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MALE SPEAKER: Ladies and gentlemen good afternoon.
Please welcome Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of
Google, Dr. Eric Schmitt.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Well good afternoon and welcome to
Google's 2008 annual meeting of shareholders.
We're delighted to have you here.
First place, did you all enjoy your lunch?
OK, very important at Google.
I'm Eric, properly introduced.
I hope everybody here has had a chance to get registered.
If you've not been registered for the meeting find somebody
in the corner who will make sure you get properly
registered.
And we gave you an agenda, which he should have. And a
set of rules of conduct and so forth-- the usual stuff-- that
you find in shareholder meetings.
So at this time I'd like to call the meeting to order.
Before doing anything else, I want to make sure that I
introduce some of our directors and
officers that are here.
Let's see-- we have Paul Otellini.
You want to raise your hand.
John Hennessy, Ram Shriram, Ann Mather, and John Doerr.
Did I miss any of the board members, aside
from Larry and Sergey?
Larry stand up.
This is Larry Page.
I think people know Larry.
And Larry's doing his best impersonation of Sergey who
will be here in just a minute.
Sergey you just showed up.
There's Sergey.
And before I say anything else, the greatest highlight
of my personal and professional life, I think, is
the collaboration that I have with these two
extraordinary people.
So it's great to be here with my colleagues.
We have a number of executives,
from Google as well.
I see George Reyes, CFO.
I see Elliot Schrage.
I saw Jonathan Rosenberg.
David Drummond of course in just a sec.
Anybody else, shout out.
We also have Debra Kelley, representative of
Computershare, who will act as our inspector of elections.
And Dave Cabral, a representative of Ernst &
Young, our auditors of course, who are independent
accountants.
I'd also now like to introduce David Drummond, who as I
mentioned before, he's here, and he's the Chief Legal
Officer and Corporate Secretary.
David of course is going to do the formal
business of the meeting.
And you all remember having done this before, we're going
to do the formal business meeting, as soon we get that
over then we're going to go right into a short
presentation from me.
And then Q&A and comments that they may have on this or any
other subjects.
Please don't break the podium here David.
You're all set?
Go ahead.
DAVID DRUMMOND: I'm all set.
Thank you Eric.
And thanks everyone for coming and let me give you my welcome
to the meeting as well.
We'll try to be quick with the actual
business of the meeting.
We've got a Q&A session later on that I'm sure you're
eager to get to.
A quick note about stockholder questions, as stated in the
rules of conduct, stockholders should not address the meeting
until you're actually recognized from the podium.
We'll have, as I said, we'll have a question and answer
period later on so you can ask questions, that will be
following Eric's presentation.
Now if you want to ask a question during the Q&A
period, a please move to one of the microphones that we
have, I think we have two, one on each aisle, on
each side of the room.
And after we recognize you, please identify yourself and
your status as either a shareholder or a
representative of a shareholder and then go ahead
and ask your question.
So thanks in advance for cooperating with these rules.
Now on to the formal business.
I've received the affidavit of mailing of Computershare,
which states that the notice of meeting and the
accompanying proxy materials and annual report were mailed
to the shareholders on March 11th.
That's all the shareholders of record as of that date.
In addition, I've been advised by the inspector of elections
that the holders of our outstanding class a and class
b common stock, representing at least a majority of the
voting power of our outstanding capital stock
that's entitled to vote, is represented today, either in
person or by proxy.
So as a result, we have a quorum, the meeting is duly
constituted and we can proceed with the actual business.
First item, is the election of directors.
Ten directors will be elected at today's meeting.
The directors today will hold office until next year's
annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are
duly elected and qualified.
Board of directors has nominated the following
persons, Eric Schmitt, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, John Doerr,
John Hennessy, Art Levinson, Ann Mather, Paul Otellini, Ram
Shriram, and Shirley Tilghman.
Our bylaws require that a stockholder provide advance
notice of any intent to nominate anyone as a director.
We haven't received any such notice, so accordingly, I
declare that the nominations for director are closed.
The next matter being submitted to our stockholders
is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young
as our independent auditors and registered public
accounting firm.
Our board of directors has recommended that our
stockholders ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young.
For the fiscal year, ending December 31, 2008.
The third item of business being submitted today, is to
approve an amendment to our 2004 stock plan to increase
the number of shares of class a common stock under the plan
by an additional number of 6,500,000 shares.
And our board of directors has also recommended that our
stockholders vote in favor of this amendment to the plan.
Now the next two items on the agenda
are stockholder proposals.
Our board of directors has unanimously recommended that
our shareholders vote against these proposals.
However, one of our founders, Sergey Brin, who's also a
director of the company, will be abstaining and not voting
against these proposals in his capacity as a stockholder.
Now the first stockholder proposal is being brought by
the office of the comptroller of New York City and St.
Scholastica Monastery.
I'd like to introduce Mr. Tony Cruise.
Mr. Cruise are you here?
Great, welcome to Google.
And Mr. Cruise will be presenting this proposal.
You have a total of three minutes to make a statement in
support of the proposal today.
TONY CRUISE: Great, thank you.
Again my name is Tony Cruise.
And I'm here today using a proxy of the office of
comptroller of New York City, which holds about $200,000,000
worth of Google stock.
And I'm also here representing Amnesty International, the
largest human rights organization in the world,
with more than 2,000,000 members worldwide.
So I'm here to request your support for a proposal on
Internet censorship.
Concerns about Google's participation in the Chinese
government's restriction of freedom of information on-line
has been well documented.
Including in The Amnesty International Report
undermining freedom of expression in China.
As shareholders may be aware, Google is currently
participating in a multi-stakeholder initiative
to develop a set of voluntary principles which would guide
how companies like Google respond to censorship demands
in countries like China.
Amnesty International has been participating in this
initiative in an effort to ensure the outcomes reflect a
sincere commitment to upholding the highest
attainable standard of corporate responsibility for
human rights.
Specifically we feel strongly that for the MSI to be
meaningful, it must include the following: a commitment to
independent monitoring and assessment of the company's
fulfillment of the principles that are agreed to, a public
commitment to honoring freedom of expression, transparency
about filtering process used to limit or restrict search
results, including informing users, development of human
rights impact assessments that would be disclosed publicly, a
commitment to exhaust all possible remedies and appeals
before complying with state directives that would violate
internationally recognized human rights, including the
rights to free expression, access to information, and
privacy, and documentation and public disclosure of all cases
where legally binding censorship requests have been
compiled with.
Our requests are echoed by the proposal before you for a vote
today which requests that management institute policies
to help protect freedom of expression on the Internet.
