Eric Schmidt on The Huffington Post

Anis Shivani: "Don't Be Evil": How Larry Page and Sergey Brin Really Think and Should We Worry About Google's Dominance

2009-12-03T11:26:38Z

INSIDE LARRY & SERGEY'S BRAIN
By Richard L. Brandt
Portfolio, 244 pages. $24.95

'Searching and organizing all the world's information is an unusually important task that should be carried out by a company that is trustworthy and interested in the public good."
--Larry & Sergey's statement to Wall Street in their 2004 IPO filing.

The challenge for any chronicler of a Silicon Valley company is to distinguish between hype and reality. In Google's case, because of its indisputable financial success, the task becomes harder. After all, when Google has cornered $20 billion of advertising revenue a year--revenue that has come from struggling newspapers and other traditional producers of "content," which are in danger of losing their footing altogether--the vast flows of money can hide many simmering problems. It is remarkable that after ten years of escalating market dominance, Google's one truly successful innovation remains its search engine; it has developed more than 150 other applications, but they're either not as popular as competitors' products, or have failed to generate revenue.

The first question Richard L. Brandt addresses is Google's ambition to be the world's librarian. Google has always been very clear that it wants to digitize every bit of information. This raises obvious questions about the power Google possesses over this information. Why is it that the world's governments are not organizing and digitizing this information? Obviously, it's natural to worry about a single corporation becoming the potential gateway to everything that has ever been written or said. Since Brandt did not have personal access to the Google founders, one might have expected greater skepticism toward the self-proclaimed ethical motivations of Google's founders--embodied in their ubiquitous motto, "Don't be evil." This ethos must be seen in the context of the period of Google's emergence; the great computer giant of its era, Microsoft, was being assailed from all corners--the public, competitors, and governments alike--for being the epitome of evil.

Libraries, it is to be noted, do not charge for their content. So far, neither does Google. But we are at a very early stage yet in the life of the Internet, and it remains to be seen how this evolves. That the gatekeeper should be a single private entity, which moreover imposes its own model of advertising (which may or may not work for every content provider), should provoke concern. It is the business model inside Google's algorithms--Google's own brain--that we should be concerned about, rather than the degree to which Larry Page and Sergey Brin's brains might be virtuous and ethical.

Google is the single greatest force currently putting pressure on existing business models for publishing, broadcasting, communications, and entertainment. Google, with its Android phone software, has entered the telephone business. The way Google looks at it, all forms of communication can be redefined as search--search according to Google, that is. Google is wary of competing portals--such as Facebook, or the iPhone, or anywhere else users congregate and feel most comfortable--posing a challenge to its preeminence as the Internet's homepage of choice. It has tried to keep the homepage simple, free as it is of clutter and distractions, and has not shown any inclination to be a portal, such as AOL, paradigmatically, tried to do.

But as time goes by and we get more and more used to Google as the homepage, it becomes more and more difficult for any competitor to pose a challenge. Inertia is a large part of the explanation, but so is ease of use--in that sense Google harkens back to the revolutionary Mosaic and Netscape browsers, which made the Internet accessible to all. Undoubtedly, Google's search produces better results than any competitor's, which is partly due to the self-reinforcing nature of Google searches. The more consumers use Google search (yielding cookies that refine future searches by the same user), the better it gets at what it does. In all these ways, Google gives us what we need, with the least friction possible; yet in all these ways Google also poses a potential danger of a monopoly using the wealth of the world's knowledge and information for its commercial purposes.

Certainly, reading about Google's success story is a restorative counterpoint to the legends of evil committed in the recent past by Wall Street, Detroit, and other American corporations, which created little value yet rewarded executives extravagantly. Google has fundamentally altered the world, probably far exceeding the capacity of any single government to do so. Politics is now potentially more transparent and accountable than ever before. Users can find information cheaper and quicker and better than ever before. There is no aspect of our lives that hasn't shifted, sometimes crucially, in response to the revolution of information Google has been instrumental in bringing about. Yet Google aims to be all-encompassing, and that always has to bring its own hazards. As Brandt notes, Google claimed it wasn't interested in developing a browser, but it did, with Chrome. Google is posing a direct challenge to Apple's iPhone, with its Android telephone software, available through Verizon. When Google introduced Gmail, it was revealed that information compiled from emails would be used to target advertisements to users.

