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Viacom やMicrosoft に挑戦することをGoogleのCEOはLuckyだと感じている As Google Challenges Viacom and Microsoft, Its CEO
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/04/mag_schmidt_qa?currentPage=all
As Google Challenges Viacom and Microsoft, Its CEO Feels Lucky
WiredのGoogle’s CEO, Eric Schmidt へのインタビュー
2000年に友人からGoogleのCEOにならないかと勧められた時は、単なる検索エンジンじゃないかと思った。
Google Appsは旧式のビジネスモデルの複雑さに飽き飽きしている。
Viacom とは、単なるビジネス上の交渉である。
自前の光ファイバーネットワークを持って、その性能を自ら、チューンアップさせたいのだ。
売り上げも社員数も３倍になったが、官僚主義は常に大きな問題だ。最善のモデルは依然として小さなチーム構成で全速力で仕事をすることだ。必要なのは創造性と秩序のバランスがうまくとれた企業でなければならない。
Fred Vogelstein from Wired Magazine Email 04.09.07 | 12:00 AM
As+Google+Challenges+Viacom+and+Microsoft%2C+Its+CEO+Feels+Lucky
Illustration by Pablo Lobato
SEE ALSO:
Extra: Read the text of Fred Vogelstein's hour-long interview with Eric Schmidt.
Epicenter: Read Schmidt, the prequel, a never-before-published interview in Nov. '05
Back in 2000, when a friend suggested he apply to be Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt thought, “Why? It’s only a search engine.” And Everest is only a mountain. Since then, of course, Google has become the most influential corporation in a generation (and Schmidt is now a multibillionaire). Today, Google stands at a crossroad. With more than 10,000 employees, the tension between corporate control and creative chaos has never been higher. We caught up with Schmidt at the Googleplex, where he talked up plans to experiment with video ads on YouTube, dismissed Viacom’s lawsuit as a negotiating ploy, and almost acknowledged that Google Apps poses a threat to Microsoft.
Wired: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently called Google a one-trick pony. Thoughts?
Eric Schmidt: I don’t think it makes sense for me to comment on the words and actions of Steve Ballmer.
Wired: I’ll phrase the question differently. Google gets its revenue essentially from one source -- online ads. One could argue that it’s not diversified enough.
Schmidt: The criticism is valid. We do get the vast majority of our revenue from advertising, which is a business that a lot of other people would like to be in.
But there are some new revenue models on the horizon. The most interesting is probably Google Apps, where we’re already beginning to get some significant enterprise deals.
Wired: Google Apps lets users do word processing, spreadsheets, and email in a Web browser. Then you store all the files in a giant server farm somewhere. Will businesses really be willing to work that way?
Schmidt: Corporations are tired of dealing with the complexity of the old model, and our products are now strong enough to serve business needs reliably.
Wired: Will the success of Google Apps mean market share erosion for Microsoft Office?
Schmidt: It may. Or it may be that consumers will push us to solve completely new problems.
Wired: In March, media giant Viacom sued Google, claiming that YouTube is stealing its video content. What made Viacom decide to go to court?
Schmidt: It’s a business negotiation. We’ve been negotiating with them, and I’m sure at some point we’ll negotiate with them some more.
Wired: Viacom’s argument is that you’re not working hard enough to keep infringing clips off of YouTube.
Schmidt: Well, if they would look at the law, they’d understand that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, there’s a shared responsibility. The law says that the copyright owner monitors -- and then we expeditiously remove -- offending clips. We’ve done that. In fact, YouTube’s traffic has grown since we did. So Viacom’s argument that YouTube is somehow built on stolen content is clearly false.
Wired: How could copyright law in the digital age be clearer?
Schmidt: The balance that was struck in the DMCA has worked pretty well, and I think it may be better for all of us to work within that framework for a while as we develop these new businesses. It’s the unintended consequences of new laws that always get you.
Wired: You thought there was a good chance of litigation when you bought YouTube. The deal set aside $200 million to cover the cost of lawsuits. Why did you make the acquisition if you anticipated so much hassle?
Schmidt: Because we think it’s fantastic. I mean, we really do think that the YouTube phenomenon is sustainable for many, many years. And the argument is simple: People are using videoclips everywhere. They’re sharing them. They’re building communities around them. YouTube’s traffic continues to grow rapidly. Video is something that we think is going to be embedded everywhere. And it makes sense, from Google’s perspective, to be the operator of the largest site that contains all that video.