The proposal additionally requests that data that can
identify individual users should not be hosted in
Internet restricting countries where political speech can be
treated as a crime by the legal system and that users
should be informed about the company's data retention
practices, and the ways which their data is shared with
third parties.
Such policies and standards do not currently exist at Google,
and while we hope that the multi-stakeholder process will
result in such policies and practices, we've seen little
more than talk and defensiveness from Google
since these problems first emerged.
While a willingness to engage NGOs and other experts on
these issues as a useful first step.
The truth is that 18 months later, the issue of Internet
censorship in countries like China has worsened and we
still haven't seen concrete changes from Google.
There is nothing in the charter of the
multi-stakeholder process which precludes Google from
taking proactive steps that might ameliorate the situation
while conversations about the standardized principles go on.
Therefore, on behalf of the comptroller of New York and
Amnesty International, I ask shareholders to vote in favor
of this proposal as a strong signal to Google that
expedited action on these issues is required.
Thank you.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Thank you Mr. Cruise.
Sir, gentleman on my right, do you have a statement that
addresses the proposal at hand.
MALE SPEAKER: Yes.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Please identify yourself.
MALE SPEAKER: My name is [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
I have a smaller share of Google.
At first, I want thank Google, perform better than Yahoo, to
help China [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
to censorship.
Actually today we read The Wall Street Journal, other
Chinese writer got arrested.
And I myself, is a political refugee, I couldn't go back to
China for more than 10 or 20 years.
So what I want to say is I fully support the proposal and
I want the boarding especially when you make policy regarding
the censorship especially pay more attention on China.
Because now China, we're a lot Internet user country.
Thank you very much.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Thank you very much for your comment.
The gentleman on the other side.
You have a comment addressing the proposal?
SHELTON EHRLICH: Yes I do.
DAVID DRUMMOND: OK, please identify yourself.
SHELTON EHRLICH: My name is Shelton Ehrlich, I own 23
shares of Google.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Thank you.
SHELTON EHRLICH: I used Google on my computer to search
Amnesty International and the comptroller of the City of New
York, and the board of trustees of the pension plan
that made this proposal.
I have nothing to say on the merits of the proposal itself.
I just want the shareholders to know that the comptroller
of the City of New York is a politician.
He has two campaigns going on today.
One is condemning a jury verdict in
the City of New York.
It's as if our CFO got involved in felony cases in
Mountain View.
The second thing he has going for him to maybe rise to Mayor
or Governor is a campaign to come to shareholder meetings
and criticize decent, wonderful, corporations.
It's on his web site, that's his job.
I have another comment on Amnesty International.
Today is the 60th birthday of the nation of Israel.
Amnesty International is one of the leaders attempting to
stop Israel from defending itself against terrorists.
Thank you.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Thank you very much sir for your
participation.
Now it's time to move to the second stockholder proposal
that's being brought to the meeting today.
This one is being brought by Harrington Investments Inc.
And I'd like to introduce Mr John Harrington who is a
representative from Harrington Investments
to present the proposal.
Mr Harrington you've got three minutes.
JOHN HARRINGTON: Thank you Mr. Chairman, members.
I am not a politician so you're all safe
in your seat today.
I'm not advocating anything but human rights in China and
nothing but a modest proposal to allow the Google board to
adopt and amend their bylaws, their laws of the corporation,
to create a committee on human rights.
What we're doing is, we are looking for a constructive way
to deal with human rights issues across the globe.
Not only in China, but in Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia, in
a lot of countries that restrict the Internet and
censor the Internet.
Management of this company unfortunately has shown itself
to be unwilling or unable to grasp the gravity of the issue
of human rights in China and take appropriate steps.
This world must begin to exercise its fiduciary duty.
The directors of Google, and this is directed at the
directors of Google, not management, because they have
the fiduciary duty, and they are elected by us.
And I should say in retrospect what's really interesting is
when you filled out your ballot today you had two
choices, you can either vote yes, or you could withhold
your proxy.
Did you know this company doesn't even
have majority voting.
We can't nominate directors.
We can only vote in favor or withhold.
That means in a plurality voting we can't vote against
the directors.
We have no say in the way this company is run.
And there's a lot of similarities actually between
the Chinese communist party and the board of Google
unfortunately.
No, I'm seriously, we need to think about this relative to
majority rule.
So we have seen the failure of, time and time again, of
our board of directors to articulate and demonstrate
morally defensible human rights policies and this can
result in significant cost to the shareholders.
Our company has come under heavy criticism for
restricting Internet content that the Chinese government
deems subversive, that is freedom
of speech and assembly.
Guaranteed, by the way, by the Chinese constitution.
Which this company unfortunately has not
challenged in Chinese courts or at the international court
of justice.
This is censorship and is a violation of human rights and
today's Internet consumers really actually don't like
patronizing companies that violate human rights.
Blatant inhibitions of free flow of information are
commonplace in the people's republic of China.
Which I might remind all of us is a totalitarian regime that
tortures its own citizens.
Google's self censoring technology is an important
part of that policy.
Google's refusal to disclose the search results it filters,
or to legally challenge the Chinese government on
violations of its own constitution, only furthers
the abuses there.
Google, along with other leading US technology firms,
have helped build the great firewall of China.
A Chinese government initiative that restricts and
monitors the flow of information being transmitted
over the Internet within China.
Google's influential Internet presence makes its client
policy particularly significant.
China is a totalitarian, terrorist government.
Third only in its repressive policies after Nazi Germany
and the apartheid system of South Africa.
We need more than the morality of materialistic self interest
to lead us into the 21st century.
I asked the board of directors to begin to exercise serious
fiduciary duty on beginning to deal with the very modest
proposal that will allow them to deal with it, as board
members and fiduciary.
In creating a board committee on human rights.
Thank you very much.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Thank you Mr. Harrington.
Sir, do you have another comment with respect to the
proposal-- this proposal?
MALE SPEAKER: Yes I say--
DAVID DRUMMOND: OK please go ahead.
MALE SPEAKER: My name is [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
I'm a shareholder of Google Company.
I fully support the proposal.
I want to--
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
one fact to that.
When Yahoo or some other company says this is not the
company's business, it's government business that is
totally wrong.
Because in my experience I was expelled from China, and
expelled from Japan.
Now the FBI want to expel me from America.
So the government can never do anything good for that
worldwide citizenship.
So I want to get support and let the shareholder meeting
know Government will not help us.
So I really need the corporation to take that
responsibility.
And certainly I can see, we can help Google.
I'm a president of a US, Japan, and China comparative
policy research institute and a humanitarian in China.
So we have made connection with China and
[UNINTELLIGIBLE].
I talked with many victims from China and they asked me
to be presented them in this meeting to tell Google
management and the shareholders to think about
doing business when doing things in China.
