10 ms·

Trying to interview Larry Page

127 points by coloneltcb 11y ago

zem 11y ago
i found this bit really depressing: > Our technology group tends to work thematically, meaning that we try to focus on how tech is changing our readers’ work and personal lives. Google is the main focus of my reporting, and it is a brutally competitive beat. It takes me an hour to go through the day’s headlines each morning, and there are dozens of competitors and talented journalists on the tech beat. That means I’m often scooped, and the scrum of daily news can make it hard to see the bigger picture. if the new york times cannot take an extra day or two to get a good, comprehensive and well-put-together story without worrying about the churning techblogs scooping them, who can? there has to be space for slower-moving newspaper articles, without having to fall all the way back to magazines.
- softawre 11y ago
  The Guardian for one? I agree it's becoming more rare to see real journalism, and that's sad...which is why it's important to point out the ones who still do it.
  - zem 11y ago
    good point, i continue to be impressed by the guardian.
    - leonroy 11y ago
      Their iPhone app is superb, a few £s a year and you get access to all their stories in an intuitive format. Well worth it.
  - kombucha2 11y ago
    CSM all the way.
- frandroid 11y ago
  Huh, what were the aforementioned profile and this article if not slower-moving, step-back perspective type articles?
  - zem 11y ago
    agreed, but it also referred to his google coverage being constantly subject to pressure of getting scooped. my point was that an nyt writer should not care if someone beats them to a story, they if anyone should have the luxury to trust that their readership would rather see a well-researched story than a breaking one.
    - frandroid 11y ago
      They're in the news business, so scoops are always a huge driver, especially so with online news where the publication with a scoop with get a disproportionate number of PVs on a story. The NYT doesn't get to escape from that logic; it just gets to play on both slow/smart and fast/quick hit grounds.
- rajacombinator 11y ago
  > who can? there's still demand for quality investigative journalism, it just has to be right-sized away from bloated megacorps.
- kuschku 11y ago
  The SPIEGEL can. But they are only a weekly magazine, and get almost all their readers through permanent subscriptions. (And like most newspapers, they have a handful of people standing everywhere on university campuses, trying to sell people subscriptions)
  - dmichulke 11y ago
    Note that the crew working there is different from the www.spiegel.de crew and the quality of the weekly magazine is said to be much better (I am not a subscriber though)
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  The whole business model of journalism seems broken. I'd love to see a crowd-funded journalism portal that takes the 'patreon' model and extends it to a stable of well-trained independent journalists and provides them with an overall support structure of editorial oversight, illustration & layout support, etc, etc. In place of advertisement, the portal could run their own messaging to fund various initiatives (raise x amount in order to bring on a tech reporter for x number of articles a year, etc, etc). Users could choose to fund specific reporters at x amount per month, or just donate directly to the portal for day-to-day operational expenses.
  - SandersAK 11y ago
    There is that: http://beaconreader.com http://beaconreader.com caveat: i'm one of the founders.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - TrevorJ 11y ago
      Oh wow, that's awesome! How has it been going so far? Looks like you have some momentum, what were some of the biggest challenges to overcome?
  - corybrown 11y ago
    The New Yorker consistently has in depth articles that are well researched and fact checked.
    - fortes 11y ago
      +1. New Yorker is great.
  - fludlight 11y ago
    This exists via Bloomberg. Their $26k p.a. terminals subsidize the journalism. I haven't found another general interest news org whose journalists take the time to actually understand the industry they cover. One could argue that it's run by a billionaire politician, yet it stays much less partisan than say, the NYT. That said, these days the best content comes from single-beat sources.
portmanteaufu 11y ago
