D: All Things Digital is winding down, and one of the last major components is Walt Mossberg's interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Walt begins by asking Schmidt about Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube. Schmidt says that YouTube is legal and that Viacom should simply have waited until the service had tools in place to better identify copyrighted content. Walt seems dubious.
He then asks Schmidt if Google should summon the YouTube community, if there is one, to try to drive change of copyright law to modernize copyright law for the Internet age. Schmidt sounds cautious, saying that Google wouldn't drive its community to demand such change, but might help enable them to do so.
"Google is run around end users...and all of the innovation is about helping them understand information better and providing more valuable services." He describes the Web as "porous."
Mossberg talks about Steve Ballmer's appearance at the conference yesterday. Ballmer said that there hasn't been much change in the presentation of search results. True?
Schmidt discusses Google Universal Search and its blending of different sorts of results on one page, and says that people love it. It's an example of augmented presentation. And iGoogle presentation is tremendously successful. He says that iGoogle extends to non-PC and non-Mac platforms, such as phones. "And that's pretty exciting."
Walt says iGoogle is similar to NetVibes, My Yahoo, and Apple's Dashboard, and comes back to the idea that Google's basic UI hasn't changed much. Schmidt disagrees, mentioning the new menu up top that lets you jump between various Google services.
Mossberg then brings up Ask's preview feature, that lets you see a page before clicking through to it. Schmidt says that Google has tested such a feature, but people aren't that anxious to have it, and it can introduce performance problems.
Mossberg mentions Mahalo, a new human-powered search engine that was introduced at D yestersay. He says that it's frustrating that when he searches for a hotel (with Google, apparently), he wants the site of that hotel and a trusty review, but gets a lot of junk. Schmidt says that Google thinks it can continue to prove increasingly relevant results with algorithms rather than human editors. Combating companies that try to game Google results is a neverending battle, though.
He also says that the company is working on better approaches to help people find reviews.
Mossberg shifts the conversation to ads. He's grateful that Google has steered clear of garish ads, and that it has a clear separation between search results and ads. Now, Google has acquired DoubleClick, which does display ads. Is that a portent of Google's own site shifting to display ads?
No, says Schmidt. He says that Google is showing fewer, more relevant ads than ever, and that's core to the company's business model. He thinks this approach can be used in other worlds, such as TV. It makes both users and advertisers happy, and the value of the ads goes up. "We want to solve the advertising problem in general...to bring engineering to advertising in general." Including with DoubleClick.
"'Don't be evil' is a slogan, but it's also a way of getting people to think before they act," says Schmidt, and says that the company shoots down ideas proposed by engineers if they don't serve users.
"Let's talk about evil for a moment," replies Walt, saying that some people believe that Google has become too powerful, given how much data it has on its users and its ever-expanding online platform. "I understand the concerns," Schmidt says. But he says that Google "is one click away from losing that end user" if people aren't satisfied with its services.
Mossberg points out that with DoubleClick, Google will be serving up ads all over the Web, and users won't know that the company is behind them. Is that good? Is that a healthy thing?
"The publisher of that content gets to make that decision," says Schmidt. "So far, they think it's a good thing."
Walt asks how Google evaluates Microsoft as a customer. Google has competed with it for a long time, but with Microsoft's new emphasis on advertising it'll be true more than ever. Does Google worry about that?
Sure, says Schmidt, mentioning that Microsoft controls most of the installed operating systems in the world. But he says that competition is a good thing that gives consumers and advertisers more choices. Ads are a complicated business, he says, and Google has top scientists working on figuring it out. "The challenge is high, but the opportunity is worth it."
"Talk about Yahoo in a similar way, as a competitor," asks Walt. He asks Schmidt what Yahoo should do. But Schmidt declines to give his rival advice.
Mossberg says there have been lots of rumors on the Web about Google doing more phone software or releasing a phone, or becoming a wireless carrier.
"We've been internally saying mobile, mobile, mobile," says Schmidt. That's because everybody in the world takes their phone everywhere. And with networks getting faster and better browsers like the one on the iPhone coming out, Google can say "apps, apps, apps." But it has to make its services make sense on itty-bitty screens. It's developing new stuff in collaboration with operators such as Japan's KDDI.
There are more cameras in phones than standalone digital cameras; there's GPS in phones. That makes for a very interesting platform, he says.
Mossberg points out that Google has been writing mobile apps for awhile. "The idea that you're going to write a bunch of apps is mildly interesting." But Google making a phone would be a much bigger deal.
Schmidt says that creating the infrastructure for sophisticated phone apps is a big, complicated deal. New services will be person-to-person--"like SMS gone wild."
Steve Jobs, says Mossberg, describes today's phone apps as "baby software." He's ported OS X to the iPhone. Can Google write a whole environment or operating system for a whole bunch of phones?
Schmidt says he's going to avoid announcing anything new, but says that Google is working on helping third parties write a whole universe of mobile apps.
Questions from the audience. Beginning with one from me. But I'm running out of battery juice, so I'll end this liveblogging session here...
