Holy Crap, it's the Chairman and CEO of Google!

I traveled over to St. Paul again this morning, for yet another blogger brunch at the Crowne Plaza, yet this time, we didn't know who the speaker was to be beforehand.  Originally, we were supposed to get Bobby Jindal, but alas, Gustav ruined that.  We were told yesterday that they were trying to get Joe Scarborough, but they didn't know if that was going to work out, and alas it didn't.  MSNBC wanted him to stay on set, and so he did as his evil masters told him.  But we did get someone very interesting instead...Eric Schmidt, the CEO and Chairman of Google, which sponsored the event.

I recorded the entire thing, and the transcript is below the jump.  If you've at all harbored unclean thoughts about Google's political views, and that maybe those same views altered how they treat right wing blogs, and other publications, I would recommend reading what Schmidt has to say in reply.  Believe me, he got it from all angles, and I have to say it was pretty brave of him to show up in the first place.  He received not one free pass because he and his company paid for the eggs and juice.  

Q:  "Is that kind of a sense that you have, that Google isn't doing enough to reach out to the right side?"

A: "Well in the first place that's partly why we're spending so much money here, and time and people.  We have quite the operation.  The world is a better place when you know people.  People call you, and you get the feedback, and you figure out what their problems are.  So absoltutely. One of the important things to know about Google is that we do not do the content...you do the content and we index the searching.  So we're incredibly dependent upon quality content.  So we don't care about numbers, we care about quality.  So when you walk into a room, and you're that voice, it just makes it even more challenging for you, you just have to beat them in terms of quality and content and arguing.  And that's it's how the web works and it's a great thing."

Q: "Google frequently takes policy positions that are pro-regulation of the internet, especially in the so-called the Net Neutrality debate.  Why do we find Google so much on the other side of so many of these policy positions. With all that Google is doing, space travel, new browsers etc.  When are we going to see Google getting involved helping maintain and extend the competitve environment that led to Gooogle's rise in the first place?"

A: "The easiest way to understand our net neut. position is to imagine a scenario where your internet provider has a politically different view than you do.  And I don't know if that's possible, or likely, or unlikely.  Everybody here has maybe different choices, maybe similar choices.  We're very very concerned that we construct a separation between the people who run the pipes and the people who put the stuff on the pipes.  This is our view.  You may disagree with that, and I certainly respect your view on that. But the fact of the matter that a situation where that separation does not exist is a problem, because it allows corporations, for example, to censor speech of one kind or another, which is totally bad.  It's just not a good situation."

{Follow up} "So, one of the largest capitalized corporations in America is taking an approrpriate position?"

A: "Uh, yes.  So, again, I'm happy to debate this precisely.  But the scenario I want you to think through, is in a situation where, for example, the company that was the provider of your internet service disagreed with you in such a way that they disadvantaged you.  It's not a good situation.  Now, tha tcan occur with speech, which is very bad.  But it can also occur with applications, so for example you get vertically integrated corporations, where they own everything. {...}Now again, you may take, you may, there is an extreme, how would you characterize it?  There is a view of corporations that any size corporation and any level of integration is good.  Bigness is always better kind of an argument and I disagree with that.  In this particular case, we believe there is an appropriate level of government regulation, which consists of maintaining that separation."

{...}

"Our position has been argued on other people in ways that we don't agree with.  People will say that Google is in favor of this or that.  In fact, for example, with the telecom providers, we understand that telecom providers have infinte demand for a finite resource.  So, we're not arguing over, for example, differential quality of service, we just want them within a particular band, say video, not to favor one video over another."

{Follow up}: "Google itself has engaged in infrastructure implementation, in cities like San Fran, that provide the very separation that you're arguing toward here.
 

A: "Actually I disagree with you there as well.  In the wifi case in San Fran the one router and the two guys who set it up, who then caused all those other companies to invest in San Fran Free Wifi, which never happened. Not that policy."
 

{Follow-up}: "The fact that it never happened had everything to do with Earthlink pulling out rather, and not Google."
 

A: "One of our goals was to get corporations to take their money rather than cities' money to make free wifi."

Q: "Michael Bates, Batesline.com.  {...} In your discussion of separating the pipes from the content providers and situatiuon where a provider may be politically at odds with the people who are trying to use that provider to gather information, I couldn't help but think of the situation in the PRC and I wonder if you could address Google's stance toward the Chinese government's filtering of content."
 

