The Economist: Larry Page on His Way to Changing the World
The Economist article: St Lawrence of Google, offers a profile of Google co-founder, Larry Page that says he’s “well on his way” to changing the world. Many of the comments come from the post keynote press conference last week that we’ve mentioned and Engadget published a lengthy post about almost immediately after the event ended.
From the article:
Does Larry Page ever get vertigo when contemplating his life and future?…”It’s not a good thing to think about,” said Mr Page behind the stage after his keynote address in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week. But if he must ponder his company’s achievements and power, he says in his halting, thoughtful voice, it gives him an even greater “sense of responsibility” to make the world a better place. “The reason your question doesn’t make sense”, adds Eric Schmidt, the comparative veteran who is Google’s chief executive and jointly runs the company with the founders, “is that he’s too busy” to have vertigo. Busy, that is, changing the world.
The article goes on to talk about Larry as a boy, Google’s culture and future and Google as God.
One visitor to the company’s ?Googleplex? in Silicon Valley ?felt as if I were in the company of missionaries?. A consequence of the theory that Google is aiming to run the world could be that ?Google may be less liked in the industry than Microsoft inside 12 months,? says Pip Coburn, a technology analyst. Bloggers have started accusing Google of hubris and arrogance. Paul Saffo at Silicon Valley’s Institute for the Future says that ?Google is a religion posing as a company.?
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Btw, if you want more from Eric Schmidt, who was also at the backstage press event, he sat down with the BBC for a brief interview. This post has a pseudo transcript and a link to the video.
Postscript: It made me both laugh and smile that during his speech Page talked about (joking) Google, the fast food provider. Last April, April Fools Day to be precise, I wrote an overview of what I called Foodgle, Google’s move into the frozen food business.