editor.
me too.
BTW that was obviously just a rough transcript of the talk. A regular article is up top now.
No it doesn’t. Learn to read.
seba – what are you replying to when you say “it doesn’t”? shouldn’t you say “it isn’t”?
that’s no way to write man …
“It doesn’t” meaning “it doesn’t imply Chrome for Mac keeps him up at night”. duh!
Uhmmm….Am i missing something? The title says what keeps SB up at night is a Google phone….in the interview, that is not talked about at all…
Read the reply to the previous comment.
you should learn not to be an idiot….This is all he says about ‘phone’
JB: Will their be a Google hardware device for Android?
SB: I’ll leave that for Andy Rubin. But we have been very involved. Ever since the G1. We want to work closely with a few at any time. You can’t make software totally divorced from the hardware.
Do me a favor, press Control + F, and type phone. Now tell me how many times you see it on the page? once, in the headline…in the article? zero.
The article does include a question to SB asking him what keeps him up at night, and he does provide an answer.
When it says “A Google Phone” in the title of the article, it doesn’t mean that that’s what keeps him up at night.
yes, thank you.
Title needs adjusting.
And the interviewer (JB) seemed fairly Google hostile. Relax, pal.
SB is awesome. In fact, Google directors/CEOs/officials/etc. interviews are always awesome. They always seem more personal, down to earth, and far less ‘restrictive’. If only they went into the Hardware business, we’d know what they were working on before half their employee’s did, ha.
Q: Where’s Chrome For Mac?
A. http://www.stainlessapp.com
When will this obsession with Google end. They crush entire industries with their lab efforts. Authors of books are suffering as they will drive down the price of books and also destroy the publishing industry. Google books is napster for books.
Big up for Google. At least they provide innovative and powerful competition to the other two tech giants – Apple and Microsoft.
But I do sometimes wonder if they are now stretching themselves a bit too far in trying to launch so many new products and services at once.
The chances of Google Wave, Google Music, Droid Smartphone & Chrome O/S all hitting a home run are highly unlikely, especially as new product launches need a huge back -up infrastructure to iron out any bugs or serious problems.
I think what really keeps Sergey Brin up all night is that he has too many things on his plate.
Or maybe its both Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer knocking on his front door in the early hours and shouting ‘Trick or Treat’.
That last paragraph made me laugh
He finally manned-up a little making some sense thats the Brin I wanted to hear what he really thinks.
@Moe Glitz
That’s a good one. LOL.
When it comes down to it, Google wins for me, regardless of how it may seem, Google embodies some things that make me have to love them.
Their software is free…almost always free…Chrome OS is going to be free (look at Windoze is that free?). Google re-defines the market prices for services, we would be paying monthly for e-mail if G-mail hadn’t made that push, we would be paying for CAD without Sketch-up. Google is amazing because google is free.
Or…is their strategy to flood the market with free services/software to entice users to use it and get them hooked and into the “I can’t live without this” state-of-mind, drive out their competition, and then be able to charge whatever they want?
I honestly don’t believe that’s their strategy, but hey, you never know.