Brandt, like other chroniclers of Google, emphasizes Larry & Sergey's similar intellectual upbringing, their common Montessori background, and their shared experience at Stanford graduate school, all of which are generally said to be the source of the free-flowing environment at the company. Yet this is too banal to be given much explanatory credence when it comes to Google's eventual success. There is nothing particularly new in this, as far as Silicon Valley goes. The challenge for a chronicler of Google is to separate the corporate mythology--the way the Google founders talk about the 20% time engineers are allowed to devote to their own projects, or the way the company has bent over backwards to provide food and daycare, and even massages, on campus--from the corporate business philosophy.

To the extent that Larry & Sergey are math prodigies--or computer geeks, if you will--and lack the humanistic dimension, we are carried forth into the brave new world on the wave of their shortcomings. They both seem to display a cavalier disregard for the value of content, as Brandt suggests at numerous points. Why would authors write books for free? Only to enrich Google with advertising dollars? What would be the quality of free books? If the existing publishing, journalistic, and broadcasting environments entirely collapsed tomorrow, one suspects Larry & Sergey wouldn't be too unhappy. Content--some sort of content--can always be procured. Free, as Chris Anderson recently pointed out in his new book, can work for authors, musicians, and other content producers, but why should advertising be the sole support for creative work? Surely that would have an effect on the quality of journalism or writing, if that were the case. Yet Google's brain knows no other dimension than to capture advertising dollars through the greatest possible numbers of clicks.

Outside Google, the talk may all be about controlled chaos, yet hierarchies obtain--as they must--within Google. Engineers are a cut above nonengineers. The company makes no bones about it. Again, this reflects Larry & Sergey's bias that data drives everything, that there is no other calculus for decision-making. One might argue that this dilutes the quality of Google's search. It's better than anything else out there, but what is out there is pathetic, as measured by the utterly soulless efforts of Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, which wanted to serve as portals where users were captured and walled-off from other options, rather than as neutral arbiters of information. So Google search is an advantage over these barbaric early manifestations of what search never should have been, yet the vaunted PageRank algorithm often fails to value quality over quantity. And moreover, Google doesn't seem particularly interested in measuring the quality of, say, a New York Review of Books article on a particular subject, or of a scientific journal's, compared to the random musings of some uninformed ignoramus, should that have succeeded in getting the most views. The elevation of the engineer's data-driven, linear, antihumanist mind might have something to do with this manifestation in search results.

PageRank, Larry's great innovation, we learn from Brandt's interviews with Google's competitors, might not have been such a great innovation after all. The technology was open and available to others to exploit; the fact that they didn't do so speaks to Google's competitors' disinterest in making the Internet experience pleasurable and efficient and quick for users. Yet the public mythology of Google's discovery of its magic algorithm needs to be brought down a few further notches. CEO Eric Schmidt--who was brought on with some reluctance at first, after insistence by Google's venture capitalists--is variously seen as not being particularly effective, or as the genius who produces the first part of the "controlled chaos" equation. Actually, it doesn't take a genius to be the CEO of a corporation in as dominant a position, relative to its competitors, as Google currently is.