Definitely where we need to respect human rights, like in
this proposal, that's my point.
Thank you very much.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Thank you sir.
Sir.
SHELTON EHRLICH: Yes, my name is Shelton Ehrlich.
I still own 23 shares of Google.
[LAUGHING]
I think I remember the motto of Google.
Don't be evil, or is it don't do evil.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Don't be evil.
SHELTON EHRLICH: Don't be evil.
Well I looked up Harrington Investments using Google, and
Harrington Investments is what's called a socially
responsible fund.
They refused to invest in people
who manufacture weapons.
That includes one of our big companies
nearby, Lockheed Martin.
It includes IBM, that makes computers from the military.
One of their other issues is electricity
from nuclear power.
Now if we as a nation want to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from coal oil, and gas fired power plants, we are
going to need nuclear power.
Harrington Investments refuses to do that.
Now regarding the proposal itself, one second, if Silicon
Valley companies were not to do business in China I
wouldn't have my Macintosh computer, I wouldn't have my
Nike shoes, I wouldn't have a lot of things, so who is not
to be censured alone for being in business in China.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Thank you very much.
So that ends the discussion over the proposals and the
various items on the agenda today.
So because there are no further items scheduled to
come before the stockholders the polls are now open.
Now if you previously voted by proxy you don't need vote
today unless you wish to actually change your vote.
Now let me just note that we've received sufficient
proxies in advance of the meeting to know that the
proposals we discussed today will pass or fail in
accordance with the recommendations of the board
of directors that we've made in a proxy statement.
But we want to make sure that everyone votes.
So please if you picked up your ballot when you register
today, we have some folks who can come collect that.
So we're going to pause for a moment in order for anyone to
submit a ballot that they've used to vote.
And when you do that please make sure that you hand in
your legal proxies that are part of that
ballot if you have one.
OK, it looks like we've collected most of the ballots
so I now declare the polls for each matter that's voted upon
at this meeting closed and direct the inspectors of
elections to collect the ballots--
I guess I've already done that.
So the results.
I've been advised by the inspector of elections that
the nominees for the election to the board of directors have
been duly elected.
I've been further advised that a majority of the shares
present at the meeting, in person or by proxy, have voted
in favor of the appointment of Ernst & Young to act as our
independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal
year ended December 31, 2008.
And they have voted in favor of the amendment to our 2004
stock plan that I previously described.
So each of these proposals has been approved.
I've also been advised by the inspector that a majority of
the shares present at the meeting, in person or by
proxy, voted against first the stockholder proposal regarding
Internet censorship and second the stockholder proposal
regarding the creation of a board
committee on human rights.
So each of those proposals has not been approved by the
shareholders today.
So that ends the official portion of the meeting and I
hereby declare the formal meeting adjourned.
Eric will now make a presentation to you about
Google's business and we'll have a Q&A
following that, Eric.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Thank you David, and very well done.
I want to give you all a brief update on the company and the
easiest way to summarize the company's is I think things
are going well.
And it's a good message.
The mission as set by Larry and Sergey when they founded
the company has not changed.
What has changed is the scale of what we're doing.
So this simple idea, born literally in the dorm room and
in the garage and all the things that made Google is
today, has served as a basis of how we run the company.
It's really about broad goals, broad initiatives,
that change the world.
That really affect many, many people.
And we have as a platform, the Internet which of course has
more than 1.3 billion users.
And is growing at a couple hundred million a year The
average American Internet user is spending 13% more time on
the Internet this year than last year.
So either productivity is going up, or down, depending
on your view but is definitely changing and we obviously
benefit from that.
People have a lot say which is great.
70,000,000 blogs exists.
120,000 more created every day.
This is phenomenal.
New expression, new voices, people we haven't heard from
before, whether we like them or not.
Looks like more than half of the new blogs are created by
users who are 18 years old or lower.
So again it's generational as well.
The number of photographs--
an alarming statistic from my perspective is that more than
10 hours of YouTube video is uploaded
every minute into YouTube.
So I hope you all are spending lots of time on YouTube.
An even more interesting statistic, is if you if you
plot out Moore's law, it would be possible to have an iPod
like advice that you click to the equivalent of your belt,
or in your purse, in some number of years, maybe 5 or 10
years, which will have 85 years worth of video.
So you'll be dead before you can watch all the video on
this device.
So it's an amazing new world and it's just phenomenal and
of course Google is well position on this.
Now the business of course--
I don't need to go into this, you've all seen our results--
business is working well.
The majority of our revenues, of course, are in advertising.
The last quarter we saw a shift from US as the majority
to international for a majority which
we think it's great.
Very much a global business.
Of course earnings, and cash flow, and operating profit,
track with that and it's a great business to be in.
When you see Google and you see this very simple user
interface, which Sergey literally
designed right, himself.
We've changed a little bit since then.
You sit there and think it looks so easy.
But in fact what's beneath it, these acres of servers that we
have built and own and power, which in my view are
tremendous competitive damage to the company, is very hard.
We did more than 95 quality--
that is search quality-- launches in the first quarter,
over and over again.
Whether it's in a language or for more
information or so forth.
And we work on things like making our index bigger.
So for example now, we you do a search, you search all of
the indices.
You literally searched through every piece of information, in
case that relevant thing.
If you went through all those pages that Google presents
you, you will in fact see everything.
Of course, it will take you many, many minutes to get
through it.
We've also worked on performance and relevancy.
Literally getting things to be more correct.
And the eventual goal, if we could do it, is to have
exactly the right answer, and only have one.
But of course with the explosion of information we
may never get there.
There may always be multiple choices.
So it's a race between all that information coming in and
our scientists and some of the best brains in the plant to
literally figure out how to deal with all that
information.
That information explosion, to get you that very one or two
or three right answers.
And it's a daunting task at the scale that we operation
in, with billions and billions of pieces of information.
With more coming, because were also included personal
information now, from your own information and so forth.
So an example of this is that we have changed Google so that
we show not just the traditional text answers, but
we now try to find the correct images, web, audio, and so
forth and video.
So not only do we have to get the words right, we've got to
get the video right, and the audio right, and so forth.
Coldplay is a band that I can tell you my daughters like, so
here is all of the relevant information, the best video,
the best music, the best information about
what they're up to.
We've also been working on personalization.
And so all of the sudden these are much more personal.
With a product called iGoogle, we can actually deliver very,
very specific things that people care about.
The primary business of the company's advertising.
We love advertising.
And we think advertising is very, very helpful to people
when it's informative and targeted to them.
We think advertising is not very useful when it's for a
product that you're not going to use.
