AllThingsD » Eric Schmidt

Viral Video: "Jaws" Guy Bites Mark Zuckerberg and "Eric" Brin at Webbys

Kara Swisher — Tue, 22 May 2012 07:14:40 +0000

If you love a celebrity getting all self-righteous on the world, especially the tech world, then here’s a big plate of Richard Dreyfuss for you.

He tsk-tsks all over the stage in this video of highlights from the 16th Annual Webby Awards, which took place last night in New York.

That includes calling out Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s “Eric” Brin — which I am assuming is a mutant mash-up of Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin — for some sort of clickety-click-clack Internet crimes against humanity.

Thankfully, there is a very lovely tribute to Apple legend Steve Jobs at the end that includes President Barack Obama.

Enjoy:

Cannes Ad Conference Roars for Twitter's Jack Dorsey

Peter Kafka — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:02:56 +0000

The Cannes Lions, the people who put on a giant advertising trade show every year in France, have named Twitter’s Jack Dorsey as their “Media Person of The Year.” The honorific comes as Twitter has begun ramping up its ad-selling efforts. For context: Previous winners include Google’s Eric Schmidt and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Klik App Does Mobile Facial Recognition in Real Time

Liz Gannes — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Is taking pictures of your friends on your phone, tagging their names and uploading them just too darn hard? Now there’s a free helper app for that, called Klik, which launches out of testing today on the iPhone.

Using facial recognition, Klik can identify people even before a photo is taken — if you hold up your phone to take a picture of someone, Klik will guess who it is by hovering that person’s first name over the person’s head. If the app doesn’t get it right, it will give you its top choices and you can teach it to improve. Then Klik helps users share the tagged photos on Facebook, Twitter, email and its own public social network.

The app is made by Tel Aviv-based Face.com, which already offers a facial-recognition API to 45,000 developers to enable them to do things like unlock users’ computers by recognizing their faces.

Even if it’s not realistically that huge of a time-saver, Klik is a pretty nifty parlor trick. That goes for other facial-recognition apps, too.

But at the same time, facial recognition is right on the edge of many people’s Internet creepiness comfort level.

Facebook touched off a privacy backlash last year, especially in Europe, when it enabled automatic photo tag suggestions. And Google has sworn it won’t do mobile facial recognition. Google built such technology, but decided never to release it because of the potential for abuse, Google chairman Eric Schmidt said at D9 last year.

Since then, Google+ did introduce a photo recognition feature — but it’s only enabled for the faces of people who have opted into it.

Klik does limit its facial recognition to people you already know. Once you submit your Facebook credentials, the company crunches all of your photos, your friends’ photos and the photos in which you and your friends are tagged. That is often a ton of pictures of faces — and it can take up to a full day to import and analyze them.

Face.com, which raised $4.3 million led by Yandex in 2010, told me it is near profitability, based on charging a sliver of top developers for API usage.

Stealthy Shape Security Lands $6 Million From Kleiner Perkins and Eric Schmidt

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:04:56 +0000

There’s an interesting new fundamental thought emerging among computer security companies. The logic goes like this: First, your digital assets are going to be attacked. Second, no matter what preparations you make to defend those assets, a determined attacker is going to find a hole or a method of penetrating your defenses that you didn’t think of.

Most attacks are relatively cheap to carry out, because they’re not that sophisticated. More often than not, attackers copy the methods they use from each other. Attacks are inexpensive, and most attackers have the luxury of limitless time.

The exception is attacks using so-called “zero day” vulnerabilities, where a previously unknown vulnerability, usually in the operating system, is used to gain access to a system. Most — but not all — of the time, once a zero-day vulnerability is seen and documented, the weaknesses it reveals are patched, making it the type of weapon that can be used only once.

As such, zero-day vulnerabilities are often traded on the black market and sold at a high price. For example, when the Stuxnet worm — the malware that was used to attack and sabotage the Iranian nuclear program — was first discovered, security researchers were impressed that it used no fewer than four distinct zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. So many used at once indicated that the cost to carry out the attack was high, leading to the conclusion that only a state-sponsored attacker would have the funds to carry it out. This led to the logical conclusion that either the U.S. or Israel had been behind Stuxnet.

I bring it up because Stuxnet is an example of the conclusion of this new fundamental thought I mentioned at the start. Why not make attacks expensive for the attackers? The early estimates on Stuxnet put its cost at $3 million, and it is believed that it required a team of 10 skilled programmers and as long as six months to develop. It was not a cheap attack. It was expensive.

That’s the idea behind Shape Security, which today announced that it has landed a $6 million Series A round of venture capital funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and TomorrowVentures, the fund led by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Peter Wagner, a former partner at Accel Partners, as well as executives from LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, will also join the round. Ted Schlein, managing partner at Kleiner Perkins, has joined the board of directors, along with Gaurav Garg, a limited partner at Sequoia Capital and personal investor in the round.

We don’t as yet know a great deal about Shape Security or its intentions. But we do know who’s running it: According to this filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, its CEO is Derek W. Smith. Another key exec and director is Sumit Agarwal, the former head of Google’s mobile product management, who in 2010 took a post in the Department of Defense as senior adviser for Cyber Innovation.

Another key exec is Troy Tribe, who appears to be the same person who used to be VP for business development at Solera Networks, which specializes in network-security analytics and forensics.