"Emasculating" was a very strange and evocative choice of words for this. Most of the article describes Google's significance and direction, with only this snippet at the tail end having anything to do with the title: > ....I can tell you from experience that it is really awkward and emasculating to try to interview someone who doesn’t want to talk. You feel like a big dork.
- RankingMember 11y ago
  Agreed. I read the word "emasculating" with the meaning "deprive (a man) of his male role or identity", and was imagining that Page was calling into question his manliness during an interview like some kind of bro, which is funny to imagine considering I don't hear any accounts of him being the kind of guy who would do that. Managing your public image is something I imagine can become pretty draining, so I'm not surprised he parcels out his comments to simple, controlled, one-way exchanges.
- dang 11y ago
  We took that distracting word out of the title and put in Larry Page's name, since everyone here knows who he is.
- zellyn 11y ago
  Especially since there would be absolutely no difference at all in this story if the author were a woman.
- mrmcd 11y ago
  I assume the NYT headline was a reference to a few years back when Page was talking about how great Glass was and by way of comparison described looking down at a phone screen as "emasculating". I assume he (Page) was just meant that using a phone a lot felt awkward and took your attention away from the rest of the world around you, but made a poor word choice while improvising in front of an audience. The tech press had a little tisk tisk field day about though, especially since this was well past the point where Glass was looking like a silly boondogle. In most newspapers though, someone besides the author writes the headline for an article, so I'm assuming whoever wrote this one for the NYT thought they were being clever here in referencing that faux pas. edit: Just checked it was actually Brin who said the emasculating thing, so who the fuck knows what the headline writer was thinking. Maybe they remembered wrong too.
js2 11y ago
Here's an interview Page and Brin did with Terry Gross in 2003, when they were more accessible I suppose. There's an amusing exchange where one of them tries to explain idempotence ("When I type 'Google' into Google and click "I'm Feeling Lucky", it just takes me back to Google.") to Terry: http://www.npr.org/2003/10/14/167643282/google-founders-larry-page-and-sergey-brin-part-2 http://www.npr.org/2003/10/14/167643282/google-founders-larr...
- NelsonMinar 11y ago
  My memory of that interview at the time was that it was terrible. I imagine it contributed to Larry and Sergey deciding talking to the press wasn't as good a use of their time as doing things.
  - js2 11y ago
    She's in over her head technically (obviously) and asks an arguably insulting question to end the interview. It's a softball interview, but it was also in 2003 I think.
- th0ma5 11y ago
  I tried doing that just now in Chrome, and immediately upon typing the interface with the I Feel Lucky button disappears and I start getting the usual results interface, with autocomplete.
  - t0mbstone 11y ago
    Google actually killed off the "I'm feeling lucky" button some time ago. http://www.businessinsider.com/google-just-effectively-killed-the-im-feeling-lucky-button-2010-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-just-effectively-kille...
  - saganus 11y ago
    Wow... really... I just tried as well (even in IE) and same thing. Why have buttons then? to fall back in case my browser (Which one?) doesn't do autocomplete? Or maybe there is a setting to turn it off? Edit: Well duh... you need to turn off autocomplete of course... try it and "I'm feeling lucky" still works and indeed it takes you back to google.com
us0r 11y ago
I was watching a video[0] the other day and Eric Schmidt said since the Playboy interview they have not given any more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcRxFRgNpns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcRxFRgNpns
- jjulius 11y ago
  If you're working and can't watch YouTube, here's a transcript: > I knew that it was Larry and Sergey’s company, and I acted that way. For example, I never did any press. Right before the IPO, Larry and Sergey did an interview with Playboy — no pictures. It turns out that the interview was at the wrong time in the quiet period, and it put the IPO in jeopardy. “Did we screw up?” The correct answer is Yes. But the even more correct answer is no problem, we’ll fix this. From that moment on, they’ve never given an interview. That was 12 years ago. When they wanted to do interviews, they did them. Once they didn’t want to do it anymore, I did them. https://medium.com/cs183c-blitzscaling-class-collection/cs183c-session-8-eric-schmidt-56c29b247998#.5sxzh9a2g https://medium.com/cs183c-blitzscaling-class-collection/cs18...
