Schmidt starts off by announcing a presentation feature for Docs & Spreadsheets. John Battelle points out that this completes the Office suite, so he asks is it now a competitor to MS? Schmidt says no, because it doesn’t have the same or all of MS Office’s functionality. He says Google D&S is a collaborative, web 2.0 framework – very different to MS Office according to Schmidt. He talks about the transition to a web-based computing framework, which their product is a good example of (for R/WW readers, aka the Web Office!). John persists – nevertheless it is a competitor to MS, he says (to crowd applause). Schmidt persists with his line of not answering that question, saying that D&S will enable people to use productivity products on the web, which he says they will use for different reasons – such as sharing and collaborative features. Schmidt calls this a web 2.0 shift in thinking for productivity.
The talk shifts to DoubleClick. John says that DC was in the past seen by Google as the type of advertising (banners etc) that was oppositie to Google (CPC text links). So what’s changed? Schmidt says that Google has since decided to offer a full scale set of advertising – not just text ads. So they acquired YouTube, started doing TV and radio advertising, and more. Now Google is looking to offer a single way to do all types of advertising. Since 2004, he says DC has become more targeted and offers better support tools (for publishers etc). So he says combining this with Google’s technology will make “the math work” for them, in terms of the $3B price they paid for it. He finishes by saying that Google’s technology does the best job of targeting, so if you marry that with DC’s people and tools, that’s how they came up with the $3B price tag.
John asks about Amazon S3 etc and will Google respond. Schmidt doesn’t answer that specifically, although he says they are interested in the Web platform space and are doing it in a different way (from Amazon). He cites Google Docs & Spreadsheets again, as an example of Web platform services that Google will provide. He then talks about how Google is building the world’s largest supercomputers, which will allow them to provide data platforms and things like advertising services on top of that.
John asks what areas interest Google. Schmidt says mobile space is the biggest. He says 3G and 4G will provide a lot of opportunities and that this is “a wide open space”. He also notes the local space, which is a big search opportunity.
John asks: what does Schmidt think about when he first wakes up? Schmidt aboids the early morning part, but says he thinks a lot about scaling. He worries about this – because scaling requires more data centers, cash flow, people, product announcements etc. But he says the amazing thing is how early we are in scaling the Internet. He says we’re just at the beginning of getting information that was previously kept in small pockets, onto the Internet platform.
Last question, John asks about data portability. Can users get their own data and e.g. give it to Yahoo. Schmidt says that Google has made a commitment never to track personal data (search history, gmail etc). He says end users wouldn’t choose to adopt the services Google offers otherwise.
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)