On my first day of giving Bing a go (I used it for about two weeks to try to fairly assess) I ran into a problem: It can spellcheck words, but it cant get it right contextually.<p>Let me give you an example:<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer</a><p><a href="http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer" rel="nofollow">http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer</a><p>I meant to type "how I won the war" and only Google picks up on this.<p>"waer" alone into google instant will bring up water (country), but with the context of my search phrase it gives me something far more accurate.
Google needs Bing to be moderately successful to avoid an anti-trust lawsuit.<p>Bing is a win for Microsoft either way. If it gets about 30% market share, then Bing makes Microsoft money and forces Google to invest more in search. If even the largest software company after investing billions can't stop Google's growth in search, then Microsoft and others will claim that that Google is a monopoly. So it should be subject to anti-trust laws.<p>In the old days, when General Motors completely dominated the car industry, they made sure to keep their market share under 25%. They believed, probably correctly, that a higher share would bring anti-trust sanctions.
Seems pretty logical to me. As much diversity as Google has, they are still a search company. A lot of the tech they leverage in other areas seems to come from competencies they acquired while improving search.<p>I never understood why people think they are positioned against FB.. Google and FB don't solve very many of the same problems.
I like how his cool confidence stands in contrast to Steve "I'm going to fucking kill Google" Ballmer's aggression. Notice how generous he is with compliments for Google's competitors.
Very good interview. I think it's smart that he is not underestimating Bing. Mr. Schmidt also has great comments clarifying Google's position on the net neutrality announcement with Verizon (about 12:00 mark).
It makes a lot of sense, android and phones are a complement to their business. Android is simply a way of reducing the cost for producing more phones. Facebook while large doesn't pose a serious threat to "organizing the worlds information" once Facebook sells their social graph information Google will simply purchase it and use it to further optimize search results. Neither Facebook, nor Apple are real competitors to Google's core operations. Google is a much more serious threat to Apple with Android than Apple is to Google with iPhone. Facebook and Apple ARE threats to mind share, but that pales in comparison to a threat to the bottom line.<p>Bing IS a threat also because Microsoft has a large stake in Facebook and could ostensibly find itself with preferential rights to Facebook's social graph. If Bing could integrate the graph into results first it could give them huge search advantages. Traffic from Bing also costs about half of what it does from Google.
I felt really annoyed by the interviewer. It seemed like along with information gathering, he was equally interested in creating controversy.<p>Did you notice how, instead of asking Schmidt questions, he posed contentious statements? "CERTAINLY Google must be scared of Facebook!" He did that with everything. Look how Mr Schmidt scrunches his face at about 2:00 when the interviewer tells him how he must be feeling.
Isn't it likely that FB is making google <i>more</i> ad money without google having to lift a finger? On FB, a good chunk of links to "outside world" stuff pass around. Websites do fbconnect 'cos FB&twitter drive traffic to them. Google places contextual ads on these sites and in youtube videos <i>without</i> anybody needing to search for anything. Even youtube has "share on FB" button.<p>I don't think FB can keep their soc graph to themselves for much longer .. if as ES says people will just give the data to google ... just as they probably do for FB now. (You can tell FB to crawl your gmail contacts and link up.)<p>So by that argument I can buy ES's "FB is not our prime competitor" statement. Apple is somewhat obviously not a competitor since google can also push ads to iOS devices and pull data like location.<p>That leaves Bing .. which makes me scratch my head. The only reason I can think of for google considering Bing to be their main competitor is to avoid antitrust suits by not looking like a search monopoly.<p>Side note: FB's ads are pretty funny actually. I keep getting "Download Chrome, a fast browser" ads on my FB page despite the fact that I'm viewing the page in Chrome.
It's funny, in my mind I always think Eric Schmidt looks like Egon from the Ghostbusters, and whenever I see his picture I always think to myself, 'Who is <i>this</i> guy?!'