Google cofounder Sergey Brin and Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke today to a small gathering of reporters at Google’s New York office. Below, a live blog of the briefing.
Note that I’ve tidied this up a bit since the briefing happened at 11am Eastern time. You’ll still find plenty of typos. I may try to pull out selected portions later when I have more time. I’m juggling being at our SMX East search marketing conference this week, the impromptu briefing plus having to fly of New York and back to California today.
Expect More Android Devices
Sergey enters the room and sits down. He starts talking, saying he’s not sure where to start. He mentions the Verizon-Google news on Android. “There are a number of devices. They’re coming out as a trickle, but we expect more.” Please note that when I use quotation marks, I think I’ve captured the exact quote or very close to it.
Brin Proud Of Google Book Search
Says he wanted to mention Google Books. Knows there’s a hearing today. Very proud of it, making information accessible. Has an op-ed piece coming out. Feels it helps fulfill Google’s mission.
Schmidt Says “Worst Behind Us” Of Global Economic Downturn
Eric just came in, and now we’re doing some formal introductions. Wants to focus on search in talks today. Both are here because of Google’s global sales meetings happening today. Says mood is very positive. “We told them that the worse is behind us and we’re clearly seeing aspects of recovery…. I had been in error thinking there would be a lag, Europe first, US second.” Google never stopped hiring. Increasing the investment rate in way all would be welcome.
Brin’s Working On Search
Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch asks what Sergey’s been spending time on. Sergey says search. You can get more commercial results now, he notes (see my Up Close With Google Search Options article).
Today you can restrict things by date, but based on date in the text (not quite, see that article above), but you can’t tell when it was actually authored. You’ll be able to choose that authored date. It’s in prototype. It’s amazing how powerful features like that can be, he says.
Sure, Competiton Helps
Steven Levy from Wired asks: More activity from competitor in Redmond [you know, Microsoft]. Will that ramp up competition?
Sergey: I think it’s healthy to have a variety of competitors and a diversity of competitors (mentions Cuil and Powerset). Certainly Microsoft has made its contributions. Many of the things deployed in Bing we’d seen earlier in Live or whatever it was called. Generally all those competitors helps the health of the industry.
Eric agrees.
Steven asks is Bing new to them or seen as a rebranding. Eric says better they focus on themselves. Says Google criticized for having a self-referential view of things, but they think it helps.
Smart Phones & Office Applications
Ed Baig from USA Today. Where are smart phones going.
Sergey: We started to focus on Android because there were problems. They lacked powerful browsers, the ability to easily install and run different applications without having to do things for every carrier and combination. I think Android has addressed that very well. Look at iPhone does that well. … pretty excited for the future.
Sergey, born of an early need to have these apps themselves. At time we started and launched in 04, email was kind of a toy. Not much storage. So we focusd on something that would work in an enterprise. And I think that pushed the marketer forward, Yahoo and Microsoft are more capable than wer. We feel we’re father ahead. That’s obviously for you to judge. Going forward, more of Google apps will be available both ways.
Question on help for smaller businesses.
Sergey: Added functionality being added to help larger enterprises. Acquisition of Postini for email archiving, they have been providing for their customers. Obviously more complex administration. There have been a number, surprisingly a number of the apps larger enterprises have are shared with smaller businesses. You’d be really surprised to hear. There’s not as much difference.
Gmail: Aiming for 99.99% Stability
Question on Gmail outtages. Sergey, certainly we’re not happy with any outtage. they’re still at three 9s level (99.9%), not where they want to be, but targeting the 4 9s (99.99% available). therew are several things that contribute to reliability. one issues is the time to recovery. with one outtage, could have been solved in 5 to 10 minutes but errors extended that over an hour. Don’t forget, if you look at typical enterprise today …. those outtages tend to add up to more than those highlighted in Q3. Nubmer of people affected by outtage by grouping of people in pods.
Are Google Results Getting Inconsistent? Experimenting Is Good
I asked him about how the new search options produce a different experience from the existing navigational options (the aforementioned article goes into depth about this), plus how listings themselves now have so many enhancements that it’s hard to know what to expect. Is inconsistency an issue? Is this different teams not coordinating?