ksk 11y ago
>There’s a strong argument that Google is now the most important company in the world Does anyone know what this argument is? It boggles the mind that an advertising company is the most important company in the world.
- metaphorm 11y ago
  maybe you consider these weak points in support of the argument, and I'm not certain I agree with all of them either, but its a starting point. here, first few things off the top of my head: 1. highest market cap of a major tech company that is a) an important part of masses of people's daily lives, b) working on experimental projects that will not realize their fruits in the short term, c) has intimated a progressive vision for society. 2. has the necessary funds, personnel resources, knowledge base, and lobbying power to accomplish ambitious goals. 3. category definer for the domain of internet search advertising, which is actually a bigger deal than you make it out to be. this corresponds to a very basic human need: finding what you're looking for, including things you're looking to buy. 4. philosophically speaking, seems to have an actual grasp on what it is they are doing beyond the simplistic definition "making money" or "increase shareholder value". their actions are (if you believe their own statements about it anyway) guided by a coherent vision to "organize the world's information". 5. has already changed the way people speak and think about using the internet, which is the civilizational mega-project of our time that will have irreversible impact on human culture from this point forward.
  - ksk 11y ago
    I guess then we first need to establish what properties 'the worlds most important company' would be likely to have. To me, the company would have to be firmly established as a key player in so many different markets such that if the company were to vanish they would literally be chaos on the streets.
    - metaphorm 11y ago
      hmm, I think that describes something different. "the world's most indispensable company". google isn't that. not sure what is. maybe the big oil companies (collectively) are indispensable? that's kind of a shame really. no company should be indispensable. to me though, google is clearly important, in a historical sense. they are building things that change the world. they also seem to care (at least pay lip service) to trying to change the world in a way that is a net positive for most people.
denniskane 11y ago
The first time I was aware of Larry as a person was in early 2014 when I saw a replay of him on stage at the 2013 Google I/O event. I immediately got an impression of him as being a truly saintly figure, with his gentle, soft-spoken demeanor. Considering what I have been going through in my daily life, I could not be more in awe of what Larry has been able to accomplish. I feel that Google is easily an order of magnitude more important than the next closest institution, be it public or private, be it a business or a government. My offering to Larry is a little thing that I've been working on for the past several years called "Linux on the Web". If you stick those four words together and put it into a relevant search engine, then the link should appear as the top hit. It only works in Chrome... a fact that truly warms my cockles at this moment. I f*ing love that man. Screw all the haters. Suggestion to all potential future reporters out there: pay more attention in your math, science and engineering classes, and less in your liberal (f)arts classes.
- pconner 11y ago
  > Suggestion to all potential future reporters out there: pay more attention in your math, science and engineering classes, and less in your liberal (f)arts classes. No. You do not create technology that serves real humans by refusing to study the humanities.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  > The first time I was aware of Larry as a person was in early 2014 when I saw a replay of him on stage at the 2013 Google I/O event. I immediately got an impression of him as being a truly saintly figure, with his gentle, soft-spoken demeanor. I don't have any strong opinions on Page as a person, but if you decide that someone saintly based purely on their stage presence, you are in serious danger of getting taken for a ride by any charismatic jerk who crosses your path.
- aws_ls 11y ago