A: "This one was a hard one{...}  Let me tell you a little bit about how China works.  china's a dictatorship and they have a firewall, called the Great Firewall, which is a censorship model.  It's pretty evil, by any definition.  So, we faced the following choice: if we did not follow the law in China, the firewall would have shut down access to Google period.  And was doing so.  To follow the law meant putting in a trigger, essentially, that for certain keywords, an example is "Falun Gong," we omit the result.  We debated and debated.  The company was split half and half.  We ultimately decided it was better to engage, and when we show one of those we actually publish a citation saying, in chinese, dear chinese citizen, the government has forced us to remove this information.  Now, I don't know what really happens, but the Chinese people that I know are incredible smart, and I think it's a reasonable assumption that, probably, they then use illegal means to go and get that information.  We're proud of this, in a compromised sense, because after doing this for a year, the local competitors, BAidu in particular, have now been forced to do that as well.  So, it's a small victory for free speech. The alternative, and the reason that this was such a hard decision for Google, is that we would have been completely frozen out of the market because of this Great Firewall.  {...} Is that when institutions start screwing around with routers, and preferences, and firewalls, and censorship, really bad stuff starts happening, and often it's insidious.  One of the issues in China, having been there a lot, every Chinese citizen is sort-of ok because they don't really have the other voices, and I think it's important to have those voices."

Q: "Matt Sheffiled from Newsbusters: Can you talk a little bit about how Google seems to vastly give enormous amounts of money to left wing operations and basically none to conservative operations, and then also in terms of the political donat. of Google emply., especially of your colleagues at the top, who gave overwhelmingly to Democrats vs. Republicans.  How can we as Conservatives perceive Google as an objective entity when there is this clear, obvious disparity?"

A: "A good question.  We have a PAC;  the PAC is split 50-50, and, so again, that's all public information, and you can inspect that. So, as a corporation we made the decision to creat a pac, which is itself controversial, and to donate 50-50, and I think it's slightly biased toward Republicans at the moment.  But call it 50-50. The employees, of course we have no legal way of influcing, in fact it's illegal to influence their contributions."
 

{Follow-up from someone else}: "Doesn't that show you need more diversity?"
 

A:"I would argue that it does."
 

{Follow-up}: "What can we do about it?"
 

A: "Work for Google, for one thing?"
 

{Follow-up from someone else}: "Are you hiring?"
 

{laughter}
 

A: "We are hiring.  I don't know, because I'm not legally allowed to ask this question, but I can offer you my guess.  Employees at Google, are generally right out of college, they tend to be in NY and Calif. and they're very socially liberal.  My guess is that's not a sweet spot for most of you in the room."
 

{Follow-up from someone else}: "Actually, the conservative blogosphere is overwhelmingly libertarian."
 

A:Ok, thank you for that correction.  So, maybe the blogosphere, but if you ultimately, my guess is that the Google employee's guess is socially liberal, fiscally conservative.  If that's libertarian {...} then there may be more alignment than you think.  If you think about it, California, in particular, is incredilby progressive with respct to a lot of things that traditional, conservative social policy is opposed to, and my guess is that drives a lot of this behavior."
 

{Follow-up from someone else:} "Although, Silicon valley is actually fairly conservative."
 

A:"Uh, not soc..."
 

{Follw-up from same blogger}: "I live there"
 

A:"But not socially.  Every company has very, very progressive gay rights positions and economic {...} not socially.  Financially?  Absolutely.  You're absolutely right, but one of the problems I see is that the traditional labels, and this is my own opinion now, and maybe you guys agree or disagree, that the traditional levels of republican and democrat don't work as well with this new cohort of people."
 

Q:"Just to follow up on what Matt asked, how do you respond to the cricticism in the conservative blogosphere that Google tends to favor more left-leaning publications and left-leaning articles in its search?"
 

A:"Give me some data."
 

{Follow up}"Ok"
 

A: "The arguments about the search are always interesting because whenever I get them, I always check.  And the answer turns out to be that our search algorithms which aer not perfect, tend to bias in favor of popularity.  If you have this large, overwhelming agreement that the world is flat, Google  might conclude the world is flat, when it turns out its just the title of a book.  There are errors in what Google does, but I can assure you, having done lots and lots of code reviews, that there is no human bias. There may be algorithmic bias, but its certainly not intended.  And again that might make this earlier gentleman's comment about scale, you know, in part of getting you guys going, is to get more of you.  More voices.  The solution to speech problems is more speech, not no speech."

Q: "Could you tell us why having government stay out of this part of the industry, this part of the sector, why you all see that as problematic?"
 

A: "Let's imagine the following scenario:  Who is the largest internet provider  in America today?"
 

