

A Conversation with Sergey Brin - bastian
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/07/a-conversation-with-sergey-brin/

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dkokelley
Why I think Google is and will remain strong and innovative:

 _"One day Larry and Sergey bought what became Android, and I didn't even know
about this. They said this is really interesting. I didn’t think about that,
but now think about the strategic opportunities that created"_

The fact that Larry and Sergey can still pursue what they consider
'interesting' with their resources WITHOUT giant bureaucracy getting in the
way speaks volumes about the health of the company IMO.

~~~
aston
I mean, they should be able to dodge bureaucracy; they run the company. I'm
missing what's so amazing here.

~~~
davi
They do not own the company; they run it at the pleasure of (yes) a
bureaucracy.

~~~
tsally
I'm pretty sure one of the most notable things about Google is Larry and
Sergey's ability to avoid this, going back all the way to when they raised VC.
They split the funds between rival firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and
Sequoia Capital and kept control of the company for themselves.

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kakooljay
This is hilarious:

Schmidt: let me, some of your assumptions about Chrome adoption are wrong. The
adoption rate of Chrome is [very strong]. We are going to do a better job of
getting that message out.

Schonfeld: Steve Ballmer calls it a rounding error, is it?

I don’t respond to Steve Ballmer questions. Next question?

~~~
arithmetic
You'd think they'd act like grown-ups before the press, given media's tendency
to blow things out of proportion. But nope, not Schmidt.

~~~
tsally
_You'd think they'd act like grown-ups before the press, given media's
tendency to blow things out of proportion. But nope, not Schmidt._

The person acting like a child is not who you think it is.

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yan
"Sergey: There is also the security aspect. In a recent hacker competition,
Chrome was the only one to escape unscathed in terms of security
vulnerabilities. And more stable."

When, oh when will people learn that touting the security of a product by how
well it did in hacking competitions is not a measure of how secure it is?

~~~
txxxxd
There is no single measure of security. The hacking competition mentioned is a
perfectly valid data point though.

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zaphar
Is it just me or does his bold formatting detract from rather than add to the
interview? I found it hard to follow with the constant switch back and forth
from bold to regular text.

~~~
tb
I quickly switched from reading to skim-reading to trying to find a pattern in
the boldness to giving up. I might've read it all if it used one font face
consistently.

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edw519
In front of the press:

 _Eric Schmidt: It seems like Sergey has jumped the gun. We should focus
mostly on search, and some of the ideas Sergey has._

I could only imagine what goes on behind closed doors.

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arithmetic
Is it just me or does the entire interview seem very strained and
uncomfortable? Schmidt seems to violently differ from Sergey and they both go
compeltely mum when asked about their competitors.

~~~
msg
To me it seemed like they avoided the celebrity cat fighting those questions
about competitors would devolve into, "Jobs gets served by Brin and Schmidt"
idiocy.

