Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Google’s CEO on Mobile Web, Cloud Computing, Privacy...

Google boss Dr. Eric Schmidt talked to German FAZ. Here are some of the items Eric talked about (my emphasis; note from what it looked like, FAZ might have back-translated the interview from German, though I’m not sure):

• The mobile web, in a discussion that circled around ads: “Yes, mobile will be a larger business than the [PC web]. But it will take a few years.”
• Advertising in social networks: “MySpace did not monetize as well as we thought. We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we thought to get our ad network to work with social networks. When you are in social network, it is not likely that you’ll buy a washing machine. It is not a long term problem but it is taking us longer than we thought.”
• The computing cloud: “Put it in the cloud! It is much cheaper! That is the new model. That transition is going to happen independent of Google. It is the time: The networks are fast enough, the computers are fast enough.”
• Asked on whether Microsoft would move to the cloud: “I’m looking forward to that cloud.” Then asked whether he doesn’t think so: “I let you judge whether Microsoft will take [their] core applications and put them in the cloud.” Asked if it may be a threat for Microsoft: “I can’t speak for Microsoft. They have a large revenue stream for products that run in the old model. The question is: Which ones are they moving to the cloud.”
• On the future of Google search: “I would like it to answer more hypothetical questions. The most extreme is: ’What should I do tomorrow?’ Or: ’I am in Berlin, which spots shall I go visit?’. And for artificial [intelligence] techniques it is possible over time to approximate that kind of understanding.”
• On Yahoo and regulatory concerns over partnerships: “We may be the leader in text ads but we are not in the online ad market in general or in particular online ad markets, for instance display ads. Yahoo is the leader in display ads and one of my concerns about Microsoft buying Yahoo is that you have two strong companies in the display ad business.”
• On data protection: “There is always room for improvement. At this stage from our perspective we think what we do is correct. But the industry is suffering from the fact that the people don’t necessarily do what they are saying they are doing.“

[Thanks Frank!]

Google’s CEO on Mobile We ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (8)

>> More posts

Advertisement