Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
eWEEK.com
Search
eWEEK.com
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Cloud
    • Cloud
    • Mobile
    • Networking

    Google CEO Eric Schmidt Talks Future, Economic Trouble

    By
    NICHOLAS KOLAKOWSKI
    -
    March 4, 2009
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      Google CEO Eric Schmidt launched into a wide-ranging presentation during the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco on March 3, covering everything from how Google is dealing with the current economy to the rise of mininotebooks, known popularly as netbooks.

      Given how the current recession seems to be on the forefront of every company’s mind these days, Schmidt took several minutes to discuss how Google will potentially be affected.

      For the online world, “the next few quarters, things are going to be very, very tough,” he said during the conference, and predicted that it would be 2010 before the industry saw a turnaround.

      “We are not immune to this,” he added.

      According to some analysts, Schmidt’s straightforward discussion of Google’s potential economic peril serves a purpose.
      “Over the past 12 months, as the economy has continued to spiral down, we’ve seen CEOs that have tried to finesse the truth, and they’ve been punished for that willingness to be less than truthful,” Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT Research, said in an interview. “So it’s important for C-level executives to be straight with people about the economy and how their companies are affected.”

      “From the standpoint of base realism, we’ve seen a slowdown in the amount of money that people are spending to buy things,” King added. “So even companies like Google, whose revenues are advertising-based, are going to take a hit.”

      However, even economic devastation comes with a bit of a silver lining, at least if you’re Google.

      “There’s an increasing willingness to try new systems in the enterprise. We have a set of enterprise offerings [that center] around information, mail applications and documents,” said Schmidt. “We’ve been pleased with the willingness of customers to now accelerate their trials …. [T]heir budgets are very, very tight and our stuff is just a lot cheaper.”

      Schmidt also dismissed ideas that the search engine wars were settled, citing both the rise of new players in the arena and the continued attempts by old ones to gain market share.

      “Microsoft is working very hard to build a search engine,” he warned.

      As for another major player in the search business, Schmidt took a moment to refer to the newly appointed Carol Bartz as a “fine and able” CEO for Yahoo.

      Earlier on March 3, Bartz also engaged in a broad discussion with audience members at the conference, in which she said that any negotiations with Microsoft about Yahoo search would be conducted “privately.”

      And cloud computing is coming, Schmidt said.

      “Cloud computing is one of those changes that’s going to happen regardless of whether companies that are participating in the ecosystem allow it, because the technology will make it happen,” he elaborated.

      This is ultimately good for Google: With everybody online, “you can get a lot of information about user behavior that you can mine or build interesting products for.”

      Some have been predicting that 2009 is the year that Google and Microsoft start duking it out over cloud computing.

      As for the future, “mobile devices are going to be the majority of the way people get information.” Citing Moore’s Law, Schmidt seemed confident that it would be “a few years, but not a few decades” before phones with the processor capacity of a computer allowed users to do everything they now do on a PC, including media-intensive applications.

      At that point, he predicted, ad revenue from displays on mobile devices will pass revenue from ads displayed on traditional PCs.

      Future mobile devices “have a GPS on them, and they’re personal-so they know what you’ve seen and won’t show the same thing over and over again like my television,” he said. “That’s a huge change in the business model. Those products are getting built, and the challenge and opportunity is how you get money out of that.”

      In true CEO fashion, Schmidt envisioned a price structure for this future branch of computing: “The monetization of the ads should be higher, because they’re targeted.”

      Editor’s note: This article has been updated with comments from an analyst.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      CHRIS PREIMESBERGER - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      CHRIS PREIMESBERGER - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      EWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      ZEUS KERRAVALA - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      WAYNE RASH - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Info

      © 2020 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×