14 DAY TRIAL // Google CEO Larry Page doesn't like talking to the press very much, he doesn't like anything that takes him away from running his company. Still, as a CEO, he has a tougher time avoiding these things than he did when we was just a co-founder.
In a new interview in Wired, he talks about most of the issues that have been affecting Google recently, as well as the broader stuff.
There's nothing incendiary in there and nothing that revealing either, unfortunately, but it's still a good read. He tackles Apple and Facebook, but also Google's growth, the relationship with Motorola and so on.
He steers clear of talking about competitors that much, but still manages to take a few swings. With Facebook, he believes the company does great in the social space, but that it could do a lot better when it comes to actually building stuff.
"We had real issues with how our users shared information, how they expressed their identity, and so on. And, yeah, they’re a company that’s strong in that space. But they’re also doing a really bad job on their products," he said.
He also addressed Steve Jobs' "thermonuclear war" on Android with the simple "How well is that working?"
Still, overall, he tried to move away from the idea of competition in the tech space saying that there's so much potential and so many untapped markets and ideas that there's no point in competing with anyone.
"For us to succeed, is it necessary for some other company to fail? No. We’re actually doing something different. I think it’s outrageous to say that there’s only space for one company in these areas," he said.
"I feel like there are all these opportunities in the world to use technology to make people’s lives better. At Google we’re attacking maybe 0.1 percent of that space. And all the tech companies combined are only at like 1 percent. That means there’s 99 percent virgin territory," Page explained.