  >Suggestion to all potential future reporters out there: pay more attention in your math, science and engineering classes, and less in your liberal (f)arts classes You were making sense, until this last para. Have some compassion - you don't seem to care that a human (journo) is degraded into such a position (used emasculate to describe his position) by another (although no fault of the latter). Its good that humans are different, for various reasons -- its so obvious. Going by your logic, what Mr. Page does is fart compared to say a Roger Penrose writing 'The Road to Reality'. All said, we all try our best, you know. Your project looks interesting. So is mine, or that journalist's or Larry Page's or Roger Penrose's. In the large scheme of things, who knows what really matters.
bko 11y ago
I may be in the minority on this forum but I am not worried about the information that I willingly provide private corporations. The corporations that have my data continue to exist because people find their products valuable. When people talk about the power Google or Facebook have, they speak as though these are companies that have been around for hundreds of years amassing ever more power. I feel like I have more choices than ever as to the services I use and the power of these corporations is very fickle. Apple has lost over 10% of their value since this year began and about 25% in the last 6 months simply because expectations are that they are losing favor in the public, or at least that's my hypothesis. Every generation had a different country or corporation that they were afraid of. And then we have the Congress in US with an approval rating in the teens and a re-election rate in the 90s [0]. Since there appears to be little accountability in the public sector and the monopoly on violence the government holds, I am much more concerned about that. [0] https://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php https://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  > the monopoly on violence the government holds People keep complaining about the "government monopoly on violence." What other group would you prefer to have a monopoly on violence? If the government doesn't enforce a monopoly, then invariably someone else will, in the process becoming the new government; or else two or more groups will actively dispute it, a condition commonly known as "war."
  - jdminhbg 11y ago
    The point is that the entity given a monopoly on violence needs to be held to a higher standard than entities that aren't.
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      I can agree with that, and I hope that's what bko meant, but I've seen enough people (on HN and elsewhere) complaining specifically about the existence of the governmental monopoly on force that I wonder.
ikeboy 11y ago
Does "Once was at an off-the-record gathering where nothing interesting happened" mean that whatever happened is off the record, or does it actually mean nothing happened? I'm not sure how to read it.
- aaronsnoswell 11y ago
  I read it literally - as in, nothing interesting happened.
tim333 11y ago
Maybe given that Google is emulating Berkshire Hathaway[1] they could adopt Buffett's approach to taking questions which was for many years to avoid it 364 days of the year and then have one multi hour open question session at the annual meeting. He's changed a bit recently in giving more interviews but in earlier years the annual meeting was largely it. It seemed quite smart in that he could be open while being free from being bugged by journalists 99.5% of the time. [1] http://qz.com/527596/eric-schmidt-explains-how-alphabet-will-emulate-berkshire-hathaway-and-warren-buffett/ http://qz.com/527596/eric-schmidt-explains-how-alphabet-will...
- munificent 11y ago
  Larry and Sergey take questions every Friday (well, Thursday now). It's just only within Google.
amag 11y ago
In public comments, Mr. Page goes out of his way to say the opposite, describing Google more in terms of a nonprofit than a gigantic corporation. During a 2014 interview with Charlie Rose, he said he wished there were a vehicle for people to donate money to their company so that it could be used for projects that had some kind of social purpose. There is such a "vehicle", google something and click on an ad. Seriously, why would anyone want to donate to Google so that they can do projects with "some kind of social purpose"? Is Google an expert at "some kind of social purpose"-projects? Can Google (or the founders) not afford such projects without normal people explicitly donating? Just the thought of donating to Google is offensive and I find the article author's seemingly awe at Mr Page's idea of such a thing repulsive.

