SAN FRANCISCO -- Web 2.0 Summit -- While waiting for AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL)'s newest CEO Tim Armstrong to take the stage today, Summit attendees were surprised with a visit by Sergey Brin, founder of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), who apparently decided to show up unexpectedly.
"I didn't say no," Brin said to Federated Media's John Battelle. "I just didn't RSVP."
Hmm. Some might call it a bit arrogant for someone to assume such a level of importance as to just show up at a conference, completely throwing off the course of the afternoon session, because he couldn't be bothered to RSVP...
Butttt, moving on.
Brin couldn't give as much time as the rest of the speakers, given his having to leave to attend to miracles and all. But he did touch on a few points of interest.
On Twitter: Responding to a question on whether he tried to buy Twitter, Brin smartly replied that he didn't try to buy Twitter, but "if companies approach us we consider any opportunity to buy."
To which Battelle retorted that he's "sure there's still a price tag." Brin was silent.
On Google's Omnipresence: Battelle noted that Google often gets criticized for doing too many things, questioning whether Google intends to succeed in all of those areas. "Primarily we've entered areas where we run into a problem," said Brin. Google launched Gmail, he says, because "when we started it was really painful to deal with email."
(Yes. We meant to thank you immensely for saving the day with Lively and Knol.)
On a Microsoft/Yahoo Search Deal: Brin said he's impressed with Bing and uses all search engines, but he's disappointed by Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO)'s potential deal with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) on search.
"It's a shame that Yahoo plans to abdicate that area because I think they were doing interesting work, too," said Brin. "I think Yahoo had a number of interesting innovations there and I wish they would continue to innovate in search."
(It's worth noting that AOL's CEO Tim Armstrong said afterward that he disagreed: "If you're not going to be really good at search and compete the way Microsoft and Google are it's a really tough market to compete in. My guess is Yahoo was getting out of it because they weren't able to compete at that level."
On Chrome for Mac: It exists, ladies and gents! So take off those sad hats! But... to get it, you have to go to a page where it "warns you against it." It's still buggy, and you shouldn't expect it to work very well (wait, is that something unusual?), but you can use it if you really want to. "It has been one of the disappointments of the Chrome project for me," said Brin. "If it crashes or is somewhat unreliable please forgive us."
On Google Books: Brin says he doesn't get the criticism surrounding the Google Books project. "We get criticized kinda for anything. I've been surprised at the level of controversy," he said. (Aww!)
"Ultimately these books have great content in them, great information, even if they're 50 years old or so... We need a way to allow people to access them and to pay the authors and publishers for that matter for those books."
But, if nothing else, Google has optimism: "I'm optimistic we're going to be successful and I'm optimistic we're going to be able to provide people access to tens of millions of books that otherwise would be lost."
I'm amazed at the uniformly negative comments about Sergey. I'll focus on one, from the author of the post: "Yes. We meant to thank you immensely for saving the day with Lively and Knol."
How terrible that Google failed. It's something that seems to be a common trait among so many inventors, even the successful ones. Maybe humankind just doesn't cut it when it comes to inventing stuff? Or let me just stick to Google, or better still, make it personal and blame Sergey. I bet I can come up with a pretty long list of Google failures that he was responsible for. So, not only is Sergey leading a bunch of losers who get it wrong most of the time, but he also lets his staff goof off for a day every week so they can find even more ways to fail that Sergey might not have thought of. One of the commenters summed it up nicely: "brilliant kid when it comes to search, other than that, just another kid that is craving for attention". Or maybe, and let me lose the sarcasm, which I'm not really good at anyway, maybe it's just that you need to fail a lot before you get it right. And Google is giving so many geeks of the world a great chance to do just that.
Leading a successful company that inspires so much passion and innovation amongst its employees takes extraordinary people. I'm sure Sergey and his partners will continue to get things wrong now and again and plenty of people will line up to point it out, but the only thing I'd want to say to them right now is to thank them for the huge boost in productivity and the pleasure I get from using Google-powered search, email and maps every day. I think they got those ones right.
What is it, Nicole? A desire to make more money? The guy is tired of search options or just decides to make the world better ( the way he thinks)? Why Does Google have to be everywhere, to cover all the sides of any Internet activity? May be Sergey just wants to be a god? Nice to meet you, I am Sergei Brin - the god of the Internet? :))))?
Several of Brin's comments have me guffawing. To wit:
--"It's a shame that Yahoo plans to abdicate that area because I think they were doing interesting work, too," said Brin. "I think Yahoo had a number of interesting innovations there and I wish they would continue to innovate in search."
Translation: "Keep focusing on what you do worst, Yahoo, while I grab more of your share."
--"It has been one of the disappointments of the Chrome project for me," said Brin. "If it crashes or is somewhat unreliable please forgive us."
Now, THAT's a classic. "If our publicly traded company screws up, please forgive us because we're ... [young? cute? nice? rich? have a private jet?]"
--"Ultimately these books have great content in them, great information, even if they're 50 years old or so.."
Translation: "I don't read much, so I have no idea why anyone would be interested in a book that's more than a year old.... what's that you say -- Dante? Shakespeare? Einstein? Paul of Tarsus? I'll Google 'em and get back to you."
It is funny that Sergey was disappointed that Yahoo gave up on search and signed up to use bing, but didnt Google had a similar deal before they realized DOJ will not allow this go through due to search market monopoly... May be Sergey should do some google search on all the deals that fell apart before he makes a snooty comment like this :) Definitely brilliant kid when it comes to search, other than that, just another kid that is craving for attention.
I know this may be a needless distraction to the content of this blog but since you mentioned Sergey Brin, who in classical internet hype, displayed the so called missing evolutionary link on its search engine logo, it is time to give the internet community an update on the latest findngs on this subject.
It has just been proven that the so called evolutionary missing link is not even a close relative of man. So please tell sergey and Co the big news and tell them that in future, they should be more circumspect in order to avoid such embrassment.
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Hey, IE Radio lovers: We're live right now with Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM). You won't want to miss this, so hurry up and head on over!
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We do a lot of grousing here on Internet Evolution, and usually for good reason, considering the amount of nonsense that keeps this industry afloat on its cloud of hot steamy air!!!! But... we can still happily acknowledge those titans who have succeeded in leading the way or paving new ground in their respective fields and, in turn, give credit when it is well deserved.
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What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
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