IndustryMore Google Chatter from Various Sources Including Bill Gates

More Google Chatter from Various Sources Including Bill Gates

Yes, it’s another story about Schmidt, Brin, and Page (aka the Google Guys) in the latest issue of Forbes. It’s titled, Google Thinks Small.

Here are a few key passages:

Google is now at $6 billion a year in revenue and $7.6 billion in cash, employing 5,000 painstakingly chosen people. Schmidt and other insiders believe they may have found a world-changing way to run a company. (Then again, nothing Google does, in its own view, is ever average.) Most firms still look like the refining and manufacturing businesses of Rockefeller and Ford. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, children of the Internet, have built a world where a well-chosen elite accommodates flexibility, shifting roles and, above all else, urgency.

One success in ten tries is okay; one in five is superb. Everyone from a failed venture moves to another urgent project. “If something is successful, you work it in, somehow,” Schmidt says. “If it fails, you leave.”

On Working at Google
One key rule: You can’t call any idea “stupid.” (Nor is most any idea too wild. On a recent day at the Google campus a bulletin board invited workers to a session on the dream of erecting a 200-mile-high elevator into space.)

You’ll also read about the Google interview process.

Finally from Forbes:

Marc Meyer, who knew Schmidt at UC, Berkeley and worked with him at PARC, says Schmidt sees a day when Google will hold everyone’s data on a “trust me” basis. “He told me, ?If you want it to be private, don’t put it in a computer,'” says Meyer, now at a recent tech startup. “Eric has an Anakin Skywalker conundrum. He has absolute power, and it will be hard to resist the Dark Side.”

Schmidt counters:”I joined a small company full of smart guys, and it still feels like that. We just have to change outside perceptions.”

OK, so that’s Google. Now, on to Microsoft.

Via Search Engine Guide, this Computer.co.uk interview with Bill Gates where he spends some time discussing what else, Google.

Gates says (again we’ve heard some of this before):

?Which Google products are you talking about? Seriously? Other than search, which are you talking about? Google Talk? Wow. A total ?me too? product. Even Gmail ? what is the unique thing?? he says.

?We need to surprise people and do a search that is way better than Google, and we are very on top of that. The idea of development tools, a natural interface, productivity software ? Google is not in any of those categories. People are acting as if they will magically be in these other categories with something more than a ?me too? offering. It is kind of fun that people underestimate what we are going to do here.?

Gates on Google and the Press and Who Should Organize the World’s Information

Here’s my favorite quote from Bill G:

Google is great, they are smart people, the press should continue to feed their arrogance as much as possible,? he says.

?They say they are going to organise the world?s information. Well, we don?t think that is our job. We think you need to get tools to editors and subject experts to let them organise the world?s information. There is a bit of a philosophy difference here. The only sure winner is the consumer.?

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