Obviously, we would like to include licensed, copyrighted content -- legally -- and then make money on it. But YouTube itself can pay off -- and this is where the critics get it wrong -- in simple searches. Because, remember, when you go to YouTube, you do a search. When you go to Google, you do a search. As we integrate those searches, which we’re working on, it will drive a lot of traffic to both places. So the trick, overall, is generating more searches, more uses of Google.
Wired Which generates more pageviews, which generates more ad revenue.
Schmidt: You got it.
Wired: Does that mean we will soon see video ads on YouTube?
Schmidt: Absolutely. Advertisers and their agencies produce a lot of video they don’t use. So, for them, the Internet represents a new creative medium. Now they can do five- or 10-second teasers to drive online viewers to their ads on TV, or they can air outtakes or run shorter versions of the ad itself. These are creative people. We will see the emergence of new categories of ads and new ways of making money.
Wired: Meanwhile, News Corp. and NBC Universal recently announced they’re joining forces to create their own video-distribution channels online. Does that represent serious competition?
Schmidt: No. They are creating an exclusive agent to license that content to anybody. In fact, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin and I had a long conversation about this. Before the announcement, Peter explicitly told me that this was not a competitor to YouTube. To me, it’s another effort to get the content out.
Wired: You recently joined the board of Apple and have talked about potential partnerships between that company and Google. Like what?
Schmidt: Google’s architectural model around broadband and services plays very well to the powerful devices and services Apple is making. We’re a perfect backend to the problems they’re trying to solve. And Apple has very good judgment on user interface and people.
It doesn’t have the data centers, though. What it has is a manufacturing business that’s doing quite well. We can provide great services. The obvious example is the iPhone, which will come with Google Maps installed.
Wired: Let’s talk about those data centers. They’re changing the way the world thinks about computing. Explain.
Schmidt: It’s pretty clear that there’s an architectural shift going on. These occur every 10 or 20 years. The previous architecture was a proprietary network with PCs attached to it. With this new architecture, you’re always online, every device can see every application, and the applications are stored in the cloud. It’s like having banks manage your money rather than you managing your money.
Wired: How many data centers have you guys built?
Schmidt: In the dozens. There are a few very large ones, some of which have been leaked to the press. But in a year or two, the very large ones will be the small ones. That’s where a lot of the capital spending in the company is going.
Wired: Google controls its own fiber-optic network. Why?
Schmidt: We can tune it. One of the neat things about the Internet bubble of the ’90s was that people built all of this fiber, and now it’s essentially free. People are always assuming that we have some master plan involving telecommunications, when in fact, if you view it as solving the supercomputer problem, we just want the thing to be faster.
Wired: How should we think about Google today?
Schmidt: Think of it first as an advertising system. Then as an end-user system -- Google Apps. A third way to think of Google is as a giant supercomputer. And a fourth way is to think of it as a social phenomenon involving the company, the people, the brand, the mission, the values -- all that kind of stuff.
Wired: The company is helping San Francisco and other cities install cheap, public Wi-Fi. Why?
Schmidt: Remember, one of the critical things for Google is for users to have inexpensive or free access to broadband. So, especially if somebody else is going to subsidize that, we think it’s great. If you have 10 percent broadband penetration in San Francisco and we can get it to 50 percent, that produces happier citizens. And we know that those searchers will use our services more. They’re much more likely to become a Google Calendar user or a Gmail user or a Google News user or whatever, because they like the performance.
Wired: Google’s revenue and employee head count have tripled in the last two years. How do you keep from becoming too bureaucratic or too chaotic?
Schmidt: It’s a constant problem. We analyze this every day, and our conclusion is that the best model is still small teams running as fast as they can and tolerating a certain lack of cohesion. Attempting to provide too much order dries out the creativity. What’s needed in a properly functioning corporation is a balance between creativity and order.
But we’ve reined in certain things. For example, we don’t tolerate the kind of “Hey, I want to have my own database and have a good time” behavior that was effective for us in the past.
Wired: Do you and Larry Page and Sergey Brin still divide your duties the same way?
Schmidt: Pretty much. Larry and Sergey spent all day today in the boardroom doing product reviews. I’m interviewing some prospective executives, talking to a couple of partners about potential deals, and the three of us are going onstage in a few minutes to answer employee questions. That’s a typical day.
Our skill sets are just as complementary as they were five years ago. Larry and Sergey have brilliance and technical understanding, and they’re quicker on some things than I am. They’re very clear thinkers. And there is my background in knowing how to grow a corporation. I think the combination has worked well, and it’s not going to change. We’re going to do this for a long time.