There's no denying that Google's corporate vision includes making things as easy for the user as possible. After all, the dominant late-nineties Internet portal was AOL, and we all remember how user-friendly that was! And we all remember the horrendous banner advertisements flashed on MSN. Google has insisted on not including advertisements on its homepage. Advertisements, when they do appear to the side of search results, are unobtrusive. Yet, again, there is a sense in which advertising--because it is so effective in the form Google uses it--has become the engine of growth, rather than being the outcome of the growth of valuable information on the Internet. It makes no difference to Google what viewers view, as long as it results in advertising dollars. AdWords, borrowed form GoTo (later renamed Overture), which places advertising on search pages, and AdSense, which places ads on other Web sites, are the two key innovations. In response, competitors like Microsoft have eyed Yahoo to try to develop a counter to Google's dominance of the advertising market, but nothing has come of it so far. The logical conclusion to what Google is doing would seem to be the eventual end of all forms of middlemen, so that advertising becomes completely automated, without the human touch. Not everyone will lament the end of the advertising executive or salesman, but there will be other consequences for content should that happen--consequences we ought to think about.

We have let Google slide on many things--its China censorship, to allow it to remain viable in that huge market (though nothing Google does seems to stall the rise of Baidu, the local search engine); its occasionally cavalier public posture toward privacy; and its indifference toward copyright laws--because we feel good about Google. That is both the most tremendous asset (unmatched by, say, Microsoft) and also perhaps the weakest foundation on which to build the world's greatest library. On the other hand, Brandt is right to wish that Google might become an ISP. Our experience of accessing the Internet would probably become much better. We shall see if Larry & Sergey's collective brain can keep up with the spontaneous evolution of the Internet, as embodied in the worldwide community of users. That is the greatest logic of all, and it may supersede the planning and visionary capacities of any Internet corporation--even one as sanctified and mythologized as Google.

Eric Schmidt To Newspapers: Don't BLAME Google, We Can Help

2009-12-03T09:02:24Z

With dwindling revenue and diminished resources, frustrated newspaper executives are looking for someone to blame. Much of their anger is currently directed at Google, whom many executives view as getting all the benefit from the business relationship without giving much in return. The facts, I believe, suggest otherwise.

Obama Jobs Summit Will Include Business Leaders: Google, Disney CEOs To Attend

2009-11-30T00:48:59Z

The invitations went out just before Thanksgiving, but by the end of the holiday weekend the White House has confirmed that President Obama's jobs summit on Thursday will include about 130 business leaders, union chiefs, academics, mayors and representatives of nonprofit groups.

YouTube: Iraq Government Launches Online Channel (VIDEOS)

2009-11-25T15:36:49Z

*See video below*

The Iraqi government has launched an official channel on YouTube, the video sharing site, in an effort to better "share its message" with people in Iraq and beyond.

Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki introduced the official channel, which can be here and is listed under the username "Iraqigov", in video posted November 24, 2009.

According to the Independent, the government's YouTube outreach effort was unveiled at the tail end of Google CEO Eric Schmidt's visit to Baghdad.

The Prime Minister says in his introduction to the government YouTube channel,

The world has not seen what the Iraqi government has been able to achieve in regard to security, economy, politics and building a federal democratic system. [...] The government sees in this video technology an opportunity to show our achievements.

Eric Schmidt created a video welcoming the Iraqi government to YouTube and praising the government's dedication to openness and modernization (see the video below). Schmidt says in the YouTube post,

It's great that the Iraqi govt is introducing the Iraqigov YouTube channel so that we'll discover even more what's great about Iraq, this new country that's being built, the resurgence of a new society, and the amazing things they have in store for all of us.

Schmidt also recently announced that Google would be digitizing artifacts from Iraq's national museum.

WATCH:

WATCH:

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Google To Digitize Iraq Museum Artifacts

2009-11-24T08:28:15Z

Google is documenting Iraq's national museum and will post photographs of its ancient treasures on the Internet early next year, Google chief Eric Schmidt announced Tuesday.

Eric Schmidt: Attacks On Execs Have 'Gone Too Far' (VIDEO)

2009-11-06T09:01:47Z

Google CEO Eric Schmidt sat down with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business Network for an extensive interview that probed Schmidt's take on everything from Google to Twitter, Obama to bankers.

See what Schmidt has to say about Microsoft ("Hopefully we won't repeat the mistakes that Microsoft made 10 years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened to them"), Google's hunger for content, and what he thinks about Twitter -- as well as his take on health care reform, the "demonization" of CEOs, and his discussions with Obama about serving in his administration.