It's not relevant to you, that you'll never buy, why waste
the advertiser's money and your time, which
is even more important.
Wouldn't it be better if we showed you ads that were
relevant to you.
And you thought that they were interesting, or that you
learned something, for you figured out who the best
suppliers are, and that's how we operate.
So we live in an ecosystem where users become publishers
of information and then they want to publish information,
they can add our ads to their content and make
some money doing it.
We have lots of stories of people who were hobbyists in
information and all of the sudden gave up some job which
they viewed as boring in order to become the world's expert
on something that they care a lot about.
It's a wonderful story about innovation, and information,
and empowerment about new voices.
And that model works, and works not just in the US it
works everywhere.
We just recently completed the acquisition--
an incredibly important acquisition, called
DoubleClick.
Roughly April 7th, we started operating.
And what it does is it allows us to enter a much larger
business that's near the text ads business which I've been
talking about.
It's called the display ads business.
It's interesting that more than 90% of our publishers
have enabled display ads.
So it looks like not just text ads, but also display ads--
and display ads here doesn't mean just little static
pictures, it also means little movies, and little stories and
little things that are engaging.
And we think that a whole new category of ads will emerge,
which are narrative.
Where it's involving the car and you're in the car and
you're doing it and so forth.
We think that advertisers will like it and we think people
will enjoy it.
And remember the great thing about our ads.
If you don't like them you don't have to click on them.
So again you have some control over the experience as well.
We have ads formats, by the way, coming.
We have lots of things come out with YouTube for example.
Procter & Gamble, as an example, ran five contest for
Gillette, Tide, Pepto-Bismol and Swiffer.
Break up with your mop and fall in love with stiffer.
OK, I'm not in charge of their ads.
The ads worked really, really well.
Did a similar thing with gadget ads, where little
gadget programs. And we did one for
example with Honda Civics.
Where you could drive it around in the ad networks.
Really, really fun, really interesting,
to see if it works.
So by doing this, we can really give
people a lot more control.
The same thing is also true in apps.
We started a year ago, we change our strategy from
search and ads to search, ads and apps.
Because it was clear that we had enough technology, we had
enough investment, enough people, enough platforms, that
we could begin to solve other problems that were nearby.
The problem of who stores your email.
Actually a pretty important question for those of you live
on email, as most of us do.
What about instant messaging?
How do we use geographic information and
that sort of thing.
This shift, to shift from PC centric to web centric
applications, is the defining technological shift of our
generation.
It's not going to be done in a year, it's
the next 10, 20 years.
Google is particularly well positioned to take advantage
of this shift.
And indeed you can see competitors and so forth
responding to the things that we're doing and actually
trying to figure out how they can participate in this too.
It's much bigger than just Google.
But we hope will happen, is that people will move more of
their information in what we call the cloud.
And what that means is that you walk in here, you forgot
your computer, or your mobile device.
And you just see a computer like one of those, and you can
get everything over there, that you have at home, all
your personal information, and again secure, and nobody else
gets access to it, and it just works.
It's really easy to understand when you state it that way.
Why have all these different devices and have something
over here, and you forgot over here.
Why not just have everything available to every device,
very very, quickly, again with your permission, with your
passwords, in a very secure way.
That's the promise of this applications platform.
And it's a very profound technological change.
So along the way we say why don't we just entered this
business and let's figure out how we can make some money.
Because it's good to make money too.
And so we built something called apps for domain which
is a simple way if your business--
that's why I wanted to talk about this-- it's a simple way
for business to do the same thing.
Why should the business have- specially smaller businesses--
why should they have all these technical people to try to
keep all the computers running.
Why don't they just have someone like Google do it.
Let the cloud do it, right, so the business can get back to
running the business.
Because they probably don't really know that much about
computers and they probably don't like them that much.
In any case it's not a good use of their time, even if
they like them a lot.
Here is a list of interesting Universities and companies
which are beginning to adopt Google apps.
We have more than 500,000 businesses using this.
That's a sense of the scale of this.
Eventually this will be a very large, and significant, source
of revenue to our company.
It's exciting to see it beginning to take off, as the
technology gets there, as the networks there, and so forth.
Same thing is true for mobile devices.
Here you see a Blackberry, you see a mobile
phone, you see an iPhone.
We have amazing results with all of these.
Access everywhere, 81% of Internet users in Japan access
the web from their mobile phones.
Even more disturbing from my perspective.
The three top books published in Japan by circulation last
year, were first published on mobile devices.
And only after they were read on mobile devices, were turned
into physical books.
Shows you how far ahead they are of us in
this sort of model.
And it's coming here too.
American's send 1.6 billion text messages a day, clearly
lowering productivity.
And the mobile highlights here are phenomenal.
The iPhone has done very, very well with the search traffic
because again it has a full browser, and there's other
ones coming.
And of course the YouTube stuff is also doing well, and
you can see YouTube on all these devices.
Have a similar story in maps.
And I forgot to mention the fella on iPhone his name is
PegMan, he's a Google employee.
He's been viewed more than 10,000,000 times.
He wears his little orange suit runs around.
And he's the mascot, if you can call him that, for street
view, showing you where you are on a street.
And we actually use this, like where do I turn left, where do
I right, is at store still there, that kind of stuff.
And you can do that with all this interesting mapping
technology.
So we're moving to a platform which is
actually quite different.
Because here we are, we have these static maps, got them
from satellites, bought them from the government, that kind
of stuff, why don't we now have end users
adding things to maps.
Very, very interesting idea.
We can combine users submissions, as well as the
official stuff.
And sometimes the users give us better data than the
government.
No surprise, because the people live there.
So all of a sudden now we have a whole phenomenon around what
is called my maps.
And submitting and changing and correcting the kinds of
things that you see on our maps.
And by the way we think it's fun here in Mountain View, but
imagine if you're in a city in a developing country where
there is no accurate map.
And there never has been one.
And this is the only map you're going to ever use,
which is obviously very good for Google.
But all of a sudden it goes from humorous and exciting, to
fundamental to how people conduct their lives in this
new Internet world.
So I'd like to offer to you that a new part of our
strategy is that the web is in fact itself a platform.
We have more than 40 developer products an APIs with a big
developer conference coming up in a few
weeks, up in San Francisco.
We launched a package called Google gears, which you can
plug in your browser.
Which allow you, for example, to get on an airplane and
still do your email.
It fools it and says, hey we're still on a network
connection even if we're not, and when you get off the
airplane and get back on and on the Internet it reconnect
and does the right things.
We have a new mobile product, which I've already mentioned,
called Android, with lots and lots of developer interest.
The first and most important principle is there's more
smart people elsewhere than there are here and we want all
of them building on top of this web platform.