Would like to see it more consistent, Sergey said. Agrees they’ve pushed ahead with search options and don’t ahve all the things refelcted. You might see the format of the results themsleves, that tthey experiment and try to improve. Somewhat glad seeing different things.
Book Search Thoughts
Theoretical question on Book Search. Eric says doesn’t want to answer theoretical questions, tries to reframe. We were doing things we thought were legal, got sued, came up with a settlement and this is a normal process. They’re very happy with the settlement they had found and don’t want to change it much if htey don’t have to. The hearing is going on right now.
I think the quesitons you’re really asking is does putting the books in the hands like Google that has so many other resources, is that a strategic problem. It’s absolutely impossible for another company to do the things that are like what we wer doing. … the scenarios in front of us … is probably the best outcome for people who are looking for information in a library.
Question: what are plans for Google. Eric interrupts saying orphan books are huge. Millions of books that no one has read. Back to question, long term, what are you thinking of Google books beyond this.
Sergey: we want to make more and more books searchable and available online … clearly to ahve as many works available.
Eric: Settlment doesn’t coer all books in the world. There’s a set of wedges of books that get bigger and bigger all the time that we need to serve. the mission of hte company doesn’t say us only europe only. it says all information. for next couple years as register comes up.
Google & Economic Predictions
Question on economic indications. Eric: want to put in disclaimer that Google isn’t able to see everthing, can’t perfectly predict. Saw the slowdown earlier last year in clickrate. From our perspective, the low point was in the spring, which is why I said the worst is behind us, may June, we began to notice it maybe junish. The conventional wisdoms of recessions, if you date it properly, you get a recovery about now. They see it according to their metrics. The other peice of convesntioanl wisdom is that Europe would lag 6 months. Europe is not one country … and it varies a great deal depending on the country you’re in. It’s the obvious stuff, countries without a big fall don’t have a big bump.
Question: Is google a leading or lagging indicator? Eric, within advertising space, I thinkwe’re a leading indicator.
Sergey: also affected by consumer queries. Says you can try it out youserfl using Google Trends.
Chrome’s Doing Better Than People Realize; Schmidt Doesn’t Respond to Ballmer Questions 
Question: Seems like Google’s far behind on things like Chrome, getting developers behind.
Eric: Says they’re going to get the message out that Chrome has had better adoption … the adoption rate of Chrome looks very very good. They’re going to get this message out.
Eric: I don’t respond to Steve Ballmer questions [perhaps because Ballmer's known for never saying Google in public if he can help it?], in response to Erick saying that Steve said Chrome is a rounding error.
Mac & Add-On Support Needed For Chrome
Eric says hopes many use Chrome. I see a lot of Macs [like me] in the room. We need to have a good offereing on that. The fundamental thing about Chrome is speed. People who move to Chrome have had problems moving back. Other problem with Chrome, extension architecture (no add ons).
About a month ago, announced Chrome OS and Chromium project. The OS project. Everything is linked together, Chrome is a platform, cloud computing.
Sergey: Chrome was only one to escape unscathed in a security competition
Eric: Historically hard to work in own address spaces, so could get hacked more.
Chrome Vs. Android: Devices Need Their Own OS
Question on Android vs. Chrome OS. Eric says Android more mobile oriented, while Chrome OS designed around the 10″ form factor. True both will use many same things. But designs are different. There are some overlalp but will deal wth. What about subsized netbooks, question? Eric: that’s where we;ll see how things play out.
Google Plays Better With Others
Question: Is google beign too nice now? Eric, tone difference, people (players stakeholders) are getting to know each other better. We’ve always wanted to have these partnershps. we’re learning how to do it where they win too.
Sergey: Talks how there’s confusion between Google and Internet. So now there’s more distinctions
Eric: A simple mantra is Google’s an innovator, and you get collision. Innovation and [missed it] creates opportunity. Fact that Verizon has embraced most of the openness that Google pushed for five years ago, it’s pretty amazing. This is verizon. Not some itty bitty start up. And by the way, it didn’t work in one meeting. We had a couple of deals.
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