Eric Schmidt predicts the future of computers - and he plans to be involved

Eric Schmidt will be able to call himself the CEO of Google just a few more months, but, contrary to some reports, transferring the position to Larry Page, he will not leave the company. In a long conversation with The Telegraph at the World Economic Forum, Schmidt discussed everything - from his own future to the future of technology and almost everything in between. I offer you a translation of this interview.

Eric Schmidt explains the changes in the Google manual and his vision of how the computer world will look in 50 years.


^{Eric Schmidt: " I am incredibly optimistic about what will be possible in the next decade, we spent our entire career to reach this point ." Photo: AFP}

In the days when Eric Schmidt was just beginning to get involved in computers, he could find out the direction to the neighboring city only with the help of a map. Printed on paper. In the book.

He could find out the opinion of his friends about a cafe in New York only by calling them, each individually, and asking them.
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As a child who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s , Schmidt (born in Falls Church in Virginia in 1955) grew up in the era of computers connected by telephone lines that used punched cards to transmit information. They worked at night when the lines were freer.

“ My first computer I ran into in high school was a car that had about 1 / 100,000 of the processing power of your phone ,” says Schmidt, pointing to my BlackBerry.

“ I remember those times - we had a rule to work all night because they were distributed machines. So people involved in computers grew up as night people. I had a rule: I had to go to bed before sunrise. Therefore, I watched sunrise times, because I thought it would be bad for karma to lie down after dawn . ”

In an interview on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the edition of The Sunday Telegraph, I asked him to recall that time and asked what had been achieved in the world of computers and the Internet.

We are all connected now, through billions of operations every day, according to technologies, the significance of which is only slowly revealed. Could anyone predict then - in the days when color television was a miracle - where are we going now?

“ This is unthinkable ,” he says.

We are talking in Davos, at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps, where some of the most prominent names of economics and business gathered together for four days of discussion and concluding deals, disputes and signing contracts. This is the last week of January.

Schmidt touches on a variety of topics - why he thinks that an agreement with the European Commission is possible (on complaints that Google is abusing its dominant search position - a claim that the company strongly denies) why Apple had an initial vision of changing technology from corporate support systems to the consumer support system and how the world can look in 50 years (“ If we start from the assumption that I will not be gone,” he laughs).

An hour before our interview, Schmidt, in a faint pullover with a collar and tie, held a session in private Google rooms in the immediate vicinity of the main conference center.

Sitting surrounded by business journalists, including such reputable ones as Jeff Jarvis, Schmidt talks about the current affairs of Google. Is he really dismissed after the announcement that Larry Page will become the executive director, and he will become the executive chairman? Is Google changing about Facebook competition a cause of these changes? Does Google take privacy and competition issues seriously enough?

His answers are in the same order: no; completely wrong; and yes, absolutely.

“ [The changing roles] was misinterpreted, and it was not well understood what we were doing ,” says Schmidt, explaining that he wants to clarify the details of the case for the “historical record.”

“ This has nothing to do with competitors. That was my suggestion. People never believed that the three of us could manage the company as a triumvirate, but [this] is a very, very well-managed business. The three of us will deal with all the important decisions together . ”

Changes in the Google manual are ultimately a tactical issue. When he looks to the future decade or beyond, Schmidt knows that he is on the verge of the next big shift in technological innovation. Google is a search company. Facebook is a social media company. But Schmidt in his conversation with journalists uses the word "social" more often than "search." The search, he says, becomes social.

“ I’m incredibly optimistic about what will be possible in the next decade, we spent our entire career to reach this point ,” he says. Anyone who thinks Google can go down, better think again.

Last week was full of news about Google:

On Monday, it was announced that Android overtook Nokia’s system and became the market leader in the last quarter of 2010.

On Tuesday, the company announced collaboration with some of the world's leading art museums, including the Tate-British in London and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the creation of a digital catalog of their collections. Using the Street View technology, people can now virtually visit museums from their living rooms.

On the same day, Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, accused Bing, Microsoft's eternal rival search service, of plagiarizing Google search results and disguising them as their own. Microsoft responded that it monitors over 1000 different sources to create its own search algorithm, and Google is a small part of that.

On Wednesday, Google demonstrated its participation in politics, creating an opportunity for protesters in Egypt to circumvent the telecommunications restrictions of the authorities. In cooperation with Twitter and SayNow, a company owned by Google, the technology giant from California created the “speaktotweet” system, which allowed people to call certain phone numbers and leave messages, which were then tweeted.

Also on Wednesday, Google revealed the details of its system for tablets, Honeycomb - a competitor to the iPad. In a session in Davos with Schmidt, Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of product management, and Hugo Barra, director of product management, showed the new Android suite with 3D tools.

Maier also said that the new business model, “approved sites,” would allow companies to use location-based search and smartphones as part of their advertising. Six million companies have already agreed, mostly from the USA, to what is likely to be a profitable source of income.

And yes, by the way. Schmidt said that Facebook is not a competitor, because the more people use Facebook, the more they use Google. " This is only good ."

Turning to a larger picture, Schmidt collected his thoughts for a minute. “ I can describe it now only as a wow moment ,” he says. “ For me, this is the beginning of a real information revolution .”

“ You are not alone, you are not bored. These are remarkable changes, and not only for Western elites — it permeates everything and cuts costs.

We are just starting to listen to those who are starting to come to the Internet. I feel that we have significantly changed the lives of literally billions of people . ”

The convergence of search, location and social - the next big story. Schmidt says that people who are "included" in the system have much richer experience in using technology, with the help of computerized "personal assistants."