WATCH:

Eric Schmidt: Weather, Few "WASP-y Americans" Make Silicon Valley Special

2009-11-05T08:30:39Z

Here's what Mr. Schmidt, a 33-year resident of the Bay Area, had to say about Silicon Valley hiring and the role of the weather in the local labor market:

Eric Schmidt: Web Will Be 'Dominated By Chinese Language, Social Media'

2009-10-27T17:36:09Z

Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time.

Eric Schmidt: Princeton Receives $25M From Google CEO For Tech Fund

2009-10-14T13:47:19Z

Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, have donated $25 million to Princeton University to create an endowment fund supporting technology research.

According to the Ivy League university, from which Schmidt graduated in 1976 with a degree in electrical engineering, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund will award funding through an annual campus-wide, peer-reviewed competition.

The endowment will support the "invention or implementation of entirely new technologies that will have a major impact on a field of research," and could also be used for the acquisition of new equipment that will "change the direction of research in a field," Princeton explained in a press release.

The fund is unique in that it will does not need to be spent evenly from year to year. The university announced,

The dean for research will have discretion to recommend that no grants be awarded in years when there are no sufficiently compelling proposals, and to spend down principal as well as income in years when there are many compelling ideas. Funding may be for one year or over multiple years.

Eric Schmidt joins a distinguished roster of technology notables who have donated to Princeton over the years, including Meg Whitman, who gifted $30 million to the school in 2002 to construct a new dorm.

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Google's Post-Recession Culture: Perks Are Out, Just Be Happy You Have A Job

2009-10-07T16:47:51Z

Hey Googlers! All those perks -- the great food, the high-end daycare, the fancy bathrooms -- that the company is famous for? Overrated, your bosses say. So is the dream of getting insanely wealthy at your job.

Instead, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said today, you ought to be happy to work at Google... because it's Google. In that sense, Schmidt said, the recession of the past year has been good for the company, since it's highlighted the difference between working at his company and other options -- including not working at all.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: 'We Voluntarily Paid $1 Billion Too Much For YouTube'

2009-10-06T14:29:05Z

Did Google overpay for YouTube? Absolutely, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

CNET got their hands on Schmidt's testimony before Viacom's laywers, in which he demystifies why Google saw fit to pay a whopping $1.65 billion for YouTube -- which even Schmidt says he valued at only $600 million - $700 million at the time of the acquisition.

The $1 billion premium, Schmidt confesses, was to blow the competition out of the water and to ensure Google's competitors didn't swoop in and steal the deal.

Schmidt's exact words, from his deposition to Viacom attorneys:

Schmidt: Sure, this is a company with very little revenue, growing quickly with user adoption, growing much faster than Google Video, which was the product that Google had. And they had indicated to us that they would be sold, and we believed that there would be a competing offer--because of who Google was--paying much more than they were worth. In the deal dynamics, the price, remember, is not set by my judgment or by financial model or discounted cash flow. It's set by what people are willing to pay. And we ultimately concluded that $1.65 billion included a premium for moving quickly and making sure that we could participate in the user success in YouTube.

Three years later, YouTube's users have swelled from 12 million (in May 2006) to more than 100 million users in the US alone. As for cash flow and profits, however, that one still has Google (and YouTube) stumped.

Read an excerpt of Schmidt's deposition on CNET here.

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Ken Auletta's Google Book: Eric Schmidt Wants To Build "$100 Billion Media Company"

2009-10-05T16:44:20Z

Googled is not published yet, but I managed to get my hands on a copy of the uncorrected proofs. One of the most startling assertions Auletta makes right up front and repeats throughout is this:

In 2007, Eric Schmidt told me that one day Google could become a hundred-billion-dollar media company--more than twice the size of Time Warner, the Walt Disney Company, or News Corporation.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt On Journalism: 'We Need Newspapers To Survive'

2009-10-03T13:09:25Z

Is Google a newspaper killer? Not by a long shot, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Nor does he want it to be. In a long interview about his company's relationship with newspapers and the print journalism industry, Schmidt made it clear he wants established players to survive. In fact, he thinks Google has a "moral responsibility" to help. But help doesn't mean a handout.