This is the second time in as many weeks that I’ve noticed a security company talking about changing the economics for attackers. The first was Crowdstrike, which announced that it had hired Shawn Henry from the FBI and landed a $26 million investment from Warburg Pincus. Neither has said yet exactly what you do to make launching a computer attack more expensive. I’m certainly eager to know more.

Here's How Planetary Resources Plans to Mine Asteroids (Release)

Liz Gannes — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:53:54 +0000

It’s an irresistible story, really. Tech billionaires and astronauts unite for a “space exploration company to expand earth’s resource base.” Once a sliver of a word got out, the asteroid-mining speculation mill was in full gear.

In advance of a formal unveiling in Seattle later today, Planetary Resources sent over a much fuller description of what it does: Mine asteroids for raw materials including platinum and water. It is also building its own spacecraft (pictured is the Arkyd-101 space telescope).

The release is below, and here’s a write-up by Wired and interview with the chief engineer on Discover.

ASTEROID MINING PLANS REVEALED BY PLANETARY RESOURCES, INC.

Expanding the resource base of humanity to include the solar system

Seattle, Wash. – April 24, 2012 – Planetary Resources, Inc. announced today its plan to mine Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals. Through the development of cost-effective exploration technologies, the company is poised to initiate prospecting missions targeting resource-rich asteroids that are easily accessible.

Resource extraction from asteroids will deliver multiple benefits to humanity and grow to be valued at tens of billions of dollars annually. The effort will tap into the high concentration of precious metals found on asteroids and provide a sustainable supply to the ever-growing population on Earth.

A single 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid contains the equivalent of all the Platinum Group Metals mined in history. “Many of the scarce metals and minerals on Earth are in near-infinite quantities in space. As access to these materials increases, not only will the cost of everything from microelectronics to energy storage be reduced, but new applications for these abundant elements will result in important and novel applications,” said Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.

Additionally, water-rich NEAs will serve as “stepping stones” for deep space exploration, providing space-sourced fuel and water to orbiting depots. Accessing water resources in space will revolutionize exploration and make space travel dramatically more economical.

“Water is perhaps the most valuable resource in space. Accessing a water-rich asteroid will greatly enable the large-scale exploration of the solar system. In addition to supporting life, water will also be separated into oxygen and hydrogen for breathable air and rocket propellant,” said Eric Anderson, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.

Of the approximately 9,000 known NEAs, there are more than 1,500 that are energetically as easy to reach as the Moon. The capability to characterize NEAs is on the critical path for Planetary Resources. To that end, the company has developed the first line in its family of deep-space prospecting spacecraft, the Arkyd-100 Series. The spacecraft will be used in low-Earth orbit and ultimately help prioritize the first several NEA targets for the company’s follow-on Arkyd-300 Series NEA swarm expeditions.

Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, said “Our mission is not only to expand the world’s resource base, but we want to increase people’s access to, and understanding of, our planet and solar system by developing capable and cost-efficient systems.”

“The promise of Planetary Resources is to apply commercial innovation to space exploration. They are developing cost-effective, production-line spacecraft that will visit near-Earth asteroids in rapid succession, increasing our scientific knowledge of these bodies and enabling the economic development of the resources they contain,” said Tom Jones, Ph.D., veteran NASA astronaut, planetary scientist and Planetary Resources, Inc. advisor.

Planetary Resources is financed by industry-launching visionaries, including Google CEO Larry Page and Ross Perot, Jr., Chairman of Hillwood and The Perot Group, who are committed to expanding the world’s resource base so that humanity can continue to grow and prosper:

Eric E. Schmidt, Ph.D., Executive Chairman of Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Planetary Resources, Inc. investor: “The pursuit of resources drove the discovery of America and opened the West. The same drivers still hold true for opening the space frontier. Expanding the resource base for humanity is important for our future.”

K. Ram Shriram, Founder of Sherpalo, Google Board of Directors founding member and Planetary Resources, Inc. investor: “I see the same potential in Planetary Resources as I did in the early days of Google.”

Charles Simonyi, Ph.D., Chairman of Intentional Software Corporation and Planetary Resources, Inc. investor: “The commercialization of space began with communications satellites and is developing for human spaceflight. The next logical step is to begin the innovative development of resources from space. I’m proud to be part of this effort.”

The company’s advisors include film maker and explorer James Cameron; General T. Michael Moseley (Ret.); Sara Seager, Ph.D.; Mark Sykes, Ph.D.; and David Vaskevitch.

Founded in 2009 by Eric Anderson and Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Planetary Resources, Inc. is establishing a new paradigm for resource utilization that will bring the solar system within humanity’s economic sphere of influence by enabling low-cost robotic exploration and eventual commercial development of asteroids. For more information, please visit www.PlanetaryResources.com.

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How Much Does Wall Street Hate Google's Stock-Split Plan?

Arik Hesseldahl — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 15:53:06 +0000

How much does the Wall Street establishment dislike Google’s proposed share split plan announced Thursday alongside its first quarter earnings report? Apparently, a lot.

The plan essentially calls for Google stock to split two for one, and all shareholders will receive a share in a new class of stock that will have no voting power. The net effect will over time preserve the roughly two-thirds majority that CEO and co-founder Larry Page, co-founder Sergey Brin and Executive Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt have over Google’s proxy voting structure.

Shareholders expressed their opinion with their wallets, sending the price of Google shares down by more than four percent on a day when the broader NASDAQ exchange was down by only one percent. The drop reduced Google’s market capitalization by nearly $8.6 billion, which is not a trivial amount, even for a company with a market cap north of $200 billion.

