Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, talks about how real partnerships are a win-win deal. When making a deal, it is important to let your partner win, too, and to form an actual partnership rather than strictly relying on financial gain.
No matter what language people speak, there is much information that is not in their language. Right now, most of the information available online is in English, but that won't always be the case. Google has been interested in translation, especially as it applies to searching. As of this 2002 lecture, automated translation is not perfect, but co-founder Larry Page reports that they are working to make it better.
Google has been caught in the middle of free speech vs. censorship issues. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act states that if a company removes information from the internet when requested, they cannot be held liable. If the company is then counter-notified, they can put the information back up and remain legally neutral. Google has followed this policy, says co-founder Larry Page, but it has nevertheless sparked controversy.
The first aspect Google considers when hiring is evaluating the applicant's capability of simply doing the job. Next, they look for people who can think outside the box, but still work within Google culture. Third, communication skills are critical for any employee, even engineers. Overall, co-founder Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt have found that if someone is exceptional at something, it is usually a good indicator that they are exceptional at everything.
Google will always be a search engine, despite any additional directions the company may take, because it is a critical part of the mission the founders Page and Brin have defined. Also, says the company, the search engine is far from perfect and still requires many developments before it is complete.
Google's advertising model has been extremely successful, says CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page. Google has invested in technology to better target ads - and they've found that targeting ads well is in fact comparable to targeting search results.
Google increasingly has a global focus; as of 2002, traffic is now around 60% outside of the United States and growing. The search supports 74 languages, including many Asian languages, says CEO Eric Schmidt. There is tremendous growth in Japan, where the majority of portals and online services now use Google.
Looking back, it is easy to forget the tremendous risks co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin undertook to get to the place they are today. The co-founders once caused the whole Stanford network to go down for a significant amount of time while trying to develop Google. Page remarks that weird things happen when you are trying to touch every computer on the internet.
The founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin believe that it is incredibly important for people to have access to information around the world - and that this is something that Google can deliver. They have run into issues with foreign governments over censorship, but recently it has not been a major problem. CEO Eric Schmidt predicts that Google will become an unintended central focus around global copyright and ownership legal issues.
In the beginning, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin tried to license Google to other companies because they wanted to finish their PhD's, but none were interested. Google was started out of desperation; they had no other option but to start the company themselves. Though the founders do worry about competition, the barrier to entry is continuously increasing as Google indexes more and more documents and becomes the foundation of so many other services.
When CEO Eric Schmidt started at Google, his job was largely centered around providing some organizational design. The culture was working well but the company needed more structure. He hired a financial and controller system, instituted staff meetings, and set and reviewed quarterly objectives.
Google's main problem is separating the wheat from the chaff through the mounds of creativity they have on hand, says co-founder Larry Page. There are simply more ideas than time and resources allow them to accomplish.