Contributing editor Fred Vogelstein wrote about Microsoft's corporate blogging effort in issue 15.04.
As Google Challenges Viacom and Microsoft, Its CEO Feels Lucky
WiredのGoogle’s CEO, Eric Schmidt へのインタビュー
2000年に友人からGoogleのCEOにならないかと勧められた時は、単なる検索エンジンじゃないかと思った。
Google Appsは旧式のビジネスモデルの複雑さに飽き飽きしている。
Viacom とは、単なるビジネス上の交渉である。
自前の光ファイバーネットワークを持って、その性能を自ら、チューンアップさせたいのだ。
売り上げも社員数も３倍になったが、官僚主義は常に大きな問題だ。最善のモデルは依然として小さなチーム構成で全速力で仕事をすることだ。必要なのは創造性と秩序のバランスがうまくとれた企業でなければならない。
Fred Vogelstein from Wired Magazine Email 04.09.07 | 12:00 AM
As+Google+Challenges+Viacom+and+Microsoft%2C+Its+CEO+Feels+Lucky
Illustration by Pablo Lobato
SEE ALSO:
Extra: Read the text of Fred Vogelstein's hour-long interview with Eric Schmidt.
Epicenter: Read Schmidt, the prequel, a never-before-published interview in Nov. '05
Back in 2000, when a friend suggested he apply to be Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt thought, “Why? It’s only a search engine.” And Everest is only a mountain. Since then, of course, Google has become the most influential corporation in a generation (and Schmidt is now a multibillionaire). Today, Google stands at a crossroad. With more than 10,000 employees, the tension between corporate control and creative chaos has never been higher. We caught up with Schmidt at the Googleplex, where he talked up plans to experiment with video ads on YouTube, dismissed Viacom’s lawsuit as a negotiating ploy, and almost acknowledged that Google Apps poses a threat to Microsoft.
Wired: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently called Google a one-trick pony. Thoughts?
Eric Schmidt: I don’t think it makes sense for me to comment on the words and actions of Steve Ballmer.
Wired: I’ll phrase the question differently. Google gets its revenue essentially from one source -- online ads. One could argue that it’s not diversified enough.
Schmidt: The criticism is valid. We do get the vast majority of our revenue from advertising, which is a business that a lot of other people would like to be in.
But there are some new revenue models on the horizon. The most interesting is probably Google Apps, where we’re already beginning to get some significant enterprise deals.
Wired: Google Apps lets users do word processing, spreadsheets, and email in a Web browser. Then you store all the files in a giant server farm somewhere. Will businesses really be willing to work that way?
Schmidt: Corporations are tired of dealing with the complexity of the old model, and our products are now strong enough to serve business needs reliably.
Wired: Will the success of Google Apps mean market share erosion for Microsoft Office?
Schmidt: It may. Or it may be that consumers will push us to solve completely new problems.
Wired: In March, media giant Viacom sued Google, claiming that YouTube is stealing its video content. What made Viacom decide to go to court?
Schmidt: It’s a business negotiation. We’ve been negotiating with them, and I’m sure at some point we’ll negotiate with them some more.
Wired: Viacom’s argument is that you’re not working hard enough to keep infringing clips off of YouTube.
Schmidt: Well, if they would look at the law, they’d understand that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, there’s a shared responsibility. The law says that the copyright owner monitors -- and then we expeditiously remove -- offending clips. We’ve done that. In fact, YouTube’s traffic has grown since we did. So Viacom’s argument that YouTube is somehow built on stolen content is clearly false.
Wired: How could copyright law in the digital age be clearer?
Schmidt: The balance that was struck in the DMCA has worked pretty well, and I think it may be better for all of us to work within that framework for a while as we develop these new businesses. It’s the unintended consequences of new laws that always get you.
Wired: You thought there was a good chance of litigation when you bought YouTube. The deal set aside $200 million to cover the cost of lawsuits. Why did you make the acquisition if you anticipated so much hassle?
Schmidt: Because we think it’s fantastic. I mean, we really do think that the YouTube phenomenon is sustainable for many, many years. And the argument is simple: People are using videoclips everywhere. They’re sharing them. They’re building communities around them. YouTube’s traffic continues to grow rapidly. Video is something that we think is going to be embedded everywhere. And it makes sense, from Google’s perspective, to be the operator of the largest site that contains all that video.