That's why the web platform become such an important
foundation for the next generation of Internet
services, web services, and all the
things I've talked about.
So to finish up, and I hope I've done this not too long,
because obviously we are proud of where we are, the
opportunity before us is of the whole world.
Some statistics are that the Internet is growing in the
United States, is growing faster in Europe, it's growing
even faster in Asia, it's growing even faster in
developing countries.
So all of a sudden, here we are, we're very proud of what
we've done, and the way we got this thing kick started.
But this is a global phenomenon.
And those people, simple rule, they want the
same things that we.
Want They want peace, education, food, safety,
entertainment, knowledge, achievement, and excitement.
And the Internet as it spreads gives us an opportunity to
really touch the whole world.
Make it safer, make it better educated.
Really bring people who've never had a voice, never had
information--
my best example is my friend is a computer science
professor at Kenya, and Kenya said, we love Google for
computer science.
I said of course you love Google, I love Google too.
He said no we use Google to teach computer science.
Why?
We don't have any textbooks.
This is a PhD program.
This gives you a sense of how profound the arrival of the
Internet and the power of information, which we hope we
can bring it, really does have an opportunity
to affect the world.
In some really, really fundamental ways.
So with that, thank you very much.
[CLAPING]
David I think we're going to have Larry, Sergey, myself.
You guys just join us.
And I think we're just going to have Q&A
from the floor right?
DAVID DRUMMOND: Q&A from the floor.
Come on guys.
I'll sit on the end here.
ERIC SCHMIDT: And if you--
I know you have your hand raised, would you mind
standing at the microphone madam so that
everyone can hear you.
Let's have the lady go first.
MAY PHONG: My name is May Phong, I'm a shareholder.
Both DoubleClick and YouTube are terrific
acquisitions for you.
I was just wondering how long it would take to monetize them
in a way that would add significantly
to the bottom line.
Thank you.
SERGEY BRIN: It's probably worth mentioning that
certainly DoubleClick as a profitable business on its own
as is YouTube, depending on exactly what you account for,
we've been very, very fortunate with our core
business that it's had so much revenue and tens of billions
of dollars, that it's hard, even for the substantial
acquisitions, to be a huge portion of that
right off the bat.
Nevertheless, both DoubleClick and YouTube have a tremendous
amount of display inventory.
In YouTube's case that's our inventory and in DoubleClick's
case that we serve and can improve both the advertiser
and a publisher experience on.
So I think they both have potential but I think for it
to be a sizable part of our revenue, you're going to have
to wait at least a couple years.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Yes sir.
TONY MEZZAPELLE: Tony Mezzapelle, shareholder.
I'd like to ask about the international sales.
Only 1/3 of our revenue comes from countries other than the
US and UK, but according to a slide I saw on the Intel site,
which happens to be by Paul Otellini, says that 80% of all
Internet users in the world come from countries
other than those two.
And that includes about 500,000,000 users that are in
the rich countries.
So what is the bottleneck the growing international sales?
Are we having problems localizing our products fast
enough or are we having problems growing our local
sales groups?
ERIC SCHMIDT: A simple answer is we're not having problems
in that area.
I agree with the numbers that you gave, which Paul I assume
are roughly correct for your view of the global structure.
The difference of course, is monitization.
Because the advertising markets in those countries are
not as mature, the ad rates, and so forth.
So you take the product of Internet penetration and the
development of the Internet advertising model in may of
those country's, Internet advertising is also held up
because of lack of credit cards, debit cards, and
overnight email, and transportation options.
The average growth rate outside the
United States is higher.
As I mentioned last quarter no non-US is now larger than US
has a total revenue and we expect that gap will continue
to increase.
We don't know how much larger it will be, but I could guess
at least 65/35 maybe even higher, eventually.
Yes, sir.
JACK EASTERLING: My name is Jack Easterling and I have a
couple shares also.
I understand that you say that you're going to be bringing in
6.5 more shares, is that correct?
That you were going to be bring to the market.
What I want--
DAVID DRUMMOND: Option plan, 6.5 million.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Go ahead David.
DAVID DRUMMOND: You're correct, 6.5 million shares of
the stock option plan.
JACK EASTERLING: So my question is, the two young men
that are sitting there, will you please not split the
stock, just keep it together.
LARRY PAGE: You're asking that we don't split the stock.
JACK EASTERLING: That's correct.
ERIC SCHMIDT: I think that's the first time we've had that
request.
[LAUGHING]
SERGEY BRIN: We've had no trouble honoring that thus far
and I don't expect that anything will
change in that respect.
We certainly appreciate your support.
JACK EASTERLING: Alright, thank you.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Thank you.
Yes sir, our good friend Richard.
RICHARD BRANDT: Richard Brandt I'm a writter, and a minuscule
Google shareholder.
I was just wondering if Sergey would be willing to tell us
why he decided to abstain on the censorship proposals.
SERGEY BRIN: Yeah sure.
Primarily I agreed with the spirit of both of those
proposals in their concern for human rights and specifically
human rights in China, freedom of expression, and the freedom
to receive information.
I should say at the outset that I'm pretty proud of what
we've been able to accomplish in China.
Google, has the gentleman who spoke earlier mentioned, has a
far superior track record in my mind than other Internet or
Internet search companies do in China with respect to
making information freely available.
Having very strict policies compared to the
opportunities--
compared to the government forces
that are in that country.
When we entered China, and developed Google.cn, which by
the way was far later than any others major search engine had
entered, and primarily was due to the reservations that the
restrictions that we would have to live by were not
consistent with our policies.
But we were able to have an implementation, I think, that
honored many of our principles.
And in fact, most of the principals that were in
shareholder proposal number four.
We restricted the amount of search results that may have
been omitted, in every case we notified users that there's
information missing because of your government policies.
As we do also in the US, Germany, and
France, by the way.
And tried an overall greater transparency to the process.
It was still a tough call, but what we've seen as a
consequence is in fact more Chinese getting more access to
more information.
Not only that, but now we've seen the local Chinese
competitors, the principal one being Baidu, whose market
leader in that market, has adopted some of our policies.
So now Baidu when they omit information because there's
some government request regarding it, they now also
label that there's some information missing.
So despite our mixed feelings about that market entry, I
think that the end result we've generated
has been very positive.
And in fact much of the attention, the shareholder
proposals, many congressional bills, and what not, did arise
from the publicity surrounding that entry.
Now from where we are today, I think direction the two
proposals were correct.
I think that we do by the way have an internal set of
principles by which we operate.
And I don't know if it's--
I believe it should be sort of shareholder proposal--
there are several in there that I don't
entirely agree with.