127 points by coloneltcb 11y ago

zem 11y ago

i found this bit really depressing: > Our technology group tends to work thematically, meaning that we try to focus on how tech is changing our readers’ work and personal lives. Google is the main focus of my reporting, and it is a brutally competitive beat. It takes me an hour to go through the day’s headlines each morning, and there are dozens of competitors and talented journalists on the tech beat. That means I’m often scooped, and the scrum of daily news can make it hard to see the bigger picture. if the new york times cannot take an extra day or two to get a good, comprehensive and well-put-together story without worrying about the churning techblogs scooping them, who can? there has to be space for slower-moving newspaper articles, without having to fall all the way back to magazines.

softawre 11y ago
The Guardian for one? I agree it's becoming more rare to see real journalism, and that's sad...which is why it's important to point out the ones who still do it.
- zem 11y ago
  good point, i continue to be impressed by the guardian.
  - leonroy 11y ago
    Their iPhone app is superb, a few £s a year and you get access to all their stories in an intuitive format. Well worth it.
- kombucha2 11y ago
  CSM all the way.
frandroid 11y ago
Huh, what were the aforementioned profile and this article if not slower-moving, step-back perspective type articles?
- zem 11y ago
  agreed, but it also referred to his google coverage being constantly subject to pressure of getting scooped. my point was that an nyt writer should not care if someone beats them to a story, they if anyone should have the luxury to trust that their readership would rather see a well-researched story than a breaking one.
  - frandroid 11y ago
    They're in the news business, so scoops are always a huge driver, especially so with online news where the publication with a scoop with get a disproportionate number of PVs on a story. The NYT doesn't get to escape from that logic; it just gets to play on both slow/smart and fast/quick hit grounds.
rajacombinator 11y ago
> who can? there's still demand for quality investigative journalism, it just has to be right-sized away from bloated megacorps.
kuschku 11y ago
The SPIEGEL can. But they are only a weekly magazine, and get almost all their readers through permanent subscriptions. (And like most newspapers, they have a handful of people standing everywhere on university campuses, trying to sell people subscriptions)
- dmichulke 11y ago
  Note that the crew working there is different from the www.spiegel.de crew and the quality of the weekly magazine is said to be much better (I am not a subscriber though)
TrevorJ 11y ago
The whole business model of journalism seems broken. I'd love to see a crowd-funded journalism portal that takes the 'patreon' model and extends it to a stable of well-trained independent journalists and provides them with an overall support structure of editorial oversight, illustration & layout support, etc, etc. In place of advertisement, the portal could run their own messaging to fund various initiatives (raise x amount in order to bring on a tech reporter for x number of articles a year, etc, etc). Users could choose to fund specific reporters at x amount per month, or just donate directly to the portal for day-to-day operational expenses.
- SandersAK 11y ago
  There is that: http://beaconreader.com http://beaconreader.com caveat: i'm one of the founders.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - TrevorJ 11y ago
    Oh wow, that's awesome! How has it been going so far? Looks like you have some momentum, what were some of the biggest challenges to overcome?
- corybrown 11y ago
  The New Yorker consistently has in depth articles that are well researched and fact checked.
  - fortes 11y ago
    +1. New Yorker is great.
- fludlight 11y ago
  This exists via Bloomberg. Their $26k p.a. terminals subsidize the journalism. I haven't found another general interest news org whose journalists take the time to actually understand the industry they cover. One could argue that it's run by a billionaire politician, yet it stays much less partisan than say, the NYT. That said, these days the best content comes from single-beat sources.

portmanteaufu 11y ago

"Emasculating" was a very strange and evocative choice of words for this. Most of the article describes Google's significance and direction, with only this snippet at the tail end having anything to do with the title: > ....I can tell you from experience that it is really awkward and emasculating to try to interview someone who doesn’t want to talk. You feel like a big dork.

RankingMember 11y ago
Agreed. I read the word "emasculating" with the meaning "deprive (a man) of his male role or identity", and was imagining that Page was calling into question his manliness during an interview like some kind of bro, which is funny to imagine considering I don't hear any accounts of him being the kind of guy who would do that. Managing your public image is something I imagine can become pretty draining, so I'm not surprised he parcels out his comments to simple, controlled, one-way exchanges.
dang 11y ago
We took that distracting word out of the title and put in Larry Page's name, since everyone here knows who he is.
zellyn 11y ago
Especially since there would be absolutely no difference at all in this story if the author were a woman.
mrmcd 11y ago
I assume the NYT headline was a reference to a few years back when Page was talking about how great Glass was and by way of comparison described looking down at a phone screen as "emasculating". I assume he (Page) was just meant that using a phone a lot felt awkward and took your attention away from the rest of the world around you, but made a poor word choice while improvising in front of an audience. The tech press had a little tisk tisk field day about though, especially since this was well past the point where Glass was looking like a silly boondogle. In most newspapers though, someone besides the author writes the headline for an article, so I'm assuming whoever wrote this one for the NYT thought they were being clever here in referencing that faux pas. edit: Just checked it was actually Brin who said the emasculating thing, so who the fuck knows what the headline writer was thinking. Maybe they remembered wrong too.

js2 11y ago

Here's an interview Page and Brin did with Terry Gross in 2003, when they were more accessible I suppose. There's an amusing exchange where one of them tries to explain idempotence ("When I type 'Google' into Google and click "I'm Feeling Lucky", it just takes me back to Google.") to Terry: http://www.npr.org/2003/10/14/167643282/google-founders-larry-page-and-sergey-brin-part-2 http://www.npr.org/2003/10/14/167643282/google-founders-larr...

