Sergey Mikhailovich Brin / b. 1973 / Russia (then USSR) / Computer Scientist, Entrepreneur
Administrative State
. . . whenever I have met with our elected officials they are invariably thoughtful, well-meaning people. And yet collectively 90% of their effort seems to be focused on how to stick it to the other party.
Reported by Kevin Hall, “Google’s Sergey Brin calls on U.S. politicians to ditch their parties,” Dvice.com blog, Syfy website, November 6, 2012.
Entrepreneurship and the Economy
When it’s too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship. Tough times bring out the best parts of Silicon Valley.
Reported by Jessica Guynn, “Google’s Schmidt, Page and Brin hold court at Zeitgeist,”Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2008.
Gmail
. . . great user experience has helped other email systems (others have increased storage, etc.). There are areas that have been overlooked in industry, much as search was overlooked in the 90’s.
Reported by Richard MacManus, “Conversation: Sergey Brin of Google,” readwriteweb.com, October 7, 2005.
Liberty
Having come from a totalitarian country, the Soviet Union, and having seen the hardships that my family endured—both while there and trying to leave—I certainly am particularly sensitive to the stifling of individual liberties.
Reported by Josh Horwitz, “Without Sergey Brin, Google has lost its healthy fear of authoritarianism,” qz.com, August 6, 2018.
Ranking
Lecture, University of California, Berkeley, October 5, 2005.
We came up with the notion that not all web pages are created equal. People are – but not web pages.
Technology
Technology is an inherent democratizer. Because of the evolution of hardware and software, you’re able to scale up almost anything. It means that in our lifetime everyone may have tools of equal power.
Lecture, University of California, Berkeley, October 5, 2005.
If what you’re doing is not seen by some people as science fiction, it’s probably not transformative enough.
Reported by Catherine Mayer, “Meet ‘Schmeat’: Say Hello to the Stem-Cell Hamburger,” Time magazine, August 5, 2013.
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Larry Edward Page / b. 1973 / Michigan, USA / Computer Scientist, Entrepreneur
Artificial Intelligence
The Star Trek computer doesn’t seem that interesting. They ask it random questions, it thinks for a while. I think we can do better than that.
Reported by Ben Elgin, “Google’s Goal: ‘Understand Everything,'” BusinessWeek, May 3, 2004.
Dreaming
Sometimes it’s important to wake up and stop dreaming. When a really great dream shows up, grab it.
Page’s Commencement Address, University of Michigan, 2009.
Impossibility
Have a healthy disregard for the impossible.
Reported by David J.. Hill, “Larry Page: With a Healthy Disregard for the Impossible, People Can Do Almost Anything,” singularityhub.com, May 26, 2012.
Research
I have a simple algorithm, which is, wherever you see paid researchers instead of grad students, that’s not where you want to be doing research.
Plenary Lecture, annual conference, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), San Francisco, February, 2007.
YouTube
It’s hard to keep things moving. And that’s always a big trick. I think for me, the key is setting really big goals. And, you know, with YouTube, I think we’ve had tremendous leadership, both with the founders and now with Salar [Kumangar], who’s been running it.
Interview with Campbell Brown, Zeitgeist Americas 2012 Conference, Arizona, October 16, 2012.
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Eric Emerson Schmidt / b. 1955 / Virginia, USA / Software Engineer, Business Executive
Business Philosophy
Playing catch-up with the competition can only ever help you make incremental gains. It will never help you create something new.
Reported in “Eric Schmidt: ‘Playing catch-up with the competition will never help you create something new,'” MacDailyNews, August 27, 2014.
Cybersecurity
We have always been the leader in security and in encryption. Our systems are far more secure and encrypted than anyone else, including Apple. They’re catching up, which is great.
Reported by Mikey Campbell, “Eric Schmidt says Google ‘far more secure’ than Apple, denies allegations of harvesting datam,” AppleInsider, October 3, 2014.
Disinformation
I fundamentally believe that disinformation becomes so easy to generate, because complexity overwhelms knowledge, that it’s in people’s interests, if you will, over the next decade, to build disinformation-generating systems. This is true for corporations, for marketing, for governments, and so forth.
In discussion with Julian Assange, June, 2011; reported in Assange’s When Google Met Wikileaks (2016).
Global Warming
Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people—they’re just, they’re just literally lying.
Reported in “‘They’re just literally lying’: Google’s Eric Schmidt on cutting ties with conservative group,” SFGate, September 22, 2014.
When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do. Well, that’s a bug. We have more bugs per second in the world. We should be able to give you the right answer just once. We should know what you meant. You should look for information. We should get it exactly right and we should give it to you in your language and we should never be wrong. That’s our challenge.
Interview, The Charlie Rose Show, PBS, June 3, 2005.
I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.
Reported by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., The Wall Street Journal, wsj.com, August 14, 2010.
The current inclination of the company is to invest heavily . , , we test stuff and, when it works, we put a lot more emphasis on it. So, Google+—all the signs are very positive, so now the whole company is ramping up on top of it.
Reported by Matt McGee, “With ‘Millions’ of Users and Growing, Google+ Set to Power All Google Products,” searchengineland.com, July 9, 2011.
Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking. There are so many manufacturers working so hard to distribute Android phones globally that whether you like [Android 4.0] or not … you will want to develop for that platform, and perhaps even first.
Reported by Stephen Shankland, “Google’s Schmidt: Android leads the iPhone,” CNET, December 7, 2011.
By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded.
Reported by Jeff Blagdon, “Eric Schmidt: Google TV on ‘majority’ of new TVs by summer 2012,” The Verge, December 27, 2011.
Government
Technology will move faster than governments, so don’t legislate before you understand the consequences . . .
Reported by Stewart Mitchell, “Group calls for ban on spying technology sales,” Alphr.com, May 25, 2011.
Openness
If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place
Interview with Lee Brodie, “CEO Eric Schmidt Reveals ‘Centerpiece’ Of Google’s 2010 Strategy,'” CNBC, December 3, 2009.
Ultimately, in the Internet, openness has always won. I cannot imagine that the current competitive environment would reverse that.
Reported by John Tozzi, “America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs 2010,” Bloomberg.com, September 23, 2010.