I think don't make sense.
For example, our recent launches of BBS type services,
we decided instead of having personally identifiable
information that could be forced from us in that
country, we would actually make all information public.
So when you make a post, you know that it's going to be
identified as this is such and such making this post. We
don't have any private information on those services.
And that's because we didn't feel we could launch service
which would have private information in a way that we
felt we could safeguard it from the
government in that country.
These kinds of, I think, novel approaches have enabled us to
bring more information to the country.
Again, with respect to the board
proposal on human rights.
I think human rights is very important.
I think there are other social responsibility issues that we
also need to think about.
For example our energy usage, carbon neutrality, for an
having great environment for other companies to operate in,
and so forth.
I think there's a broader scope there.
And I think it might make sense to have a separate--
you know these people are all very busy and so might be
interested in these issues and might be experts, and
some may not be.
I think there is certainly room for us to have a group of
independent people within Google who meet regularly to
discuss these questions.
But I didn't strictly support the proposals as they were
written and that's why I decided I would have abstain.
[CLAPING]
ERIC SCHMIDT: And we welcome the debate.
These are complex issues that are important for
everyone in the world.
And we understand that people can disagree on this and we
welcome-- we literally welcome the discussion.
Yes sir.
ANDY MOORE: Hi, my name is Andy Moore.
I'm a stockholder and I recently got into podcasting.
I'm launching a new podcast next month,
Andy'streasuretrove.com.
And I don't see any services at Google related to
podcasting, and maybe I missed it, but you've got YouTube,
but nothing in the audio realm aside from commercial music.
Anything in the works regarding podcasting?
SERGEY BRIN: We've undertaken a broader infrastructure
initiative that enables us to handle data of any type.
We don't want to have to build specialized product that's
just for podcasts, another one that's just for videos.
And like many of the things that we've built thus far, we
feel that we are now at a scale and understanding that
we can build more generic services.
We have some more generic things out there, probably not
perfect for podcasts, as of yet.
For example, GoogleSites enables you to host content of
any type because you can have essentially
file storage on their.
But we have even more appropriate more generic
technologies that we're developing and I hope you'll
be able to see in the next few months, six months,
something like that.
ANDY MOORE: Thank you.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Yes sir.
MARK JACOBS: Good afternoon.
Can you hear me?
ERIC SCHMIDT: Yes.
MARK JACOBS: I'm Mark Jacobs, I'm a patent trademark lawyer
from Sacramento and I'm a shareholder.
I've had several clients complain to me that when
they've done Google searches for their trademark, somebody
else's listing comes up first. In fact I have specifically
written to Google about this issue and all I get back is a
very nice form letter from somebody who's very, very low
capacity underneath the ground.
And I wondered if Google is going to take more effort to
control trademark misusage on the searches.
LARRY PAGE: So this has been an issue we've spent quite a
bit of time on.
And it's an important issue.
And while we work really hard to protect people's trademarks
and so on, there's also user benefit to get competitive
advertising.
So for example, if you're thinking about buying a
product actually seeing competitive products can be
really useful to you.
MARK JACOBS: It's not the issue when you put in your
trademark and somebody else's name comes up.
It's misleading, it's creating confusion, it is not
advertising beneficial to the user.
They're looking to get a Frigidaire, and up comes
Whirlpool, using a Frigidaire trademark.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Well actually, we actually litigated this
very matter.
Because we think, as Larry said, we think it's a really
important issue for users to have competitive advertising.
As it turns out, when you do the survey you actually see
what happens with users, they're not confused.
So to take the example that you brought up, Frigidaire,
Whirlpool if you typed in Frigidaire and Whirlpool ad
came up on the side of the search results, guess what the
number one search result, I can guarantee you, for
Frigidaire would be Frigidaire.
And so--
MARK JACOBS: Not so, not so, I'm
sorry, that is not correct.
DAVID DRUMMOND: We've gone through the Court, and as you
know, we litigated this matter against--
in the Gieco matter.
And of course the court held in our favor for that, which I
think was the right result.
MARK JACOBS: The advertising, I have no problem with.
But I could give you a specific
examples after the meeting.
ERIC SCHMIDT: OK sir, you're being shown a result there,
take a look at it.
MARK JACOBS: I don't need a result.
ERIC SCHMIDT: No,no just take a look.
MARK JACOBS: That's fine, but I can show you several.
But I won't belabor the point now.
ERIC SCHMIDT: There may be some confusion on your part
between the difference in the results from
Google and the ads.
MARK JACOBS: Correct it's the results, is what I'm
complaining about.
ERIC SCHMIDT: OK so let's just review
for everybody's benefit.
We have a policy which we enforce globally, and
thoroughly, that the actual Google results are not
affected by advertising.
So important to understand.
We thought you were asking about the ads, the things on
the right hand side.
So we misunderstood you.
The things in the right hand side, it is in fact possible
for advertisers to fight over key words.
And as David said, we in fact litigated that, and we're very
happy to be won that case.
But the core results, the ones about how Google answers, in
fact answer in our best ability what we think the user
was looking for, and is not affected by advertising.
MARK JACOBS: I appreciate that.
But why can't an attorney or somebody complains that when
you go in the search results, or you type in Frigidaire and
you're looking for information Frigidaire that the first hit
that comes up is a different company other than the true
trademark holder.
That is my problem.
JOHNATHAN ROSENBERG: I can see the first result.
It's here, I don't know if I can project it there.
But the first result is www.fridgidarie.com.
MARK JACOBS: Well I can give you half a dozen others but I
don't want to belabor the meeting.
ERIC SCHMIDT: I understand so thank you--
this is Jonathan who runs all of our products it actually
matters that he get the right answer here.
So thank you Johnathan.
But again, to the best that our computers can do, they
give the first result based on the query.
If you are aware of errors in Google search results, there
are relatively few of that type.
But they're certainly not inspired by Google.
And remember that the actual search index answers are not
done by humans.
There are no people typing those things in.
So we don't have a way where you can go change them by
human intervention.
Why don't we move on, thank you.
AUDIENCE: [? George Bayon, ?]
[? Bayon ?]
Capital Partners, private equity and shareholder.
Has Microsoft or any other private equity contact Google
about buying their class b shares, and if so, where with
the board of directors value the shares at?
ERIC SCHMIDT: David why don't you explain--
there is confusion here, over the value of class b, which
don't trade separately.
You want to talk about how that works.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Which are class b--
our structure is class b or the private--
GEORGE BAYOND: It's not the structure, it's just has
anyone approached Google about-- the board of directors
about buying the class b shares?