“ We are still thinking about searching, like what you type ,” said Schmidt. “ Maybe in ten years time, you will think:“ well, it was interesting, I had to type, but now it is just known ”.”

“ How does this know?” Well, on mobile phones, we know where you are up to a meter. You have decided to log in and, with your permission, he knows where you are and he can provide a personalized service.

So, here, in Davos, where I come every year, he knows where I was and where I was, and he can say: “you forgot that you were at this meeting last year, and you didn’t like it terribly,” because I could say this or he could notice that I was there for only 15 minutes.

This is a real example. I was at this meeting last year, and we were joking about it - I forgot that I really didn’t like this meeting, and I forgot that I told people that I didn’t want to come, so this time I came to five minutes and left, last year it was 15 minutes. Thus, the computer can say: "We noticed that you were less and less time here and therefore we believe that maybe something is wrong."

Technically, with your permission, we know where you are, we know your history, we can extract data and see what they tell us . ”

Every time Schmidt does not forget to add: “ with your permission ”. Both Facebook and Google have an unpleasant experience spreading users' confidential information without their knowledge. Lessons learned.

“ Sorry for such pedantry, but if I do not repeat it, I will be tortured to death ,” says Schmidt. “ We need to add a preamble: all this, provided that the client wants this kind of information. If you want anonymity and you don’t want your friends to know what you are doing, this is normal for us . ”

My children are 10 and 7 years old. I asked what they would have in a fifty-year perspective.

“ A child born today with a life expectancy of 90 years will live until 2101, ” says Schmidt. “ Think about it. That is why issues like climate change are important. One hundred years is a long time. As for technology, it is reasonable to assume that in 50 years all these differences between computers and clouds [remote data storage] will disappear. Computational power will be widespread everywhere, which will be so free and so surprising that people will consider them their assistants. They will know who you are, they will know what you are doing, they will make suggestions, they will simplify everything for you.

The computer world is very good at what we are not. He is very good in memory. In addition, he is very good at committing actions involving large numbers, such as “ask a million people a question”.

But its capabilities are very limited in, for example, intuitions - human things. It is reasonable to expect that in 50 years computers will do what they are really good at, and people will do what we are really good at.

And those stupid things that we should do, for example, memorization of something, they can do, and what we are really good at — for example, court decisions — they will not have to do. This division is often forgotten. People think that computers will do everything that people do. Not. People differ from each other, and they all really differ from computers . ”

This is very far from the punched cards that Schmidt used because he does not want the computer to confuse something because of an error in the printed.

“ Fifty years ago, people in America admired the transition from black-and-white to color television ,” says Schmidt. " And the computers then contained a megabyte of information and occupied a space the size of a small room ."

He refers to Moore's Law, which describes the long-term trend that computing power doubles every 18-24 months.

“ Now the mathematics of this is interesting ,” he says. “ Doubling every 18 months is about a factor of ten in five years. After 10 years, this is a hundred factor. After 25 - a factor of one hundred thousand.

So, when you look at things fifteen or ten years ago, you will realize that we worked in a context that was 1000 times smaller than calculations, reflections, networks, data analysis - we just could not do it.

We could not make cards. We could not do a search. We could not physically do it. You could not get enough equipment. You could not get enough energy, whereas now it is simple. After 50 years, people will think about us, how we think about the transition from black and white to color television. They will think: "Why could they not do these extraordinary things?"

Schmidt recalls his first job related to computers when it was still serving the needs of companies.

“ When I grew up, the computer industry was basically a business area. Today, it is truly a consumer and information industry. The growth of Google, the growth of Facebook, the growth of Apple - I think, the proof that there is a need for computer science, as such, which solves the problems that people face every day.

There was only one company that looked a decade ahead, and that was Apple. If you look at the nineties: Sun, Microsoft, Novell, Cisco were fundamentally infrastructure companies oriented towards corporations. That's where the money was. There was almost no household use in everyday life, with the exception of Apple. Within 10–15 years, there was a big shift, and it happened with the development of the Internet.

The easiest way to think about it is to imagine a non-technical person. What is the first thing he does with technology? He begins to use e-mail. I noticed from my non-technical friends that their first foray into my world was connecting to e-mail, which happened in 1991-1992. And then, when the Internet appeared, Internet mail protocols became standardized, everything else was transformed and you got this explosion . ”

Google picked up the wave after this explosion - sometimes controversial, but always expanding the boundaries of the possible. Schmidt says the company has tightened its product launch procedures to protect against past mistakes.

“ It is very important that lawyers do not make decisions about products ,” he says. “ Because lawyers will ultimately be more conservative because this is how lawyers work. So I always say to the creators of the products: just create the best you can.

But the reality is that when we release products, we need to be sensitive to legal and privacy issues. So now we are doing extensive research and we are very pleased that we are keeping the balance now. Engineers create things, then lawyers come. Inside the company there are often very difficult disputes between different stakeholders.

In the end, they are resolved, and in the case of StreetView [when personal data were accidentally collected] are solved quite positively. I think this will be the norm. The days when we could just release the product were gone. We do a lot, much more than five years ago. It is forever . ”

In another sense, permanent change can be Google’s motto. Schmidt, who is 55, says that he will be somewhere in the Google manual for some time, still taking his role as an “adult leader” for the very product-oriented Larry Page, who will take the post of executive director in April.

Of course, there will still be disputes and battles, but since society is facing a new technological era — an era of convergence and convenience — the future power of Google is almost impossible to overestimate.