Read more: Eric Schmidt, Technology News

Eric Schmidt Questions Murdoch's Online Pay Plan

2009-09-18T09:42:31Z

Publishers of general news would find it hard to charge for their content online because too much free content is available, the chief executive of Google said yesterday....
Schmidt was responding to an announcement by News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch that he could start charging for content online.

Google's Book Battle Rages On, Proposed Deal Makes "Mockery" Of Copyright Law

2009-09-11T11:28:21Z

SAN FRANCISCO -

The nation's top copyright official has joined the mounting opposition to a class-action settlement that would give Google Inc. the digital rights to millions of out-of-print books.

Her objections cast further doubt on whether the agreement will be allowed by a federal court, even as Google offered a concession Thursday aimed at smoothing the way for approval.

Parts of the settlement are "fundamentally at odds with the law," Marybeth Peters, head of the U.S. Copyright Office, testified in a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday that was webcast. She also expressed concerns that the settlement would undermine Congress' ability to govern copyrights and could have "serious international implications" for books published outside the United States.

Peters can't block Google's settlement with U.S. authors and publishers. That decision rests with U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, who has scheduled an Oct. 7 hearing in New York to review the settlement.

But Peters' conclusions will likely be drawn upon as critics of the deal try to convince Chin that the settlement shouldn't be approved, said Peter Brantley, director of access for the Internet Archive. The archive has joined forces with Google rivals Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to lead the charge against the book settlement.

It's unclear how the copyright office's opinion might influence the U.S. Department of Justice, which is investigating whether the settlement would hurt competition in the growing market for digital books. The Justice Department is expected to share some of its findings with Chin in documents scheduled to be filed by Sept. 18.

At issue are Google's plans to scan millions of books, make them searchable online and sell subscriptions to libraries and individual copies to consumers. Google says this will revitalize works that might otherwise be long forgotten. The $125 million settlement emerged last year after trade groups representing publishers and authors sued Google for copyright infringement.

Google says it has made digital copies of more than 10 million books during the past five years, including about 2 million titles that are no longer covered by copyright and another 2 million titles that were indexed after copyright holders gave their explicit permission. The rest are out of print but still protected by copyrights.

In its testimony to the congressional committee, Google reiterated its claim that the settlement will make literature and research more widely available while promoting competition in the digital book market.

A long list of supporters, including major libraries, disabled rights activists, technology groups, economics professors and lawyers, are endorsing the settlement for similar reasons. Some of them testified at Thursday's hearing.

Google also tried to address the concerns that it will gain a stranglehold on the digital rights to millions of books. Hoping to ease this criticism, Google said Thursday it will allow Amazon and other online retailers to sell its digital copies of out-of-print books covered by the settlement.

Competitors drawing upon Google's digital library of books would be allowed to keep most of the revenue left from the sales after authors and publishers get their shares.

"We believe strongly in an open and competitive market for digital books," said David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer.

But Brantley of the Internet Archive said Google's concession isn't much of a sacrifice. That's because Google would still be in control of the digital index, giving it access to potentially valuable data on how users interact with it. Google also would still be the only entity that could sell out-of-print books that aren't claimed by the copyright owners.

The control means Google would still be able to set the prices on millions of books, Brantley said.

"Google would still be a monopoly provider," Brantley said in a phone interview. "None of our objections have gone away."

Other opponents of the settlement fear it will make it easier to track the books people are reading. Google says it would address that by drawing up a separate privacy policy to govern the information it collects through its digital library.

Rep. John Conyers Jr., the Judiciary Committee's chairman, was among several lawmakers on the panel who indicated they think Chin should approve the settlement.