At least one shareholder advisory firm, Philadelphia-based Egan-Jones, has come out strongly in opposition to the plan. “We strongly oppose governance structures, such as currently exists at Google and as proposed, in which the holders of one class of common stock have voting rights with fewer votes per share,” the firm said.

Also on the record in opposition? CalSTRS, the $145 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which owns $400 million worth of Google shares, told Reuters that it’s not happy about the proposal and intends to let Google know about it.

You can expect more fireworks from the likes of Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass-Lewis after Google files its preliminary proxy statement, which will contain a lot more detail about the plan, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which it said it will do sometime this week.

In the end, however, even shareholders as large as CalSTRS will have little they can do but vote against the proposal at Google’s next shareholder meeting. The proxy authority Page, Brin and Schmidt already have ensures that the measure will pass. Part of the deal of investing in Google when it first came public in 2004, was putting a lot of faith in management, as the company reminded shareholders this week.

That includes those moments when it puts money and time into seemingly weird things like self-driving cars and computerized eyewear. Those things may not make sense to outsiders, Page argued during a conference call with analysts, but there’s a method to the madness, and as a shareholder you’re kind of expected to roll with it.

Clearly, many with skin in the game aren’t so sure. Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones, spoke up for that camp in an appearance on Bloomberg TV Friday. I’ve embedded the clip below.

Google Q1 Earnings: "Velocity, Execution and Focus"

Liz Gannes — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:00:16 +0000

Google today gave investors a bunch of material to work with: first quarter earnings close to expectations, an effective stock split, and normally reticent CEO Larry Page’s second public letter (this time co-authored with co-founder Sergey Brin) in a week.

Here’s how Page and his deputies explained it on their quarterly earnings call:

Page said his three main priorities as CEO are velocity, execution and focusing on the future with big bets. Major launches this quarter included Chrome for Android and Google Play.

Responding to criticism of Google+ usage numbers, Page called this “confusion over metrics” and acknowledged that Google+ actually has two parts. One, it is a “social spine” for all of Google; and two, it is a “social destination.” The social spine has 170 million users, and the social destination is “growing very fast … with very healthy growth,” Page said, with all the clarity in the world.

As for Google creating a new class of shares and awarding equivalent stakes to existing investors, Page read out the letter he’d already posted. “We don’t have an unusually big acquisition planned, in case you were wondering,” he said.

Chief Legal Officer David Drummond assured his listeners that despite the effective stock split, all existing Google stockholders will essentially be treated equally and everyone will retain same voting interests, including Page, Brin and Eric Schmidt, who will agree to a “transfer restriction agreement.”

Onto the quarter at hand. CFO Patrick Pichette repeated those three big goals, with a slight twist: “velocity, focus and optimism.” As for perceived dips in numbers, “The most important thing to understand is that our business is healthy,” he said.

It was up to Nikesh Arora to cover the various business units (Susan Wojcicki, who usually helps out, is on spring break with her kids). He talked up YouTube’s progress to become a “key buy” for advertisers, and bragged about new Google Apps customers like Roche and the State of Colorado, accelerated growth in Asia, an underwater Google Hangout from the Great Barrier Reef and Google Street View in Russia.

Onto the analyst questions:

Headcount growth seemed slower (Google now has 33,000 employees) — why? Pichette said this is just “short term variability.”
Page said it would be reasonable to expect coming Google+ integrations in products like Wallet, Offers and Maps.
Success of YouTube advertising shows growth of brand advertising online, said Arora. Page expects that mobile cost per click will improve over time because of local transactions and communication.
Most resources are still going to core businesses, said Page — still following a 70-20-10 split among core businesses and near-term and long-term bets. Android took six years to get to where it is today, much of that before the public saw anything, he noted.
Pichette declined to break out U.S. and international cash balances.
Arora wouldn’t break out traffic acquisition costs for mobile, but said it’s not any different of an arrangement than on the desktop, with OEMs and carriers sharing revenue from Google Play and search, etc.
Page said social does improve search. He gave yet another shout-out to that Ben Smith guy, who is now highlighted when Larry searches for his name because he’s Larry’s friend.
As for tablets, Page talked up their media capability. “We definitely believe there’s going to be a lot of success at the lower end of the market as well,” he said.
Pichette talked again about how lumpy growth and spending is good, and investors shouldn’t be worried.
How do you account for the value of Android, an analyst asked. Page asked him to think longer-term. “We don’t get very many new operating systems. Only a few in my lifetime, and they’re very important.” He continued that Android is in its early stages, but it’s about the pace of innovation and improvements in user experience, and money will be a part of it, too.
Page didn’t want to say tablets will eventually be more important than any other device, as an analyst asks him to do.
Advertisers are interested in ROI — they don’t care about platforms, said Pichette. Google is working toward “dynamically allocating” advertising across its products in order to maximize ROI.

Despite more than a couple repeat questions in there, I don’t think I heard a single analyst ask about the new class of stock. Either they don’t really care, or they were surprised by the announcement and hadn’t prepared for it.

L.A. Stories: Mike Jones and Peter Pham Talk About the Science of Tech Studios (Video)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:27:00 +0000

While swanning about Los Angeles last week, I paid a visit to a number of interesting techies, including Mike Jones and Peter Pham, who recently founded Science.

