Google CEO Page: social networking service surpassing predic
Source: Brian Womack
Google Inc.’s new social-networking service is surpassing predictions, helping the company make up for its earlier lack of focus on helping people make online connections, Chief Executive Officer Larry Page said.
“I’m very happy with the growth of the core Google+ network,” Page said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “It doesn’t mean tomorrow it’s going to be bigger than any other social network out there. That’s not realistic. But it’s growing faster, I think, than other services have.”
Google, the leading Web-search provider, is playing catch- up with Facebook Inc., which has more than 845 million users versus more than 100 million for Google+. U.S. users spent an average 3.3 minutes on Google’s social network in January, compared with 7 1/2 hours for Facebook, according to ComScore Inc. Page said his company’s early focus on Web search came at the expense of helping people socialize.
“Obviously, our mission was organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful,” Page said. “I think we probably missed more of the people part of that than we should have.”
Reflecting on his first year as CEO after succeeding Eric Schmidt, Page acknowledged other challenges Google is facing in social networking.
Google said in January it would weave information from Google+ into some users’ search queries. The changes sparked a backlash from privacy groups and competitors that said the inclusion unfairly promotes Google’s products over other online information. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission widened a probe of the company to ask whether the practices thwart competition, people with knowledge of the matter said at the time.
‘More Access’ Wanted
Page said “being able to see things that are relevant to you because friends shared them” can be “really useful.”
He also said he’d welcome incorporating social information from other companies, without naming any.
“I always like to have more access to data from other folks, but I’m not in control of that,” Page said. “I can’t cause a third party to put their data into Google.”
Turning to Google’s ties with Apple Inc., Page took issue with how the relationship was presented in “Steve Jobs,” the biography of the late Apple co-founder published last year.
Jobs threatened to wage “thermonuclear war” on Google’s Android operating system, saying that its features amounted to “grand theft” of Apple’s intellectual property, according to the book, written by Walter Isaacson.
“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product,” Jobs said.
Differences ‘For Show’
“I think the Android differences were actually for show,” Page said in the interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.
Page also had a different recollection of a meeting he had with Jobs last year. According to the biography, Page sought the meeting soon after he was named CEO. Jobs told Isaacson that his first impulse was to refuse the request amid dismay over Google’s foray into smartphones, a market Apple entered in 2007 with the iPhone.
Page said it was Jobs who sought the get-together.
“Actually he requested that meeting,” Page said. “He sent me an e-mail and said, ‘Hey, you want to get together and chat?’”
The conversation included discussions on management, Page said.
“He had a lot of interesting insights about how to run a company, and that was pretty much what we discussed,” Page said.
Page also lamented what he said is a growing tendency among technology companies to sue each other over intellectual property. Technology providers are expending resources squabbling over patents at the expense of innovation, Page said.
“The general trend of the industry towards being a lot more litigious somehow has just been -- it has been a sad thing,” he said. “There is a lot of money going to lawyers and things, instead of building great products for users.”
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