"Google is in this position not because they engaged in predatory or anticompetitive behavior, but because they have built a better mousetrap in the view of the mousetrap purchaser," said Conyers, D-Michigan.

Peters' misgivings about the settlement are focused on its definitions of what constitutes an out-of-print book. Google would have broad power to sell titles falling in this category without the explicit permission of a copyright holder, she said.

"The so-called settlement would create mechanisms by which Google could continue to scan with impunity, well into the future, and to our great surprise, create yet additional commercial products without the prior consent of rights holders," Peters wrote in a more comprehensive written statement submitted to the Judiciary Committee.

Peters was particularly troubled by provisions that would empower Google to make digital copies of all books published by Jan. 5, 2009, with no set deadline on completing the task. Google loses the digital rights to the books covered in the settlement only if a copyright holder opts out of the deal.

The open-ended nature of the settlement is "tantamount to creating a private compulsory license," Peters wrote, something she believes could circumvent the authority of Congress.

Why Google CEO Eric Schmidt Left Apple's Board: TechCrunch

2009-08-03T13:03:16Z

What happens when the enemy of your enemy is no longer your friend? You cast him out, as Steve Jobs seems to have done to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who today resigned his seat from Apple's board. An alliance which began with a mutual distrust of Microsoft is now under strain because of a mutual distrust of each other. Google is not so much the enemy of Microsoft as it is the enemy of the old model of device-centric computing which both Microsoft and Apple represent.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Resigns From Apple's Board

2009-08-03T09:36:41Z

NEW YORK (AP) -- Google CEO Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple's board of directors as the Internet search leader increasingly develops products that compete with Apple's core businesses, including the popular iPhone.

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs said Schmidt would have had to recuse himself from large portions of the company's board meetings to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

"Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple's Board," Jobs said in a statement.

Schmidt had been on Apple's board since August 2006. His resignation comes as the Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether Google's common ties with Apple might discourage competition.

Just a few months ago, Schmidt expressed confidence that a government inquiry into his role on Apple's board won't find any evidence that the ties between the two companies throttle competition in mobile phones and elsewhere.

He said in May, in a media session ahead of Google's annual shareholder meeting, that he hasn't considered stepping down as an Apple director because he doesn't view the company as a "primary competitor."

Google's Android operating system is used in mobile devices that compete with Apple's iPhone.

And Google is developing a free operating system based on its Web browser, Chrome, a potential rival to Apple's Mac systems.

Google has recently turned its 2007 acquisition of GrandCentral into Google Voice, which assigns a unique phone number to each user and lets the user direct calls to that number to any other phone line.

Relationships between the two company haven't always been smooth. On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission sent letters to Apple and Google -- as well as Apple's iPhone partner in the United States, AT&T Inc. -- seeking more information on Apple's rejection of Google Voice's application for the iPhone.

The popularity of Apple's iPhone is soaring even amid the recession. The company said in July it sold more than 5.2 million iPhones in the U.S. during the April-June quarter, more than seven times what it sold in the same period a year earlier.

Google's Android operating system currently runs on the T-Mobile G1, which went on sale last year. The second "Google phone" from T-Mobile goes on sale this week. Google's goal is to make Android the operating system for phones across the industry, so it gives away the software for free for any phone maker to incorporate.

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Bill Gates And Eric Schmidt Meet At Sun Valley, No Comment On Google OS

2009-07-09T14:18:18Z

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — The escalating tension between Google and Microsoft didn't prevent the companies' chairmen from sharing a moment of levity Thursday at an exclusive media conference in the Idaho mountains.

As he headed out the door to lunch, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates paused to consider a question about Google's plans to develop a computer operating system that will rival Microsoft's Windows.

Eric Schmidt: Internet Censorship Is Futile

2009-06-30T09:31:54Z

Google CEO Schmidt said he hoped that the use of websites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to spread information about events such as the Iranian election protests -- and the international scrutiny the coverage created -- would "moderate an overreaction by the government".