{Follow-up}"In North America?"
 

"In America."
 

"Probably Comcast."
 

A: "So, let's take Comcast.  Whoever is the largest. And let's imagine they were 80 percent, they would be able to start to do proprietary extensions of protocol, and that could eventually use withholding of information to create a protected substructure within the internet, right?  Now, you have to decide if you think that's an ok outcome.  The internet was based on the principal that that could not happen.  You all know, and this may also be controversial with this, I spent 25 years at Microsoft, which has a very large popular market share, who did those kinds of things.  We can debate whether they were correct or not, but where you come out on that often, I think, predicts your view on this.  So this issue is not...there is no current behavior.  So, Comcast, for example, is not doing the what I'm describing, but you worry that when any company, including Google, btw, gets that level of control over something, it can do proprietary extensions, that they make it impossible for competition to occur.  So, now for example with Chrome, which we announced yesterday...well, actually we announced it Monday, in a comic book, which is a separate discussion. {laughter} the source code is free.  It's very hard to argue against that kind of a strategy.  You like it, you don't, you change it, do whatever you want."
 

Q:"But aren't there existing statutes under fair trade laws and whatnot that regulate such things without net neutrality?"
 

A: "Well, that's one of the arguments were making is thatt the combination of FCC and FEC history and so forth causes net neutrality to be the correct regulatory act.  I would encourage you all to think not in the terms of the specifics, cause I'm not wild about{...}the unintended effects of regulation.  Well, I compeltely agree with you.  You start down this path, and the govenrment starts doing really wacky stuff, and could really screw it up.  The question is: how do you find that line? Even if you don't like my mechanism, the sort of discussion we're having, understand the outcome and why it's important, because ultimately if it were used against you, you'd be really upset.  And the way it could be would be in ways that would be really bad.  Come up with some mechanism if you don't like ours."
 

{Follow-up by someone else}:"Come up with an example of it happening in the real world?"
 

A: "Excuse me?"
 

{Follow-up}:"Come up with an example of it happening in the free world.  The only example we've been given is China, which is not analogous to the US economic or political situation.  In the US, by definition, if Comcast created a substructure within the internet, that's not anti-competitve, because it's entirely within the Comcast market, which people are compeltely free to opt out of.  If Google is truly basing this massive policy effort on a complete hypothetical, ginned by fears of what's happening in Communist China?"
 

A:"That's not what I said."
 

B: "Yes, it is."
 

[...}
 

A: "The answer is that we're trying to avoid answering.  Going back, in the first place, this has nothing to do with communist china or captialist china, or whatever your view of china is.  This has nothing to do with that.  net neturality is a principal we feel strongly about based upon the origins of the internet."
 

{...}

Q: "Hi, I'm a chicago blogger, and I frequently blog about Barack Obama, needless to say.  I was blocked, among many of the blogspot bloggers, by Google,  for two or three days at the height of the, there was "NoBama" Group, which I was not at all a part of, which was also blocked, so what steps are you taking, and I was blocked then I was informed, and luckily I kind of signed off for the weekend, and I find that very arrogant, to block me, without verifying first that I was a real person, and not some kind of spam thing.  I'm not a technical person, but I thought that was the wrong way to approach it, and I was upset and very offended, and so what steps are you taking to address that, that you are not blocking your own bloggers through some malicious campaign by, you know, lefty bloggers, I assume, to silence the voices of conservative bloggers?  And when it was restored, I did not get an email or anything, I just found that it was back up."
 

A: "I asked for a review of what happened there, because it was a short interruption to look at the spam problem, but it created all of these other issues, and I think, it was either a mistake, or we should have done it differently, so I don't understand enough of the details."
 

{Follow-up}: "It was three days.  If that had been during the week, it happened on Thursday night, that was, really in the blog world, as you know, that is very serious."
 

A: "I think the correct thing for me is to simply apologize.  IT was not intentional, in the ways that people have speculated.  And we'll make sure, that if we have to do stuff like that, we'll do it in a better way.  The specific issues have to do with the hijacking of sites, spamming and so forth and so on. It has nothing to do... we want more voices, and if we screwed up, we screwed up."
 

Q:"Do you think that was possible because of malicious user flagging?  I've noticed that left wing people seem to flag conservative views especially as offensive, or probably a service violation."
 

A: "It's perfectly possible that people tried silence you all, and that's not ok.  And if we can't detect it, we need to be able to detect it. That's a problem.  And by the way, it's also symetrically true that the opposite direction is true as well."  

end.