While there are a lot of incubators and accelerators out there fiddling with start-ups, the pair of well-known entrepreneurs are calling this venture a “technology studio.”

By that, they mean that Science will do a lot more, from coming up with in-house ideas to investing some of their $10 million in backing to advising on how Silicon Valley should look at investments in Southern California to even taking on restructuring of larger entities.

Science investors include Rustic Canyon, White Star Capital, the Social+Capital Partnership and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures, and it also has relationships with private equity firms for the bigger stuff.

The focus of Science, as the pair discusses below in a video interview, will be in three arenas: The intersection of content and commerce, social and mobile, and location.

As longtime entrepreneurs and Internet execs, Jones and Pham know those arenas, both the pluses and the minuses.

Jones tried his best (and, like others, failed) with the Myspace revival and also founded and sold Specific Media, Userplane and Tsavo Media.

Pham was recently helming the high-profile and controversial Color photo-sharing start-up in Silicon Valley and did stints at both BillShrink and Photobucket (a former News Corp. property, as was Myspace. News Corp. owns this Web site.).

Here’s my chat with them about their sun-dappled dreams of SoCal tech hegemony via their Santa Monica, Calif., HQ:

[ See post to watch video ]

Google Has Taken a Break From Buyouts So Far This Year

Liz Gannes — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:00:44 +0000

Google’s appetite for acquisitions seems to have dulled in recent months. After buying a record 79 companies in 2011, Google hasn’t made a single purchase yet in 2012.

In fact, its last acquisition was the restaurant-recommendation app maker Clever Sense, which was announced Dec. 13. A Google spokeswoman confirmed the company hasn’t bought anything since then.

Sources at Google said the main reason for the dearth of deals is CEO Larry Page’s focus on streamlining his company around key products. Plus, there’s “seasonality” around the turn of the year (but c’mon, it’s March; that would be an incredibly generous winter holiday break!).

Sources also maintained that new acquisitions are in the pipeline, and should be announced in the coming weeks.

Page reorganized Google last year around seven areas, like Android, Google+ and YouTube. New acquisitions are supposed to fit into that larger structure, sources said. So, in addition to having a dedicated sponsor within the company, each deal also has to be advocated for by the head of one of the product divisions.

That’s a change from the Eric Schmidt era (though perhaps a deferred change, given Page took over in April 2011). In recent years, Schmidt seemed to make continual pronouncements that Google was stepping up the pace of its acquisitions.

Another cause for the slowed pace of acquisitions could be a string of departures from Google’s corporate development team, which has been led by David Lawee since 2008.

Last year, Groupon hired Jason Harinstein, Facebook lured Amin Zoufonoun, and Neeraj Arora went to mobile messaging start-up WhatsApp.

There’s also the distraction of Google’s massive $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola, which hasn’t officially closed yet, but presumably will soon.

It’s not like there’s an industry-wide acquisition dry spell. In recent months, newer buyers like Groupon and LinkedIn have been particularly active on the talent acquisition front. Facebook even acquired a company on the same day it submitted papers to go public, and disclosed that fact (but not the name of the company) in its S-1 filing.

(Image courtesy of BustedTees)

Google's Schmidt Insists Android Is "A Real Operating System"

Ina Fried — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:54:38 +0000

We’ve been avoiding keynotes like day-old ham here in Barcelona. But Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt often says something provocative. So we braved the crowds for this one.

The keynote is due to start any minute. We’ll be back once there is something to say.

5:58 pm: Music — or Muzak, perhaps — playing. The hall is filling up. Thankfully, they have a better queueing system than last year, when I nearly got trampled waiting to get in to hear Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer.

6:00 pm: Okay. Here we go. Here’s the link to last year’s speech, by the way. We’ll see if he has more or less to say this time around.

6:02 pm: Schmidt starts by bringing out Hugo Barra to talk about Chrome and Android. Google brought out Chrome for Android in beta a few weeks back.

6:03 pm: “I hope everyone here is using Chrome,” Schmidt said. If you care about security or speed, you should use Chrome, Schmidt said. If you don’t, it’s free, he notes.

Not sure if he was talking desktop or mobile. But if you don’t have the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android, you can’t run Chrome for Android. And very, very few Android devices can yet run Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0).

6:05 pm: Schmidt on Android’s performance. It’s better than other mobile phones because, he says, “It’s a real operating system.”

6:09 pm: Still demoing Chrome for Android. I’ll spare you the play-by-play, but here’s our write-up on that from earlier this month.

6:10 pm: Barra notes that it’s the first time the Chrome and Android teams have worked together. (Isn’t that the problem?)

6:12 pm: Schmidt notes that there are billions of people who haven’t even gotten to have the iPhone versus Android debate.

“The World Wide Web has yet to live up to its name,” he said, noting that for every person online, there are still two who have yet to experience the joy of Angry Birds and Google searches.

6:15 pm: Much of what was imagined in “Star Trek” or “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” has come true, Schmidt said.

“These were the stuff of science fiction until very recently,” he said. Holograms and self-driving cars are coming.

You’ll be able to send a robot in your place to see your favorite rock concert. Hmm …

6:17 pm: “Driverless cars are a lot closer than you think,” Schmidt said, noting that 93 percent of car accidents are the result of human error.

6:18 pm: Schmidt pays tribute to Steve Jobs in describing this vision of the future: “People will spend less time getting technology to work,” he said.

“The future is indeed a very bright place,” Schmidt said, referring specifically to the rich and uber-connected.