He said that attempts by governments to block web access were ultimately futile, and do not succeed in isolating citizens either from unfiltered news, or the ability to spread information.

Henry Blodget: How To Get Richer Than God

2009-06-12T15:54:22Z

A lot of moguls have done the Commencement speech thing in recent weeks. Over at The Business Insider, we compiled 10 of the best of recent years.

Here's one of the most inspiring excerpts, from J.K. Rowling:

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

That one, unfortunately, might give you the impression that, if you just do what you love, you're guaranteed to be almost as rich as The Beatles--while many people would be best advised to just do something they like. But Rowling makes an excellent point about the benefit of learning what really matters.

Here are some others:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: "It's possible to spend your life inside the computer. Life is the people around you."

Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone: "It's not about the money - it's about winning."

Google "business founder" Omid Kordestani: "Think and act like an immigrant."

Click through for the full speeches and the full 10 >

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Talks Microsoft, Government Regulation (VIDEO)

2009-06-09T17:16:25Z

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked to Fox Business this week about Microsoft's new search engine Bing, the government's response to the financial crisis, and Google's still ascendant position in the tech and advertising world.

Here's Schmidt on Microsoft:

"It's not the first entry for Microsoft. They do this about once a year. From BING's perspective they have a bunch of new ideas and there are some things that are missing. We think search is about comprehensiveness, freshness, scale and size for what we do. It's difficult for them to copy that."

Watch the first part:

Schmidt also talked about how technology could have prevented the financial crisis, and the current approach to regulation by the Obama administration:

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Bill Keller: Google Is New York Times' "Frenemy"

2009-05-20T08:06:49Z

"Google is one of those companies that we generally refer to as a frenemy," said New York Times executive editor Bill Keller at his semi-annual newsroom question-and-answer session, informally called Throw Stuff at Bill.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Urges Grads To Turn Off Computers

2009-05-18T15:07:29Z

PHILADELPHIA — The head of the world's most popular search engine urged college graduates on Monday to step away from the virtual world and make human connections.

Speaking at the University of Pennsylvania's commencement, Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt told about 6,000 graduates that they need to find out what is most important to them _ by living analog for a while.

Washington Post, Google In Talks For Possible Collaboration

2009-05-11T08:50:05Z

Post Co. chief executive Donald Graham and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and their lieutenants have been holding talks about a possible collaboration. This could range from creating new Web pages to technological tools for journalists or readers. Hanging over the talks is the reality that the search giant, while funneling vital traffic to news sites, vacuums up their content without paying a dime.

Arianna Huffington: The Debate Over Online News: It's the Consumer, Stupid

2009-04-09T18:43:39Z

The discussion about the aggregation and distribution of content on the web heated up this week when the Associated Press announced plans to "launch an industry initiative" designed "to protect news content" online.

The announcement -- characterized by the New York Times' Saul Hansell as a "war on search engines and aggregators" -- drew considerable fire, including blasts from Google, BusinessWeek, the Online Journalism Review, TechCrunch, and this classic broadside from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land.

The conversation continued last night when Charlie Rose invited me to discuss the issue with Tom Curley, AP's president and CEO. The video of the segment is below.

As you'll see, for me the key question is whether those of us working in the media (old and new) embrace and adapt to the radical changes brought about by the Internet or pretend that we can somehow hop into a journalistic Way Back Machine and return to a past that no longer exists and can't be resurrected.

As my compatriot Heraclites put it nearly 2,500 years ago: "You cannot step into the same river twice."

Towards the end of the segment, Charlie summed up what I was saying: "We have seen the future and it is here. It is a linked economy. It is search engines. It is online advertising. That's where the future is. And if you can't find your way to that, then you can't find your way." Precisely.

The great upheaval the news industry is going through is the result of a perfect storm of transformative technology, the advent of Craigslist, generational shifts in the way people find and consume news, and the dire impact the economic crisis has had on advertising. And there is no question that, as the industry moves forward and we figure out the new rules of the road, there will be -- and needs to be -- a great deal of experimentation with new revenue models.