SERGEY BRIN: We should probably clarify, it's not
possible to transfer class b shares and have them--
they would convert then to class a shares.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Class b shares are only held by shareholders
before the IPO but any attempt to--
if you transfer them or tried to sell your shares they can
become class a shares.
ERIC SCHMIDT: So the scenario you're
describing it was not possible.
DAVID DRUMMOND: It wouldn't happen.
GEORGE BAYOND: I was wondering if there was a value put on
them or not.
ERIC SCHMIDT: The answer is, it's the same value as class a
because there's no separate market for class b and they
trade one to one.
GEORGE BAYOND: Thank you.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Yes sir.
JOE HOLMES: Hi my is Joe Holmes, I'm a shareholder.
I can understand policy potentially not to comment on
speculation, but I was just wondering if, hypothetically
speaking, two of our competitors in the search
space wanted to join forces?
ERIC SCHMIDT: Were you of two I can think
of a different set?
[LAUGHING]
JOE HOLMES: Purely hypothetical situation.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Ok perhaps something that was very
current, as of a week ago.
JOE HOLMES: I was wondering if you could provide some color
as to how our business risk would evolve and what our
responses to those risk might be.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Well, we did have a test case of this,
which was the Yahoo Microsoft proposed merger.
And we took a position that it was bad for consumers.
David wrote a blog post which I would refer you to.
I think it's very well argued that the combination would
have resulted in too much power around electronic mail,
instant messaging, very, very high market shares.
And given the history of Microsoft it would have been
possible that could be misused, as rough sum.
I'm probably not doing justice to your argument David.
So obviously it's good that that's not going to happen, at
least at the moment not going to happen.
Next, yes sir.
DOUG MCKENZIE: Hi I'm Doug McKenzie, a shareholder.
Thank you for your great company.
And I like to also thank you for getting out of the medium
a bit more, Eric.
With you on CNBC and especially Larry your
interview in Fortune Magazine with [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
germination about how to change the
world, really excellent.
I wondered if you had considered interactive, like
video game type interactive, advertising as a way to
monetize YouTube?
For example, a customer or user gets in there and they
start looking at something that's interesting to them and
then they might play with it.
And it could be, for the obvious, would be an
advertisement for a video game.
But you could be driving a car, or looking at a house, or
doing a variety of other things, where the information
flow could be two way.
SERGEY BRIN: Yeah, well I should first mention we've
also looked at just advertising within video
games, which is an emerging market and one which we're
participating in.
Within YouTube itself, I think, you could certainly use
one of our gadget ads, the new gadget ads formats which could
have embedded within it a game.
I think that's an interesting approach.
And it could work even beyond YouTube.
I guess you know that the YouTube
viewer has flash installed.
So that will give you greater confidence that they be able
to see the ad.
SO it's a good user for that.
But it might apply even more broadly.
DOUG MCKENZIE: Thank you.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Yes sir.
DANIEL GOLDSMITH: My name is Daniel Goldsmith and I want to
speak about my experience with the investor relations
department.
I don't think they relate well to
investors or at least myself.
There's no phone number to direct queries to so email is
the way to go and my emails never get answered.
ERIC SCHMIDT: OK
DANIEL GOLDSMITH: I'm willing to help you, we if
you need some help.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Thank you for that feedback.
Since they're here, maybe afterwards we could get the
specifics and on top of it.
And I apologize on behalf of the company for that.
Yes sir.
GEORGE DAVIS: Hi my name is George Davis, I own five
Google stocks.
I go to school over the hill in UC Santa Cruz.
Got a little anecdote related to the cloud that you're
talking about earlier.
In January or so, I think, maybe, around there, my house,
me and three roommates, we ran out of ink in our printer, and
we can't agree on whose turn it is to buy new ink.
So what we do is we write our papers in Microsoft Word,
Gmail them to our UCSU account, and use the printers
the university of California provides us.
But there's a problem with this.
The problem is we're using Microsoft Word to write our
papers, so my question is, by the time I graduate, which
will be hopefully fingers crossed, two years, will
Google docs be as powerful as Microsoft Word?
ERIC SCHMIDT: Sergey and Larry.
SERGEY BRIN: I think in a number of respects Google Docs
is more powerful than Microsoft Word today.
For example, the ability for multiple people to edit the
same document at the same time and see the changes coming in,
in real time.
The ability to access the document no matter where you
are, whether an Internet cafe and whatnot.
There's certainly a long list of sort of bullet point
features that's in Microsoft Office, some of which I think
will be incorporated, and perhaps even succeeded, like
succeeded, in Google docs and spreadsheets in the
forthcoming years.
And there might be some features which are perhaps a
little too niche or best left to third parties to implement.
Maybe specialized bibliographic entries, you
know there's--
those pull downs have hundreds of entries, I don't think we
want to do duplicate every single one.
But the general direction is to be more powerful.
LARRY PAGE: I don't read things in Microsoft Word.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Yes sir.
PETER CURBIE: Yes my name is Peter Curbie, I'm a
shareholder.
My question to you is about alternate revenue streams. I
don't dispute the fact that you have a great business and
a search and would include DoubleClick in that.
But I gather from your last quarter that you now have a
revenue coming in from print advertisements.
And I was wondering what other new revenue streams are you
opening up and could you include any word
on Android in that.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Well remember, we have print, television,
radio, YouTube, display all coming.
And you also want to mention Enterprise.
SERGEY BRIN: Enterprise has been an important part, as a
fraction still small, but still important part of our
revenue for number of years.
And since the recent release of Google apps for your domain
also for universities and whatnot, we really see that as
an important growth area for us.
And a lot of companies, including our own, because
we're going to use our own stuff, have really benefited
because they can really easily and cheaply deployed email
productivity software to all there employees.
PETER CURBIE: How do you make money from that exactly?
SERGEY BRIN: So there's the free version, which many, many
people use.
And then there's a premium version, and typically large
companies want support, want to increase storage, and a few
administration features, on some more things like that,
they subscribe to the premium version.
Which is $50 a user a year.
Typical, there are a few other ways that we price to.
PETER CURBIE: You didn't answering my question about
Android, do you have any word there?
ERIC SCHMIDT: Do you want to say anything about Android?
SERGEY BRIN: Android is part of our broader goals to enable
more Internet access via more devices, more
quickly, and easily.
The goal is not the revenue stream itself, but rather by
increased usage of the Internet via mobile devices we
think we will benefit.
ERIC SCHMIDT: And the revenue might be an
issue, since it's free.
Android
SERGEY BRIN: Yes, I should clarify.
The Android--
we will be open source and free the available to all.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Yes sir.
AUDIENCE: Yes, if you can get advertising into video games,
maybe you could get Grand Theft Auto to carry LoJack ads
and Ceradyne, the bullet proof vest company.