New technology will still open doors for the middle class, he said.

6:22 pm: Meanwhile, Apple has just sent out invites for a March 7 event in San Francisco — Apple’s way of saying hi to Google.

6:24 pm: Back in Barcelona, Schmidt has made his way to the barely connected. “For many people, the Web is still a scarce resource …”

6:26 pm: If you want to know more about the Apple event, here’s John Paczkowski’s piece with the details.

6:27 pm: Having a smartphone isn’t enough — you need a data connection. But Schmidt says they don’t need to connect to a central network; can get value by connecting to one another in mesh networks.

6:30 pm: Schmidt talking a lot about tech’s broader impact.

“In times of war, it will be impossible to ignore the voices that cry out for help,” Schmidt said. “There will be far fewer places for dictators.”

There will still be elites, he said, and the gap between the top and bottom may well grow. Online censorship, he notes, is on the rise. Google products are blocked in 25 of 125 countries it operates in.

“We will see more of these efforts, but I think they are going to fail.”

Even in the U.S., some legislation exists that would limit things.

6:35 pm: On to Q&A.

6:35 pm: Will Google go after Chinese companies for going after Motorola IP?

“Google has been willing to take on China pretty well,” Schmidt notes, but adds that the deal hasn’t closed. “I’m well aware of the issues, and we’re certainly considering your question.”

6:37 pm: Pitched by some guy with a peer-to-peer money technology. There are some issues with peer-to-peer money. It’s illegal, Schmidt said. Otherwise, it’s great.

Issues with money laundering, etc.

6:42 pm: Asked about Facebook’s announcements yesterday, Schmidt said anything that gets more people on the Internet is a good thing. Also praises Facebook for Facebook Zero program which allows people in emerging markets to get Facebook even without a data plan.

6:43 pm: Asked when we will see Android on feature phones, Schmidt replies: “Why don’t you just buy a smartphone?” A better question, he says, is when will smartphones cost the same as a feature phone. The answer to that, he said, is “next year.”

6:44 pm: Asked about regulations he doesn’t like, he says there are a lot of them. He notes that is what regulators do. “They are not de-regulators.”

His suggestion is, if you are going to regulate issues, regulate an outcome, not a specific technology.

Asked about tech and overconnectedness.

“By the way, these devices have an ‘off’ button,” he said, noting people have choice. For himself, he said, “I think you should always have your Android phone on.”

6:59 pm: Asked where advertising fits into the future he was talking about, Schmidt said he was trying to avoid a commercial for Google, but — since he was given a chance …

As part of his answer to the question, Schmidt notes that on search, Google is moving beyond 10 blue links to give you an answer when it can. (Bing much?)

We are improving our advertising targeting, he said. Noting in mobile; mobile can be even more targeted ad. “We believe in ROI-based targeting,” he said, meaning return on investment.

7:02 pm: Schmidt on Android: 850,000 Android activations per day, with 300 million devices so far.

You do the compounding, and it will eventually be a trillion, he said. We need more people, he jokes.

Vis-a-vis forking, it is completely allowed. Schmidt said Google hopes device makers see the benefit in the Android market, but says they’re under no obligation to use it.

“It is their choice,” he said “We don’t sue them. Another activity we don’t do, if you get my drift.” A not at all subtle dig at Apple.

7:07 pm: Asked about whether they are riding on the backs of mobile operators, Schmidt notes their software uses mobile data, the only growing area in the cellular business.

And it’s a wrap.

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Really, Mr. Schmidt? All in Used Twenties?

John Murrell — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:10:57 +0000

According to a regulatory filing, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt plans to sell as much as $1.5 billion in Google stock over the course of the year as part of a trading plan adopted in November. The sale of up to 2.4 million shares would cut his ownership stake to about 2.1 percent from 2.8 percent.

Meet Spongecell, a Profitable Ad Tech Company With $10 Million in New Funding

Peter Kafka — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:00:12 +0000

You hate Web ads, or you ignore Web ads. Ah, but what if those Web ads weren’t boring old Web ads, but they danced or sang or jiggled around?

This is the pitch, more or less, for Spongecell, a start-up that helps produce “rich media” Web ads. That’s not a new idea, by any stretch, and there are plenty of competitors that do similar stuff. But last year the company’s story still attracted angel investors like Google chair Eric Schmidt.

And now the company has new funding: Tech investor/holding company Safeguard Scientifics has taken all of a $10 million B round.

The money will go to help Spongecell expand smaller product lines, like video ads, and eventually move into new ones, like mobile ads, says CEO Ben Kartzman.

Spongecell is a full-fledged “pivot”: Prior to 2008, it had raised $3 million and was trying to sell some sort of “event management” widget that Kartzman readily admits got no traction. Then it moved into ad tech, and things have been humming since. Kartzman says that last year he grossed around $10 million and cleared “seven figures” of profit.

Big picture: Smart people keep telling me that the ad tech ecosystem has too many start-ups funded with too much money, and that something has to give. But then I keep hearing about another ad tech start-up raising another round. Assume we’ll see more of these for a while.

Resolutions for 2012 (Comic)

Nitrozac and Snaggy — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:30:12 +0000

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site.

Top 10 Reasons Google's Founders Want to Restore That Airship Hangar (Comic)

Nitrozac and Snaggy — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:04:39 +0000

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site.