NelsonMinar 11y ago
My memory of that interview at the time was that it was terrible. I imagine it contributed to Larry and Sergey deciding talking to the press wasn't as good a use of their time as doing things.
- js2 11y ago
  She's in over her head technically (obviously) and asks an arguably insulting question to end the interview. It's a softball interview, but it was also in 2003 I think.
th0ma5 11y ago
I tried doing that just now in Chrome, and immediately upon typing the interface with the I Feel Lucky button disappears and I start getting the usual results interface, with autocomplete.
- t0mbstone 11y ago
  Google actually killed off the "I'm feeling lucky" button some time ago. http://www.businessinsider.com/google-just-effectively-killed-the-im-feeling-lucky-button-2010-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-just-effectively-kille...
- saganus 11y ago
  Wow... really... I just tried as well (even in IE) and same thing. Why have buttons then? to fall back in case my browser (Which one?) doesn't do autocomplete? Or maybe there is a setting to turn it off? Edit: Well duh... you need to turn off autocomplete of course... try it and "I'm feeling lucky" still works and indeed it takes you back to google.com

us0r 11y ago

I was watching a video[0] the other day and Eric Schmidt said since the Playboy interview they have not given any more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcRxFRgNpns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcRxFRgNpns

jjulius 11y ago
If you're working and can't watch YouTube, here's a transcript: > I knew that it was Larry and Sergey’s company, and I acted that way. For example, I never did any press. Right before the IPO, Larry and Sergey did an interview with Playboy — no pictures. It turns out that the interview was at the wrong time in the quiet period, and it put the IPO in jeopardy. “Did we screw up?” The correct answer is Yes. But the even more correct answer is no problem, we’ll fix this. From that moment on, they’ve never given an interview. That was 12 years ago. When they wanted to do interviews, they did them. Once they didn’t want to do it anymore, I did them. https://medium.com/cs183c-blitzscaling-class-collection/cs183c-session-8-eric-schmidt-56c29b247998#.5sxzh9a2g https://medium.com/cs183c-blitzscaling-class-collection/cs18...

ksk 11y ago

>There’s a strong argument that Google is now the most important company in the world Does anyone know what this argument is? It boggles the mind that an advertising company is the most important company in the world.

metaphorm 11y ago
maybe you consider these weak points in support of the argument, and I'm not certain I agree with all of them either, but its a starting point. here, first few things off the top of my head: 1. highest market cap of a major tech company that is a) an important part of masses of people's daily lives, b) working on experimental projects that will not realize their fruits in the short term, c) has intimated a progressive vision for society. 2. has the necessary funds, personnel resources, knowledge base, and lobbying power to accomplish ambitious goals. 3. category definer for the domain of internet search advertising, which is actually a bigger deal than you make it out to be. this corresponds to a very basic human need: finding what you're looking for, including things you're looking to buy. 4. philosophically speaking, seems to have an actual grasp on what it is they are doing beyond the simplistic definition "making money" or "increase shareholder value". their actions are (if you believe their own statements about it anyway) guided by a coherent vision to "organize the world's information". 5. has already changed the way people speak and think about using the internet, which is the civilizational mega-project of our time that will have irreversible impact on human culture from this point forward.
- ksk 11y ago
  I guess then we first need to establish what properties 'the worlds most important company' would be likely to have. To me, the company would have to be firmly established as a key player in so many different markets such that if the company were to vanish they would literally be chaos on the streets.
  - metaphorm 11y ago
    hmm, I think that describes something different. "the world's most indispensable company". google isn't that. not sure what is. maybe the big oil companies (collectively) are indispensable? that's kind of a shame really. no company should be indispensable. to me though, google is clearly important, in a historical sense. they are building things that change the world. they also seem to care (at least pay lip service) to trying to change the world in a way that is a net positive for most people.

denniskane 11y ago

The first time I was aware of Larry as a person was in early 2014 when I saw a replay of him on stage at the 2013 Google I/O event. I immediately got an impression of him as being a truly saintly figure, with his gentle, soft-spoken demeanor. Considering what I have been going through in my daily life, I could not be more in awe of what Larry has been able to accomplish. I feel that Google is easily an order of magnitude more important than the next closest institution, be it public or private, be it a business or a government. My offering to Larry is a little thing that I've been working on for the past several years called "Linux on the Web". If you stick those four words together and put it into a relevant search engine, then the link should appear as the top hit. It only works in Chrome... a fact that truly warms my cockles at this moment. I f*ing love that man. Screw all the haters. Suggestion to all potential future reporters out there: pay more attention in your math, science and engineering classes, and less in your liberal (f)arts classes.

