14 DAY TRIAL // Seagate CEO Bill Watkins is well known for his "salty" and straightforward remarks regarding almost everything that comes through its mind. This time though, he said something that probably shook the entire audience. And with this latest trick, Watkins will probably remain in the history books as the most brutally honest hard drive executive ever.
During a conversation with Fortune's senior editor Jeffrey O'Brien, Watkins said: "Let's face it; we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch p*rn." Nice one coming from Seagate. And true, so true.
"People worry that newspapers are going out of business. So what? It's the content that's important. No one gives a s**t about the delivery mechanism. Think about mail. You had the pony express, truck delivery, airmail, email. You don't care how it gets to you. I read more now than I ever did, but I get it off my PC. I don't need to go down to the end of the driveway and pick up the newspaper. It's the content that's most important."
It's obvious that Watkins, during the dinner, said what everyone knew all along, but you have to give him the credit of being the first ever to say that large hard drives are only good in non server-related environments.
Seagate is generally known for their Barracuda line of hard drives, but the company also makes a plethora of portable hard drives from the "Pocket Hard Drives" line to the "Mirra Personal Server" products. During the last months, the company completely acquired Maxtor. The DiamondMax line is still in stores and Seagate plans to produce it in the next following years.