Google’s Eric Schmidt opens the day vowing to run the company based on the founding principles. “Principles matter, it’s part of what will be coming as we grow,” he said.
Larry Page, co-founder, on customer trust: “There’s great incentive to be trusted. Companies that win in this space will be trusted.”
Co-founder Sergey Brin, on Google’s agreement to censor information in order to do business in China: “We gradually came to realize we were hurting not just ourselves but the Chinese. We’ll see how it evolves.”
Schmidt on Google capital expenses: “The capital we’re spending builds sophisticated hardware designed by the best computer scientists to deliver, on margin, better performance. Investment in captal gives us enormous leverage.”
More about capital expenses, Schmidt: “Google will grow from Google.com and partners in the United States and internationally,” especially in China, where Google has its largest overseas research and development center, and two Western Europe nations.
Schmidt on acquisitions: “We’ve worked to get people full-time if it’s an important product. Acqusitions are a key part. The important thing to know is [Google’s] investing for the long term under the founding principles.”
Schmidt on the size of the addressable advertising market: “$600 to $800 billion a year.”
Schmidt on click fraud: “Today, it’s not a material issue. I hope it never becomes one.”
Schmidt on Google’s biggest competitor: “We’re clearly focused on Microsoft.”
Will Google stand for some Internet providers’ supposed plans to charge for specific features? Schmidt: “We take a strong position that’s bad for the end user, bad for people proposing it,” Schmidt said. “It makes no sense to take most of a customer’s most important products and charge differentially. This is why they are deploying broadband. Don’t take it away from them.”
Chief Financial Officer George Reyes: Google’s revenue growth rate? “It’s extraordinary, I don’t care what business sector you’re in. It’s driven by traffic, and growth in our advertising and publishing.”
Reyes on why Google refuses to disclose much about its business results: “If we are sharing them (the details) with you, we are sharing them with our competitors.”
Reyes also strongly hints Google’s capital expenses will be “well in excess” of $1 billion in 2006.
Alan Eustace, Google Vice President, engineering, likes his infrastructure: “We do not believe any competitor can deploy infrastructure faster or cheaper at our scale.”
Eustace on Google’s overseas markets and outsourcing, a key to Google’s future: “We have engineering centers all over. Israel has got tremendous technical talent. The Brazil group, Portugal. This is not an outsourcing effort. The people we are hiring are exactly the same quality engineers as we are hiring in Mountain View. It’s globalization, not outsourcing.”
One important overseas market is China. Kai-Fu Lee, the Microsoft engineer Google hired to run its operations in China, mentioned overflow crowds during his visits to China’s major universities – a sign of good recuiting efforts. “It shows you the degree Google’s loved among computer scientists,” he said.
Joan Braddi, vice president of search services, on Google’s new distribution deals. Dell Computers and “past distribution deals like this have been successful.”