Google's Top Brass Willing to Pay Up to Save NASA's Hangar One

Ina Fried — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:13:00 +0000

Google’s top three executives want to save Hangar One, NASA’s iconic Moffett Field airship house. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt are willing to pay the $33 million price tag in full, as long as they can park their eight private jets there once the revamp is done. NASA is said to be weighing the offer, according to the Mercury News.

Sheryl Sandberg: "I Have Never Worked for a Woman"

Liz Gannes — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:41:18 +0000

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is famously outspoken about women and their ambition gap. Today in Portland, she delivered an extended version of her stump speech on the topic, as a keynote at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

One thing Sandberg said today stood out to me: “I have never worked for a woman, and I have never worked with a lot of women.”

I guess that’s not hard to believe when you look at Sandberg’s upper-echelon-heavy resume of Facebook, Google, the U.S. Treasury Department, McKinsey & Company and the World Bank. But it’s still kind of a stunner.

Here are some of Sandberg’s other key points:

Technology is a growth industry, so it’s a good one to join. When Sandberg was thinking she wouldn’t accept an offer to be Google’s general manager, Eric Schmidt told her, “Stop being an idiot; all that matters is growth.” She says that’s the best advice she ever got.

“I would be better at my job if I were technical,” Sandberg told the technical audience, saying she had doubts about addressing them for that reason. (She didn’t need to worry, the talk was very well received.)

Sandberg spoke of the importance of women setting an example by believing in themselves. “It’s easy to dislike the few senior women out there,” she said, referencing backlash she herself has gotten. “What if women were half the positions in power? It would be harder to dislike all of them.”

She added, “The main reason women don’t go into computer science turns out to be women don’t go into computer science.”

As in previous talks, Sandberg emphasized the value (in a heterosexual household) of making sure the man is equally responsible for domestic work. She also told women not to “leave before they leave”; that is, not to self-impose caps on their careers because they are planning to have kids.

“When you’re more valuable, the people around you will do more to make it work,” she told women, referencing Facebook’s flexible hours.

Lastly, Sandberg encouraged women to speak out like she has — saying it wasn’t until recently that she felt comfortable in her career to use it as a platform for these talks. “I stand up here as an old woman,” the 42-year-old Sandberg told the student-heavy audience. “My generation is not going to change this.”

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Google Chairman: Android Didn't Copy iPhone Because It Predated It

John Paczkowski — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:50:09 +0000

Prior to his untimely death in October, Apple Chairman Steve Jobs accused Google of ripping off the iPhone with its Android mobile OS. “I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” he told biographer Walter Isaacson. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

A contentious quote, and one that Google has remained silent on since it was first publicized. Until today, when Chairman Eric Schmidt summarily dismissed it. Asked to comment on Jobs’s remark during his visit to South Korea today, Schmidt first declined, and then said simply that Android predated the iPhone.

“I’ve decided not to comment on what’s been written on a book after his death,” Schmidt said. “Steve is a fantastic human being and someone who I miss very dearly. As a general comment, I think most people would agree that Google is a great innovator and I would also point out that the Android effort started before the iPhone effort.”

Which is likely true. Android was founded in 2003 and acquired by Google in 2005, years before Apple debuted the first iPhone in 2007. Perhaps Apple began work on the iPhone prior to 2003. Who knows? That’s not the question here. The real question is whether Jobs’s accusation that Google ripped off Apple’s vision of a mobile device is supported. And Schmidt, by deferring to the historical timeline, dodges it entirely.

A wise move, considering what the company’s prototype Android handset looked like before the debut of the iPhone, and what the first Android smartphone — the HTC Dream — looked like when it finally arrived at market.

Google's Schmidt Says Android Will Remain Free

Jung-Ah Lee — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:00:48 +0000

Google Inc. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Tuesday that the Internet search giant remains committed to offering its Android mobile operating system for free to its handset manufacturing partners.

Mr. Schmidt also reiterated that Google’s planned takeover of U.S. handset manufacturer Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. won’t have an adverse impact on its Android partners and said the company won’t “violate the openness” of the software platform.

In August, Google unveiled its plans to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Google Loses Longtime Lobbyist (Updated)

John Paczkowski — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:15:22 +0000

Eric Schmidt (left) with Alan Davidson and an unidentified mime

Looks like Google’s in the market for a new influence peddler. Alan Davidson, who has long served as director of public policy and government affairs for the company, is moving on.

“It’s been a remarkable experience — and a very exciting and intense time — but I’m ready for a new challenge,” Davidson said in an email to colleagues. “After six and a half years, I’ve decided it’s the right moment for me to leave my current role at the company. Starting later this month, I will be taking a sabbatical to explore other opportunities.”

Davidson’s departure is a bit of a surprise, and a real blow to Google. He was the company’s first full-time lobbyist in Washington and the guy who established its presence in the Beltway. He’s leaving at a time when Google is mired in all sorts of regulatory issues and facing increased scrutiny of its operations. So the company is understandably scrambling to replace him. Sources say it’s hoping to replace Davidson with a former member of Congress in an effort to further bolster its Capitol clout.

Sounds like exactly the sort of lobbyist that company chairman Eric Schmidt described in this October interview with the Washington Post.

“The conclusion that we came to [as far back as when I was at Sun Microsystems] is that there are two kinds of lobbying,” Schmidt said. “And this, I think, is grossly unfair but kind of true. There’s the kind of lobbying where you pay an ex-senator to get the current senator to write a sentence into a bill, and there’s no confusion as to what this is about. You are representing your corporate interest. It’s specific to your company. In Washington, for example, you can pay an ex-person $50,000 to arrange a meeting to get that process, to get those five sentences written in this bill, and so forth and so on.”

