Google's Schmidt Talks Yahoo, Newspapers, 'Don't Be Evil', and iPhone
Yesterday, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was interviewed by Ken Auletta on stage at a San Francisco event hosed by Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. Schmidt offered up insight on a variety of issues. Let’s dig in.
Yahoo
An independent Yahoo would be better for innovation and competition, in Schmidt’s opinion. He feels that Microsoft has delivered products such as Windows that limits the choice of consumers.
Newspapers
Schmidt said that Google has a ‘moral imperative’ to help newspapers, who’ve lost money in recent years to online publishers, who often provide their content for free. DoubleClick will be a part of the effort, though specific details were not revealed.
Of course, newspapers haven’t traditionally been Google’s biggest fan. A Belgian newspaper group has been going after Google for years for indexing their site.
‘Don’t be Evil’
The famous mantra is misunderstood, says Schmidt. Instead, the phrase was designed to facilitate internal conversations about corporate ethics, but most people interpret it as an absolute moral stance.
iPhone
Schmidt said that a “vast majority of searches” performed on Google via mobile phones are generated on iPhones. But since Google is preparing its own mobile platform, Schmidt has been excused from Apple board meetings a couple of times. He said that Android will “likely be quite different” from the iPhone.
via InfoWorld, USA Today, Reuters, and MarketWatch
