Q: Google gives engineers paid time to work on side projects. That gives some people the sense that it's impossible to harness what's happening here and that there's no grand plan.
A: We benefit by occlusion. But of course there's a grand plan. And that grand plan is search -- as we define it.
Q: As Google grows, are there particular companies you've studied to learn what to do and what not to do?
A: I'm not aware of any innovative companies that are growing as quickly as we are at our scale. So, we are making our own path at this point.
There are many small companies that are very innovative that we can learn from. The larger companies tend to become less innovative. Larry [Page] gives this speech -- he says he would assume that with this cash and this many people we would start taking bigger risks as opposed to smaller risks because we have so many more resources.
Q: You have been a close observer of Microsoft, competing against it at Sun and Novell. Do you see your company as a young Microsoft?
A: There are similarities and there are big differences. There are a number of things Microsoft did well. They hired very well, and they built a very strong product management organization. As far as I know, they did that the best -- way back when. We would modestly, or immodestly, argue that we have the best now.
There are some things that are different. We are much more partner-focused than they are. Our rate of innovation is much faster. And that's to some degree because we're at a different stage in the technology development.
I don't really feel comfortable talking about Microsoft, because anything I say will be used out of context. Not by you, but by others.
Q: I sometimes think of it as a whirlpool, sucking in talent and attention and start-ups, and in some cases fear. That whirlpool used to be around Microsoft, and now it's around Google.
A: I used to have a rule when I was at Sun: You should never generalize from the one monopoly in your space. By definition, such generalizations are false. Because the path they took is not available to you.
You have a different path. Everyone assumes that what was the success model for the last company is the success model for the next company. And I believe it's the inverse.
The success model for Google is different from Microsoft and Yahoo and the other companies you named. How you achieve that is you do it with smart people, and you question every assumption.
Q: Was your corporate motto, "Don't be evil," a direct response to Microsoft?
A: No. It had nothing to do with Microsoft. Larry and Sergey, and certainly I when I joined the company, spent almost no time on Microsoft. This is a press-generated focus. We don't spend very much time talking about Microsoft.
Q: They're sure fascinated with you guys.
A: We do not spend our time talking about them. It's perfectly fine if everyone wants to obsess about what we're doing. We want to obsess about what we're doing and how can we do better.
We don't do things perfectly. We make mistakes. Our products don't work perfectly out of the box all the time. We have features that are missing. We don't bring in the talent as fast as we want. We don't have buildings for them. It's all of the problems of growth -- that's what we want to spend our time on.
Q: When I talk to start-ups and venture capitalists and others in Silicon Valley, I hear the same trepidation in their voice when they talk about Google that they used when they would talk about Microsoft in the past. Microsoft didn't set out to have that foreboding image, but it developed because it was so good at doing what it did at the time. How do you avoid becoming Microsoft south?
A: The fact of the matter is we're in a different business. It's not a zero-sum game. Our customers are one click away from moving to a different search engine. That is not true in operating systems and it's not true in PC applications. It never was true.
