Google's Executives Are Not Concerned by Microsoft

The four Google products launched yesterday were accompanied by a press conference, at which reporters had the chance to talk with the Mountain View company executives about the competition with Microsoft and about Google's goals and principles.

According to Silicon.com, Google executives said they don't focus too much on the Microsoft conflict, but that they keep an eye on the plans to embed web search functionality in Vista, the operating system delayed to January 2007.

Larry Page, co-founder of the company, stressed the idea that Google is less interested in the business conducted by other companies and that they prefer creating products that set new standards.

"We try not to focus on what they [Microsoft] are doing," Page said. In order to make his point, he used Gmail, the service which still holds the record for inbox storage space, as an example

"Everybody had to react to us. We didn't have to react to them", he said.

Another problem debated at the conference was Google's mantra, „Do no evil", and whether the company is still following it.

When asked if „Do no evil" can resist being a business, Sergey Brin said: "In short, yes." We've done a good job on aligning our business goals with the goals of our users and doing the best we can."

Another question related to "Do no evil" targeted the risk involved by the huge volume of personal data collected by Google. "How can you guarantee you're not evil?" a reported asked.

"We rely on the trust of our uses, and if we did something bad as defined by our users, it would severely hurt us […] I would worry more about companies that don't have a user brand but are gathering a ton of info," Larry Page answered.