Popularity and ubiquity have their downsides: Prom queens, politicians, and yes, even huge enterprises have found out that soon after everyone develops a crush on you, the backlash will quickly follow.
Google, which used to be embodied by its goofy logo letters and an origins story about a company founded in a garage that hoped to take over the world of search, is currently regarded with suspicion at its every move because it succeeded. Wildly. Now that it is huge and moving into all sorts of businesses that go beyond pure search, journalists and competitors question its every motive. And Google is determined not to get Microsoft-ed, where a company with a huge footprint in technology and culture ends up being seen as a monopolist and a threat, as opposed to an innovator.
Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of the company, has made himself increasingly available to the press and to regulators in an effort to dispel some of the concerns that swirl around the company, and on Wednesday, he was joined by founder Sergey Brin, who historically has enjoyed the company of engineers more than journalists. (Decoder sat next to Eric Schonfeld from Tech Crunch who somehow managed to render most of the discussion in real time.)
More than a dozen journalists joined Mr. Brin and Mr. Schmidt for bagels and coffee in the company’s New York offices in Chelsea, trying in vain to focus much of their discussion on search, but they happily engaged in every question that came their way, leaving Tom Post of Forbes magazine to wonder why Google is “being nice.”
“In many ways we always wanted to be this Google, rather than the one we were perceived of last year,” Mr. Schmidt said. Some of it is natural, he said — “Google is an innovator, and innovation on the Internet is going to create collisions” — with Mr. Brin adding that it sometimes seemed that all of the disruption to business models created by the Internet was laid at the feet of Google, in part because the company presents an easy, short-hand target.
Mr. Schmidt said that he had been meeting with federal regulators and that, of all the company’s priorities, making sure there is a high-functioning national broadband network was a very big deal, in part because all of the wondrous apps in the world aren’t of much use if people can’t access them.
Google’s effort to scan books raised myriad questions and was the subject of a hearing farther downtown in Manhattan to decide the fate of the settlement it had reached with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. (The judge set a Nov. 9 deadline for a revised settlement.)
Mr. Brin has taken particular offense at the criticism –- he said he wrote an op-ed on the topic that will be forthcoming — suggesting that the company’s willingness to scan millions of out-of-print books and create a registry for so-called orphan works was a social good, representing a commitment that none of the settlement’s critics have been willing to make.
“The companies that are making objections about out-of-print books are doing nothing for out-of-print books,” Mr. Brin said, and Mr. Schmidt suggested that they should “make an alternative proposal that solves the problem.”
“We thought we were doing something appropriate,” Mr. Schmidt added. “We were sued by a bunch of publishers, and now it has come before a judge. We don’t want to change it unless we need to.” In the instance of the ambitious book project, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
“Some of the criticisms as I read them are legitimate,” Mr. Schmidt said, but he suggested that they could be “addressed in the settlement.”
The chat ranged over a host of topics, with a lot of give and take, but a question from your friend Decoder reporter about Chrome, the company’s Web browser, was not particularly well received, in part because we suggested that although Google has hinted that the browser is actually the operating platform of the future, Chrome is off to a slow start.
“Let me say that some of your assumptions about Chrome adoption are wrong,” Mr. Schmidt said, smiling. “The adoption rate of Chrome is strong. We are going to do a better job of getting that message out.”
Someone at the table mentioned that Steve Ballmer, the head of Microsoft, had described Chrome as a “rounding error.”
“I don’t respond to Steve Ballmer comments,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Next question?”
On that note, someone else — there were so many big throbbing journo-tech brains in the room that Decoder had trouble keeping track – suggested that the company’s various applications, which live in the cloud and are free, may just be a plot to grab most of the market share and then begin charging. In other words, behaving like another large technology company. Mr. Schmidt said that the company’s desire to grow had to do with survival, not unchecked ambition. “In technology, you either grow or die,” he said.
“There are many reasons why we will not be like Microsoft,” Mr. Schmidt said. “The first has to do with the culture and the founders. The other is the ease of moving out of these online services.”
Besides, he said, the market has a way of correcting hubris and ill-intent.
“If we went into a room and were exposed to evil light and came out and announced evil strategies, we would be destroyed,” he said. “The trust would be destroyed. We have not yet found the evil room in our campus.” (@toomarvelous on Twitter cracked, “He hasn’t looked hard enough.” )
As was pointed out in Decoder’s sister blog, Bits, the pair were in New York meeting with the worldwide sales force, and the news on the economic front was encouraging.
“The worst is behind us, and we’re seeing aspects of recovery,” Mr. Schmidt said. “We’re increasing our investment and hiring rate in anticipation of a recovery.”
Someone brought up a recent story in The New Yorker by Ken Auletta –- who was also present -– that suggested that the leadership of the company was tired of the culture of entitlement that had grown up around the burgeoning enterprise. Not that the recession didn’t land at Google as well.
“We have significantly cut down on the snacks available” at the Googleplex, Mr. Brin pointed out.
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