But I wanted to ask another question, would you tell us
about the wedding?
ERIC SCHMIDT: Which one?
There were--
AUDIENCE: Both, all.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Larry and Sergey.
SERGEY BRIN: I think we prefer to focus on the business in
this meeting.
But we think those are pretty good ideas for ads within
Grand Theft Auto.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Larry?
LARRY PAGE: Whatever Sergey said.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Ok, yes sir.
AUDIENCE: Yes, hi, my name is Rea, I'm a shareholder.
And for first of all, I want to comment Google on such a
great company and great applications.
I use Google for almost everything.
I just start my own blog site last week, and I'm ready for
an android based phone when it comes out too.
But my question is more of a statement of concern about
some of these world issues again going on these days.
Sergey I loved your comments about what Google is trying to
do to make information more available in some of these
countries that do do censorship, also providing
your functionality.
But I'm also concerned that because of your great success
Google is probably the most powerful tool in the world
right now, and it can do a lot of great things.
I hope we're all using it to do a lot of great things
ourselves and to help other people too.
But I'm also concerned about these other governments of
other large countries that have different values from us,
that to try to censor and control information in ways
against our values here, you're still trying to grow
and some of these other places.
I'm just concerned if you could find a way to become
number one and make a lot of money there but under
different negotiations that you might need to go through
to modify your software to have certain restrictions
under the request of the governments.
Would you do that or what would you do, how would you
get around that?
SERGEY BRIN: That's a good question.
I should clarify our primary goal in these countries, for
example China, is not by any means to generate as much
revenue as possible.
In fact, while China's financial performance has been
strong and good it's still not material as a
fraction of our revenue.
We could abandon it tomorrow and would not have material
effect on our revenues.
Our goal has really been, what's the most positive we
can do, and thus far we felt that by staying in the market
and being revolutionary within it, that we
can do the most good.
And that's how we apply and it's not just China.
We get blocked especially YouTube, in many countries
around the world, all the time.
YouTube got blocked in Thailand because there were
videos with people's feet pictured above the King.
Now we could take an extreme position saying we will not
allow any video to go down and if they don't accept that one
they don't get YouTube at all.
But on balance, we feel we bring more to the Thai people
even if we have to take down the video of the feet over the
King, by providing YouTube there.
And that's not always the case.
In some cases maybe we feel that we're asked to do
something that's really beyond our principles.
And in each case, it's a judgment case.
That's the strategy I think we will continue to employ.
ERIC SCHMIDT: We've already run over a time.
So we got three more questions, I'd like to get
those questions, question, answer, question, answer as
quickly as we can.
Yes sir.
AUDIENCE: Yes, thank you. my name is Robert
[UNINTELLIGIBLE], I'm with Amnesty International I'm
representing the New York City pension funds with over
720,000 shares.
I just want to follow on the China questions, and I
recognize you've struggled with this.
And we've been in dialogue with you for
about 18 months now.
And all I have to say is we do appreciate that it's
difficult, but you really haven't come far enough.
And we really do need to do more and actually make a
greater effort.
And I have two specific questions.
The first is why won't you support the global online
freedom act?
Which is proposed federal legislation which actually
would help you deal with the Chinese on this issue?
And second since the Chinese constitution actually
guarantees freedom of speech, why aren't you actually
engaged, working in the Chinese legal system, to deal
with these issues.
ERIC SCHMIDT: David.
DAVID DRUMMOND: On your first, point I don't think it's quite
accurate to say that we we're--
actually I don't think it's really accurate all to say
were not supporting the global online freedom act.
We actually support the principles there, we'd like to
see legislation that addresses the problem and make sense.
I think there's a hearing coming up in a couple weeks in
the senate where you'll hear our views in a
more fulsome way.
But we don't actually oppose that, and we'd like to see
legislation that makes sense.
On the Chinese legal question, I think it's
an interesting one.
It's not clear to us that we have the ability, as Google to
do that, but I think it's an interesting idea for us to
utilize the Chinese legal-- or help those who are using the
Chinese legal system, to try to ensure those rights and I
think it's something we ought to think about doing.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Richard.
RICHARD BRANDT: On advertising, Eric you
mentioned print, TV, radio ads coming up, that sort of thing,
I've never understood Google strength in
moving essentially offline.
Your strength is relevancy, relating this to what people
are doing, are interested in.
Somebody reading a newspaper, or passing by a billboard, or
watching television, you have no idea what
their interests are.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Well actually, we hope to
do better than that.
That would be the base case, and we think with technology
improvements so we can actually, at least do a pretty
good job compared to what's being done today in offline.
The best example is, I'm sure you have a television at home,
you probably have a set top box, that set top box is a
computer, and now that set top boxes are
connected to the Internet.
With appropriate software changes, technology work,
built by Google and others, can actually cause more
relevant television to show up on your television.
It's a small victory, but a very fundamental one.
Television industry is a massive and very mature
advertising industry, if we can show more relevant ads, we
can fundamentally enter as a new player and really provide
a better television experience from an advertising
perspective.
RICHARD BRANDT: I think little as an old print guy, it that
really confuses me.
DAVID DRUMMOND: Print is harder because we don't have a
set top box to play with.
But even there, we did an ad interchange with all the major
newspapers and publishers were we actually have tried to get
much better distribution for ads.
So that's again a case we're trying to help them because we
need them, and in particular we need their content.
And sir you have the honor of the last question.
AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.
My name is Rudolph [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
I am a stockholder.
I read most recently Google was interested in the
environment and I was wondering if you give us
stockholders what your projections are and how you
can help the environment.
LARRY PAGE: Well yeah, we are absolutely very, very
interested in the environment.
We feel that we have a significant responsibility due
to our data centers, which use a lot of energy.
And so we have very smart people who are building those.
And as part of those builds we're trying to do
environmental things as we build the data centers to make
sure that they're using really green energy and so on.
We also think there's a huge opportunity to reduce the
power of green electricity to make it competitive with coal.
And we've made investments in different areas, solar
thermal, for example.
And we're also hiring people, small numbers of people, to
work on very exciting and very interesting projects to really
significantly reduce the cost of some of those green
technologies.
AUDIENCE: One of the most important things, that I think
that Google should be targeting is natural sources
of energy in order to alleviate
are problems worldwide.
LARRY PAGE: We're basically looking at
the Sun and the Earth.
The heat in the earth, geothermal power.
And we're very optimistic that the cost of those things can
be competitive with how we generate power now.
AUDIENCE: Very important thank you.
DAVID DRUMMOND: And we agree.
I want to thank everybody spending their afternoon here.
We will see this year.
Thanks again.