Obviously, we would like to include licensed, copyrighted content -- legally -- and then make money on it. But YouTube itself can pay off -- and this is where the critics get it wrong -- in simple searches. Because, remember, when you go to YouTube, you do a search. When you go to Google, you do a search. As we integrate those searches, which we’re working on, it will drive a lot of traffic to both places. So the trick, overall, is generating more searches, more uses of Google.
Wired Which generates more pageviews, which generates more ad revenue.
Schmidt: You got it.
Wired: Does that mean we will soon see video ads on YouTube?
Schmidt: Absolutely. Advertisers and their agencies produce a lot of video they don’t use. So, for them, the Internet represents a new creative medium. Now they can do five- or 10-second teasers to drive online viewers to their ads on TV, or they can air outtakes or run shorter versions of the ad itself. These are creative people. We will see the emergence of new categories of ads and new ways of making money.
Wired: Meanwhile, News Corp. and NBC Universal recently announced they’re joining forces to create their own video-distribution channels online. Does that represent serious competition?
Schmidt: No. They are creating an exclusive agent to license that content to anybody. In fact, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin and I had a long conversation about this. Before the announcement, Peter explicitly told me that this was not a competitor to YouTube. To me, it’s another effort to get the content out.
Wired: You recently joined the board of Apple and have talked about potential partnerships between that company and Google. Like what?
Schmidt: Google’s architectural model around broadband and services plays very well to the powerful devices and services Apple is making. We’re a perfect backend to the problems they’re trying to solve. And Apple has very good judgment on user interface and people.
It doesn’t have the data centers, though. What it has is a manufacturing business that’s doing quite well. We can provide great services. The obvious example is the iPhone, which will come with Google Maps installed.
Wired: Let’s talk about those data centers. They’re changing the way the world thinks about computing. Explain.
Schmidt: It’s pretty clear that there’s an architectural shift going on. These occur every 10 or 20 years. The previous architecture was a proprietary network with PCs attached to it. With this new architecture, you’re always online, every device can see every application, and the applications are stored in the cloud. It’s like having banks manage your money rather than you managing your money.
Wired: How many data centers have you guys built?
Schmidt: In the dozens. There are a few very large ones, some of which have been leaked to the press. But in a year or two, the very large ones will be the small ones. That’s where a lot of the capital spending in the company is going.
Wired: Google controls its own fiber-optic network. Why?
Schmidt: We can tune it. One of the neat things about the Internet bubble of the ’90s was that people built all of this fiber, and now it’s essentially free. People are always assuming that we have some master plan involving telecommunications, when in fact, if you view it as solving the supercomputer problem, we just want the thing to be faster.
Wired: How should we think about Google today?
Schmidt: Think of it first as an advertising system. Then as an end-user system -- Google Apps. A third way to think of Google is as a giant supercomputer. And a fourth way is to think of it as a social phenomenon involving the company, the people, the brand, the mission, the values -- all that kind of stuff.
Wired: The company is helping San Francisco and other cities install cheap, public Wi-Fi. Why?
Schmidt: Remember, one of the critical things for Google is for users to have inexpensive or free access to broadband. So, especially if somebody else is going to subsidize that, we think it’s great. If you have 10 percent broadband penetration in San Francisco and we can get it to 50 percent, that produces happier citizens. And we know that those searchers will use our services more. They’re much more likely to become a Google Calendar user or a Gmail user or a Google News user or whatever, because they like the performance.
Wired: Google’s revenue and employee head count have tripled in the last two years. How do you keep from becoming too bureaucratic or too chaotic?
Schmidt: It’s a constant problem. We analyze this every day, and our conclusion is that the best model is still small teams running as fast as they can and tolerating a certain lack of cohesion. Attempting to provide too much order dries out the creativity. What’s needed in a properly functioning corporation is a balance between creativity and order.
But we’ve reined in certain things. For example, we don’t tolerate the kind of “Hey, I want to have my own database and have a good time” behavior that was effective for us in the past.
Wired: Do you and Larry Page and Sergey Brin still divide your duties the same way?
Schmidt: Pretty much. Larry and Sergey spent all day today in the boardroom doing product reviews. I’m interviewing some prospective executives, talking to a couple of partners about potential deals, and the three of us are going onstage in a few minutes to answer employee questions. That’s a typical day.
Our skill sets are just as complementary as they were five years ago. Larry and Sergey have brilliance and technical understanding, and they’re quicker on some things than I am. They’re very clear thinkers. And there is my background in knowing how to grow a corporation. I think the combination has worked well, and it’s not going to change. We’re going to do this for a long time.
Contributing editor Fred Vogelstein wrote about Microsoft's corporate blogging effort in issue 15.04.
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