By Eric Auchard
SchmidtGoogle
In an on-stage interview with writer Ken Auletta of the New
Yorker magazine, Schmidt said "Don't be evil" is meant to
provoke internal debate over what constitutes ethical corporate
behavior, rather than representing an absolute moral position.
On other fronts, Schmidt said Google was taking a patient
view to making money from online video advertising, while it
sees mobile phones attracting the most lucrative ad rates.
Google is moving to transform YouTube, its popular online
video-sharing site, into a money-maker via new forms of
advertising it will unveil over the next year, Schmidt said.
He was cautious about how profitable this might prove to
be. For now, YouTube's video traffic consumes the majority of
Google's outgoing network bandwidth. But he said it could
possibly lead to the "creation of a whole new industry."
"We don't yet know how we are going to make significant
amounts of money on YouTube," Schmidt said. "But it seems
obvious that we should be able to make some money from this."
His optimism is based on two key facts: "We know people are
watching it" and "We have the luxury of time to invest."
Speaking of the emerging market for Web-based advertising
on mobile phones, Schmidt said the vast majority of Google
searches on mobile phones were done on Apple Inc's year-old
iPhones, which prominently feature a Web browser.
"Mobile looks like it will ultimately be the highest of ad
rates," because ads can be targeted by user location, he said.
DEBATING CORPORATE EVIL
When he first joined Google as CEO seven years ago, Schmidt
acknowledged thinking the "Don't be evil" phrase was a "joke"
being played on him by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Schmidt recalled sitting in Google's offices later in 2001
when an engineer interrupted a strategy discussion over a
planned advertising product by saying, "That is evil."
"It is like a bomb goes off in the room. Everything
stopped. Everyone had a moral and ethical conversation, which
by the way, stopped the product," Schmidt said.
"So it is a cultural rule, a way of forcing a conversation,
especially in areas which are ambiguous," he said of how the
mission statement works in practice at Google.
Schmidt reaffirmed that the company's primary goal is not
to make money selling ads, whether it is banner ads or ads on
Web searches, online video, TV and mobile phones.
"The goal of the company is not to monetize everything, the
goal is to change the world ... We don't start from
monetization. We start from the perspective of what problems do
we have," he said, referring to big, world-class problems.
IncYahooMicrosoft
(Editing by Braden Reddall)
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