Google arrogant? Google CEO Eric Schmidt responds

I listened attentively to his every keynote words (read my first-hand report in “Google CEO extols $800 billion advertising opportunity”).

I welcome any opportunity to hear Schmidt speak in order to glean further insights into Google’s strategies and tactics, and I did, as I report and analyze in “YouTube: What Google CEO Eric Schmidt really thinks.” 

Schmidt not only leads Google, he is the number one search engine’s top cheerleader. Listening to the Google CEO’s Googley take on the world’s content and its advertising sometimes brings to mind how remarks of President George Bush provide prime fodder for Jay Leno and David Letterman monologues, or Bill Maher declaring “Mocking Bush is my patriotic duty”:

MAHER: Making fun of the president keeps this country safe. The proof? I've been doing it nonstop for years, and there hasn't been another attack. Maybe the reason they haven't attacked us again is they figured we're already suffering enough.If I could explain one thing about George W. Bush to the rest of the world it's this: We don't know what the hell he's saying either! Trust me, foreigners, there's nothing lost in translation, it's just as incoherent in the original English. Yes, we voted for him -- twice -- but that's because we're stupid, not because we're bad.

Bush is just one of those things that are really popular for a few years and then almost overnight become completely embarrassing. You know, like leg warmers, or Hootie and the Blowfish, or white people going, "Oh no you di-int."

While I have been reporting and analyzing Schmidt’s business case for Google, others have been keenly interested in his take on Google’s “arrogance,” or not.

For example, I headlined the Schmidt hour long philosophical expose on Google’s “new paradigm,” that he presented to Morgan Stanley, by underscoring “Google CEO extols $800 billion advertising opportunity.”

The SFGate, on the other hand, headlined “Google’s arrogance confirmed.”

How so? Featuring a photo of the Google CEO captioned, “Google’s arrogant ways,” Verne Kopytoff says of Schmidt’s hour long address:

All of you who think that Google is arrogant got a big affirmation today from none other than Eric Schmidt, the Internet leviathan's chief executive. He accepted responsibility for some of the negative perception about the Mountain View search engine, which instills fear across large swaths of the technology industry because of its large size and grand ambitions. By being more open, Google has overcome some of its earlier image troubles, Schmidt suggested. "We didn't tell the story, and we didn't have people inside the company to talk to our partners," Schmidt said.

In Associated Press reports of the Schmidt Q & A to Bear Sterns, Google’s arrogance, or not, is again a key focus:

Asked by a member of the audience whether Google is "arrogant," as charged by some in traditional media, Schmidt said, "I'm sure we're arrogant." But he chalked up those complaints to a negotiating tactic and groused that one of the ways traditional media negotiate "is it's leaked, and you're sued to death." Expressing dismay, Schmidt said, "It's not normal in the technology industry, I can assure you."

Asking Eric Schmidt point blank if Google is “arrogant” may provide attention getting headlines and provocative copy, but it is not productive.

Eric Schmidt Google’s “new paradigm” assertions themselves, put forth at Morgan Stanley and Bear Sterns, innately reflect the arrogant philosophy and operating principles of Google, and I shed sunlight on them.

In my “Google CEO extols $800 billion advertising opportunity”:

Schmidt on Google Cloud computing:

Why would a rational person put personal information anywhere else but the cloud, given risks of losing and/or damaging a mobile device or PC?

Schmidt on Google stance to video content owners:

It is a difficult business model transition for them. We tell them we will work to help them get to the new Google iconic model, (convincing) usually works after the initial conversation.

In my “YouTube: What Google CEO Eric Schmidt really thinks”:

Schmidt on YouTube ultimatum:

Users are going to make copies of your copyright content, so you may as well get used to it and embrace it.

Schmidt on what copyright holders really get from YouTube: 

Compensation is still “unclear” and Google is not worried about that right now because the millions of YouTubers represent “potential monetizable targets.”

Or, in the words of Pat Schroeder, CEO, Association of American Publishers:

Google has ‘a hell of a business model – they’re going to take everything you create, for free, and sell advertising around it.’

SEE my “Why Google will never pay for content.”