pconner 11y ago
> Suggestion to all potential future reporters out there: pay more attention in your math, science and engineering classes, and less in your liberal (f)arts classes. No. You do not create technology that serves real humans by refusing to study the humanities.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> The first time I was aware of Larry as a person was in early 2014 when I saw a replay of him on stage at the 2013 Google I/O event. I immediately got an impression of him as being a truly saintly figure, with his gentle, soft-spoken demeanor. I don't have any strong opinions on Page as a person, but if you decide that someone saintly based purely on their stage presence, you are in serious danger of getting taken for a ride by any charismatic jerk who crosses your path.
aws_ls 11y ago
>Suggestion to all potential future reporters out there: pay more attention in your math, science and engineering classes, and less in your liberal (f)arts classes You were making sense, until this last para. Have some compassion - you don't seem to care that a human (journo) is degraded into such a position (used emasculate to describe his position) by another (although no fault of the latter). Its good that humans are different, for various reasons -- its so obvious. Going by your logic, what Mr. Page does is fart compared to say a Roger Penrose writing 'The Road to Reality'. All said, we all try our best, you know. Your project looks interesting. So is mine, or that journalist's or Larry Page's or Roger Penrose's. In the large scheme of things, who knows what really matters.

bko 11y ago

I may be in the minority on this forum but I am not worried about the information that I willingly provide private corporations. The corporations that have my data continue to exist because people find their products valuable. When people talk about the power Google or Facebook have, they speak as though these are companies that have been around for hundreds of years amassing ever more power. I feel like I have more choices than ever as to the services I use and the power of these corporations is very fickle. Apple has lost over 10% of their value since this year began and about 25% in the last 6 months simply because expectations are that they are losing favor in the public, or at least that's my hypothesis. Every generation had a different country or corporation that they were afraid of. And then we have the Congress in US with an approval rating in the teens and a re-election rate in the 90s [0]. Since there appears to be little accountability in the public sector and the monopoly on violence the government holds, I am much more concerned about that. [0] https://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php https://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> the monopoly on violence the government holds People keep complaining about the "government monopoly on violence." What other group would you prefer to have a monopoly on violence? If the government doesn't enforce a monopoly, then invariably someone else will, in the process becoming the new government; or else two or more groups will actively dispute it, a condition commonly known as "war."
- jdminhbg 11y ago
  The point is that the entity given a monopoly on violence needs to be held to a higher standard than entities that aren't.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    I can agree with that, and I hope that's what bko meant, but I've seen enough people (on HN and elsewhere) complaining specifically about the existence of the governmental monopoly on force that I wonder.

ikeboy 11y ago

Does "Once was at an off-the-record gathering where nothing interesting happened" mean that whatever happened is off the record, or does it actually mean nothing happened? I'm not sure how to read it.

aaronsnoswell 11y ago
I read it literally - as in, nothing interesting happened.

tim333 11y ago

Maybe given that Google is emulating Berkshire Hathaway[1] they could adopt Buffett's approach to taking questions which was for many years to avoid it 364 days of the year and then have one multi hour open question session at the annual meeting. He's changed a bit recently in giving more interviews but in earlier years the annual meeting was largely it. It seemed quite smart in that he could be open while being free from being bugged by journalists 99.5% of the time. [1] http://qz.com/527596/eric-schmidt-explains-how-alphabet-will-emulate-berkshire-hathaway-and-warren-buffett/ http://qz.com/527596/eric-schmidt-explains-how-alphabet-will...

munificent 11y ago
Larry and Sergey take questions every Friday (well, Thursday now). It's just only within Google.

amag 11y ago

In public comments, Mr. Page goes out of his way to say the opposite, describing Google more in terms of a nonprofit than a gigantic corporation. During a 2014 interview with Charlie Rose, he said he wished there were a vehicle for people to donate money to their company so that it could be used for projects that had some kind of social purpose. There is such a "vehicle", google something and click on an ad. Seriously, why would anyone want to donate to Google so that they can do projects with "some kind of social purpose"? Is Google an expert at "some kind of social purpose"-projects? Can Google (or the founders) not afford such projects without normal people explicitly donating? Just the thought of donating to Google is offensive and I find the article author's seemingly awe at Mr Page's idea of such a thing repulsive.