Davidson’s email in full, below:

From: Alan Davidson
Date: Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 4:35 PM
Subject: Time for a new challenge
To: Alan Davidson

In 2005, I joined Google in Washington to build a first-rate Internet
policy group. It’s been a remarkable experience – and a very exciting
and intense time — but I’m ready for a new challenge. After six and
half years, I’ve decided it’s the right moment for me to leave my
current role at the company. Starting later this month, I will be
taking a sabbatical to explore other opportunities.

When I started at Google none of us really knew how the Internet, and
this company, would grow and change. The mobile, cloud, and social
technologies just taking hold then are now full-on revolutions today.
At Google, we’ve grown from one person in shared rental space (me!) to
a large regional team with a flagship office in DC. I am intensely
proud of the team we have built throughout the Americas, and the work
we have done.

When we started the office, I knew that we couldn’t affect the major
policy debates of the day alone. It has only been in partnership with
so many of you that we have been able to make progress on many of the
great issues affecting the Internet. As we seek to fill my role, Pablo
Chavez will continue to be a good point of contact in our ongoing work
together. Thank you.

With best regards,
Alan

Karate Kid II: This Time It's the Nerdy Facebook Kid Vs. the Nerdy Google Kid! (And I Am Rooting for Neither)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:46:59 +0000

What is it about using the karate metaphor to depict Silicon Valley infighting between tech geeks?

In March of 2010 , the New York Times used the ju-jitsu theme to depict the fight between Google and Apple over smartphones. As you can see below, the late Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs faces off with an iPad and iPhone against then-CEO (and now Executive Chairman) Eric Schmidt, who is armed with an Android device.

Jobs gets to do the cool, in-the-air kick.

Now, this week, on the cover of Fortune magazine, it is Facebook’s CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg doing the floating hi-yaaa against Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page.

Leaving aside the fact that neither ever wears suits to do anything, let alone karate, it’s almost exactly the same, as you can see below.

Personally, I would have used Nerf guns at dawn.

First Class Ticket: Social Travel Start-Up Gogobot Raises $15M in Funding at $70M Valuation

Kara Swisher — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:00:54 +0000

Gogobot, the social travel site, said it has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Redpoint Ventures.

Sources said the valuation for the Silicon Valley start-up was around $70 million.

Gogobot said it would use the funds to expand its business. Battery Ventures and CrunchFund also participated in the financing round. Currently, the company’s revenue is mostly tied to lead generation based on its user recommendations.

“We really think we have a lot of momentum in the space and we want to keeping pressing forward in pushing social travel,” said Gogobot CEO and co-founder Travis Katz. “Travelers want to share their experiences and it is a trend that is only getting larger.”

To compete with rivals such as TripAdvisor, Gogobot recently released a number of new features, such as an Apple iPhone app and Trip Portfolio, a scrapbook experience via collections about different destinations.

The company, which launched late last year, has raised $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Here is a video interview I did with Katz last year, talking about the site, followed by the official press release:

[ See post to watch video ]

Gogobot Announces $15 Million in Funding Led by Redpoint Ventures

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (November 3, 2011) – Gogobot (www.Gogobot.com), the world’s largest social travel site, announced today that it has completed a $15 million round of funding led by Redpoint Ventures. Gogobot will use this new financing to expand its global footprint through marketing, partnerships, and outreach.

Gogobot transforms how we explore new places and capture and share our travel experiences by allowing users to harness the power of their social networks to exchange trusted travel advice and share trip plans and rich visual travel memories. This announcement comes on the heels of the launch of Gogobot’s mobile app available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, which is currently a Top 10 Travel App in 31 countries around the world.

“With its unique offering and seasoned management team, Gogobot is the industry leader in the social travel space. We believe with its vision and timely and unique service, Gogobot is poised for exceptional growth,” said Satish Dharmaraj, general partner of Redpoint Ventures.

Gogobot users can browse reviews from friends as well as share their photos, reviews and other details about the places they stayed, dined, and traveled on the Gogobot site. Gogobot automatically packages these elements into magazine-style albums, allowing friends to experience your travels with you in real time, see a map of where you were when you caught that sunset, or even make a reservation at the hotel where you stayed.

“Travel is all about discovering new experiences and sharing them with your friends and family,” said Travis Katz, Gogobot co-founder and CEO. “With this new funding, Gogobot aims to continue to grow and pave the way for a new era of travel — harnessing social media to provide users with trusted, insightful, and enriching reviews at the tip of your finger.”

Battery Ventures and CrunchFund also participated in the financing round.

Gogobot Goes Mobile With New iPhone App

Kara Swisher — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:00:30 +0000

The innovative social travel site Gogobot is unveiling its Apple iPhone app today, which will give users of the service the ability to post from a location immediately and also to see where friends have been.

In an interview with me last week, co-founder and CEO Travis Katz said that the move is an important one for the Silicon Valley start-up, since on-the-go trip recommendations using smartphones have become increasingly important to travelers.

“You live away from your laptop most of your time, and especially on trips,” he said. “But you also want to preserve those experiences.”

The new travel app, which is now only available on the Apple iPhone, populates to Gogobot’s Trip Portfolio, a scrapbook experience via collections about different destinations. You can also send postcards from the app — a la Instagram — to your collections.

