Yesterday, during one of the Gartner Symposium sessions, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt hosted a Q and A detailing their positions on a number of areas concerning Google’s exponential growth.
One of the main areas of concern involves security issues surrounding Google’s Web Accelerator and Google’s new satellite map service that allows visual representations of areas of interest.
In an article by Google+CEO+defends+privacy+policies/2100-1032_3-5713639.html”>News.com, Brin and Schmidt addressed some of these concerns, saying Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” policy will continue to trump technological advances if the new pending technology does something that could be considered damaging to Google’s users.
The two also responded to concerns over their satellite capable Maps service. In response to concerns, Schmidt reminded the attendees that Google’s satellite map service could only zoom in to a point. Users cannot employ Google Maps to view areas up-close because the service was designed to prevent potentially malicious web denizens from using Google Maps for their stalking needs. With Schmidt’s rationale, it’s safe to say Google Maps will not be introducing an extended zoom function.
Other areas of discussion had to do with the overall strategy of the Google Company. Schmidt reminded attendees that Google was in the information industry and that search personalization and comprehensive content are their primary areas of focus. While Google has expanded their approach to text-based documents to include audio and video files, the newer technology is not available on a large scale as of yet.
Because of this, Google is still focusing a large amount of their attention on text-related searches.
Andy Beal also posted information from the Gartner Q and A. In Andy’s wrap-up, he asked about the size of the index-able Internet, to which Brin replied, “Substantially more than 8 billion (Google’s Index).”
The two speakers also indicated that Google would support non-English language books for their Google Print endeavor, with Brin revealing over half of the Google Print staff are French.
The session also revealed how Google spends their hard-earned money. According to Brin, 70% of their earnings are invested into Google’s core business (advertising and search), while 20% is allocated for secondary businesses. The final 10% is earmarked for Google’s new and according to News.com, comparatively wild developments.
The session round-ups did a fantastic job of detailing Google’s approach to their future, while demonstrating their concern over certain security issues. With Google’s revenues continuing to skyrocket, it certainly appears as if Google will have to resources to improve and update their products for a long time to come.
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest search news.