But what won't work -- what can't work -- is to act like the last 15 years never happened, that we are still operating in the old content economy as opposed to the new link economy, and that the survival of the industry will be found by "protecting" content behind walled gardens.

We've seen that movie (and its many sequels, including TimesSelect). News consumers didn't like them, and they closed in a hurry.

And the answer can't be content creators huffing and puffing and trying to blow down Google and other news aggregators. That one falls under Be Careful What You Wish For. As Jeff Jarvis points out, doing that is a one-way ticket to oblivion -- and a 50 percent drop in traffic.

HuffPost has a good working relationship with AP -- we pay a monthly fee to license AP stories and photos. But I was really surprised to hear Tom Curley describe what he called "the Internet experience" as "a bomb. Unlimited competition, unlimited inventory, a bad customer experience."

A bomb? Really? Tell that to the consumer. And since when does "unlimited competition" and "unlimited inventory" (i.e., lots of options and choices and freedom) add up to "a bad customer experience"?

Indeed, it's just the opposite.

Can anyone seriously argue that this isn't a magnificent time for news consumers who can surf the net, use search engines, and go to news aggregators to access the best stories from countless sources around the world -- stories that are up-to-the-minute, not rolled out once a day? (That's one of the things we try to do at HuffPost: guide our readers to the most interesting and timely news and opinion from places they know and from places that we introduce them to, as well as offering them original reporting, 200 original blog posts a day, citizen journalism, and our new investigative fund). Online news also allows users to immediately comment on stories, as well as interact and form communities with other commenters.

Consumer habits have changed dramatically. People have gotten used to getting the news they want, when they want it, how they want it, and where they want it. And this change is here to stay.

In many ways, the news industry has appropriately adapted to these changes.

Take online video. Not that long ago, content providers were committed to the idea of requiring viewers to come to their site to view their content -- and railed against anyone who dared show even a short clip.

But content hoarding -- the walled garden -- didn't work. And instead of sticking their finger in the dike, trying to hold back the flow of innovation, smart companies began providing embeddable players that allowed their best stuff to be posted all over the web, accompanied by links and ads that helped generate additional traffic and revenue.

When I hear the heads of media companies talking about "restricting" content (as Curley did) or describing news aggregators as "parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the Internet" (as the editor of the Wall Street Journal recently did), I can't help feeling the same way I did in 2001, when I was one of the cofounders of The Detroit Project, and watched as the heads of the auto industry decided that instead of embracing the future they would rather spend considerable energy and money lobbying the government for tax loopholes for gas-guzzling behemoths, fighting back fuel efficiency standards, and trying to convince consumers through billions in advertising that SUVs were the cars that would lead America into the 21st century.

Instead of trying to hold back the future, I suggest that media execs read The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen (since I keep mentioning the book and giving copies to friends, I'm thrilled that Christensen is now blogging for HuffPost), and see what he has to say about "disruptive innovation" and how, instead of resisting it, you can seize the opportunities it provides.

Or go to any college, as I often do, and ask a group of students how many of them, during the campaign, saw Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin. It's usually 100 percent. Then ask how many saw it on Saturday Night Live. It's usually no more than one or two. Yes, SNL could have said tune in to NBC Saturday Night at 11:30 or don't see it at all. But Lorne Michaels and Jeff Zucker obviously don't want to go the way of Rick Wagoner and his Detroit buddies.

Delivering the keynote address at the Newspaper Association of America's annual conference on Tuesday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt cut right to the chase, telling the assembled newspaper men and women: "Try to figure out what your consumer wants. If you piss off enough of them, you will not have any of them."

After we posted the Charlie Rose segment, HuffPost commenter osage weighed in: "EVOLVE OR PERISH. If AP refuses to adapt to the demands of the internet marketplace, it will disappear just as surely as 5 1/4" floppy disks and public pay telephones have disappeared. Resistance is futile."

I'd love to hear your take. Fire away in the comments section.

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