Gogobot, which launched late last year, has raised $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Katz said Gogobot would eventually build on other mobile platforms, such as Google Android.

Schmidt: Google Won’t Screw Up Android

John Paczkowski — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:38:23 +0000

Though its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility will put Google in the business of making smartphones, the search giant says other manufacturers of Android-powered handsets have nothing to fear. Motorola Mobility will be given no advantages over any other Android hardware partner.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said the company won’t allow its new ties with Motorola to spoil relations with its existing partners.

“The Android ecosystem is the No. 1 priority, and that we won’t do anything with Motorola, or anybody else by the way, that would screw up the dynamics of that industry,” Schmidt told Bloomberg TV. “We need strong, hard competition among all the Android players. We won’t play favorites in the way people are concerned about.”

But if anyone else attempts to screw with those industry dynamics, watch out. Schmidt says Google Motorola is happy to use Motorola’s significant patent portfolio to protect the Android ecosystem.

“From our perspective, we will end up having enough patents that we can end up with a rough truce with everybody else, which is how it’s done,” he said. “That’s been the pattern in all other industries, and I’d expect something similar in ours. … We’re actually very happy with Motorola … The fact that they also had one of the best patent portfolios was certainly a component of our decision, but certainly not the only one. From the standpoint of [not] doing evil, that is a principle that we use to help judge our decisions around consumers. Are we doing something that is pro-consumer? I’m quite sure that protecting the Android system, making sure Android innovation can occur broadly, our hardware partners can import hardware into the U.S. and so on, is pro-consumer and pro-competitive. I think it’s a very good thing to be doing.”

Google Calls Justice Department Second Request on Motorola Deal "Pretty Routine" (If Four Percent Is Routine)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:31:53 +0000

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Think about the federal government’s blocking of the $39 billion AT&T and T-Mobile merger and you might want to reread Google’s blog today, penned in reaction to the news that the Justice Department is making a second request for information about its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

“This is pretty routine,” wrote Google’s Motorola integration exec Dennis Woodside. “We’ve gotten these kind of requests before.”

Maybe Google has (and it has with other purchases) — but in actuality, only four percent of transactions got such a follow-up request from regulators.

To be fair, it is much more common in high-profile, big-money deals like this one, but it means a longer closing period and more uncertainty around the Android mobile ecosystem until it’s done.

Still, Google has good reason to be patient. Despite tough criticism and brutal lobbying, it won approval from Justice for its $700 million deal to buy flight data service ITA Software in April, after nine months of scrutiny and a number of conditions imposed.

And the search giant waited out an intense six-month Federal Trade Commission approval process last year for its $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising start-up AdMob. It had an even harder time with the FTC’s nod of its 2007 DoubleClick purchase for $3.1 billion.

One that it lost — an obvious bridge too far that I dubbed Yahoogle — was Google’s 2008 effort to meld a troubling partnership with Yahoo in search advertising.

So, we’ll see soon enough which way D.C. — which just had Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt up to the Senate for an antitrust hearing chit-chat — will go.

Until then, here’s Woodside’s whole blog:

An update on our Motorola acquisition

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 5:30 PM ET

Posted by Dennis Woodside, SVP Google

Since we announced our plans to acquire Motorola Mobility, we’ve been excited about the positive reaction to the proposed deal — particularly from our partners who have told us that they’re enthusiastic about our defense of the Android ecosystem.

And as David Drummond said when we announced our plans in August, we’re confident that this deal will be approved. We believe very strongly this is a pro-competitive transaction that is good for Motorola Mobility, good for consumers, and good for our partners.

That said, we know that close scrutiny is part of the process and we’ve been talking to the U.S. Department of Justice over the past few weeks. Today we received what is called a “second request,” which means that the DOJ is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal. (This is pretty routine; we’ve gotten these kind of requests before.)

While this means we won’t be closing right away, we’re confident that the DOJ will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile ecosystem will remain highly competitive after this deal closes. We’ll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.

Larry Page on Speed: "There Are No Companies That Have Good Slow Decisions"

Peter Kafka — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 04:47:11 +0000

Here’s the last session of this week’s Google Zeitgeist conference, a thinky/cultural event the company puts on for its big clients and would-be clients. It’s a Q&A with CEO Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, who used to be CEO, until April of this year.

There’s lots of good stuff in here, though I’d advise skipping Page’s introductory comments and heading right to the 16-minute mark, where he and his old adult supervisor field questions. I’d also advise using Danny Sullivan’s liveblog of the event as a reference guide.

Danny and other folks have noted Page’s initial response to a question about Google’s biggest threat (“Google”). But do watch the whole thing, which starts at the 38-minute mark.

After Schmidt praises Page’s direct management style, Page cuts in and gets more direct. Google, he says, has to get faster even as it gets bigger:

One of the interesting things that we’ve noticed is that companies correlate on decision making and speed of decision making. There are basically no companies that have good slow decisions. There are only companies that have good fast decisions. I think that’s also a natural thing as companies get bigger — they tend to slow down decision making. And that’s pretty tragic.

Bonus game for armchair psychologists — check out the body language and vibe as the two men field the first question, about the company’s early history.

If it was a different kind of event, and the two were different kinds of speakers, I would assume this was deadpan shtick. But I’m reasonably sure that it’s not, and at the very least, Page and Schmidt have different memories about Google’s formative years.