FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto interviewed Google CEO Eric Schmidt tonight (Thursday) in the 6 pm hour on “Cavuto”. Schmidt talked about the recession, which he now considers to be ‘behind us’, and the technological advances of Google (GOOG), including the new mobile phones that are coming out, saying that they “make money, and lots of it, it turns out from advertising on mobile phones.”
Below are excerpts from the interview: Courtesy of Fox Business News
On the Google mobile phones coming out:“Google has all the new phones coming out, as well as search and advertising products.” “It’ll be our partners’ hardware and we give the software away. But we make money, and lots of it, it turns out from advertising on mobile phones.”
On Google’s technological advances: “We’re trying very much not to cross what we call the ‘creepy’ line… for example with our satellite information—we don’t do anything that’s more recent than a month old, so we don’t do real time satellite. We do a lot of other things to make sure that the creepy or surveillance or the privacy lines are not crossed, and we care a lot about it.”
On the comparison between Google and Microsoft: “Hopefully we won’t repeat the same mistakes that Microsoft did ten years ago that ultimately led to all these things that have been happening with them.” “The general question of leadership and ‘are you the next Microsoft’ is really a function of attitude…Hopefully the mistakes that we’re making now won’t put us in those kinds of predicaments.”
On talks of buying the New York Times: “It’s highly unlikely that we would get into the content business. It’s fundamentally better for us to be the supplier of platforms and modernization and revenue and advertising and subscription services to all of these players. We desperately need the newspapers, the magazines, the media companies to be successful because we need their content.”
On the economic climate: “It’s clear that technology is in recovery. It’s clear that the recession is behind us…We’ve seen an uptick in consumer behavior and the advertising model.”
On coming out of the recession through greater transparency: “It’s easy to demonize people especially after the harm that was done to the average person in our society by the powerful and the elite. I understand the anger. There is an opportunity now to fix this, we have technology systems and measuring, open systems and transparency.” “Absolutely it’s gone too far. But I understand it. The solution is not to spend all our time talking about what happened but rather say ‘how do we avoid this crisis in the future?’ We can do that using transparency, how computers talk to each other, remember that in the Web people have a lot of ability to monitor what our government is doing and that’s a good thing.”
On the popularity of Twitter and Facebook: “Everything we’ve seen indicates that Twitter and Facebook users are using Google even more, so we’re very happy with that.”
On President Obama: “On a personal basis I like him a lot. He’s very, very smart. He’s a tough thinker.”
On whether the President ever asked him to be in his cabinet: “We had some conversations and I concluded that I was much more excited about staying and being committed to Google and I am committed to Google…That’s all I’ll say.”
