Listening to Eric speak here at PC Forum. He’s already made a few interesting comments. First, he dodged the IPO question. Then, in response to a question about Google’s business model, he made an interesting declaration: He went on a practiced riff about the media business, how large it is, and how many “platform players” can thrive and no one approach will win. In other words, Eric views Google as a media company, or at least that’s the take I came away with. That is new, last time we spoke, Google was a technology company driven by media revenues…
Eric also told an anecdotal story about the “Don’t Be Evil” mandate at Google. Early in his tenure, when he still felt it was a bit odd for a company to be run by such a rule, he was in a meeting where a (unspecified) idea was tossed out, and one of the employees yelled out “That’s Evil!!” A lengthy debate ensued. Eric pointed out that Google’s culture has built in DNA around what is and is not evil, and when something comes up that might be evil, employees bring up an “evil alert.” I dunno. I still think it’s potentially dangerous for this kind of ad hoc, socially driven morality to drive cultures within large media companies.