Google: we're very non-sticky

A report by the Telegraph on Google's Schmidt begins:

This week Google released an update to its Android mobile operating system. Known as FroYo, the new operating system makes Android mobile phones up to five times faster and makes it possible to use the phone as a wireless hotspot.
The update, the seventh since Android launched in September 2008, comes just a week after Apple launched the iPhone 4 - the latest version of the mobile phone that kicked-off a touchscreen revolution. The timing of the two launches seems emblematic of the rivalry between the two technology giants but Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman and CEO, is keen to play down the conflict.

Innovation is about changing the way we live, and there is innovation here:

The stakes are high. This is about more than just selling people a new product, it’s about shaping a social change. Within three-to-five years, Schmidt says, we’ll be consuming almost all of our information online. We’ll do it, he adds, “on devices that are live not static. The characteristics of these devices are that they know who you are, they know where you are, they can play video and they carry memory."

There is an argument that the marketplace should shape privacy policy:

Of course, along the way Google gathers an awful lot of your data. Schmidt says this enables them to deliver better-targeted ads - more lucrative for Google, more relevant and less annoying for you. However, it raises privacy issues, something for which Google has been criticised.
"I think the criticism is fine. I think criticism informs us, it makes us better. It doesn't bother me at all,” Schmidt says. However, he acknowledges the problem but says it’s a broader issue. "Those concerns are real - I'm not trying to move away from them. The fact of the matter is that if you're online all the time, computers are generating a lot of information about you. This is not a Google decision, this is a societal decision. (...)

Google, Schmidt says, is kept in check by its customers and by the competition: “All of our testing indicates that the vast majority of people are perfectly happy with our policy. And this message is the message that nobody wants to hear so let me say it again: the reality is we make decisions based on what the average user tells us and we do check. And the reason that you should trust us is that if we were to violate that trust people would move immediately to someone else. We're very non-sticky so we have a very high interest in maintaining the trust of those users."

Separately, Schmidt hammered away at Apple's lack of openness:

"The difference between the Apple model and the Google model is easy to understand - they're completely different. The Google model is completely open. You can basically take the software - it's free - you can modify whatever you want, you can add any kind of app, you can build any kind of business model on top of it and you can add any kind of hardware. The Apple model is the inverse."

Previous IPBiz post:


Google/Apple tensions: Schmidt off Apple's Board which included:

Apple is not about being open. It never has been. Every app on the iPhone (all 50,000 of them) must be approved individually, for instance. This difference in approach wasn't a problem until Google started to have mobile aspirations of its own.