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The Reason Larry Page Doesn’t Want Googlers Thinking About The Competition Is Pretty Inspiring (GOOG)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-reason-larry-page-doesnt-want-googlers-thinking-about-the-competition-is-pretty-inspiring-2012-12

During an interview with Fortune’s Miguel Helft, Google CEO Larry Page is transparently reluctant to talk about who he thinks is Google’s competition.

Helft asks him: “Is it Siri? Is it Amazon or commercial queries?”

Page tries to dodge the question, saying: “I don’t really think about it that way.”

Helf presses: “Because you don’t think about competition?”

And then Page drops this doozy, which is pretty inspirational for people in the tech industry:

“Obviously we think about competition to some extent.”

“But I feel my job is mostly getting people not to think about our competition. In general I think there’s a tendency for people to think about the things that exist. Our job is to think of the thing you haven’t thought of yet that you really need. And by definition, if our competitors knew that thing, they wouldn’t tell it to us or anybody else. I think just our strengths, our weaknesses, our opportunities are different than any other company.”

(Of course the truth is that lots of Googlers do think about the competition, and when they do, it’s mostly about Amazon lately. The reason: Google makes its money from commercial web searches, and increasingly people are just going straight to Amazon.com for that.)

SEE ALSO: 12 Quotes That Reveal How Larry Page Built Google Into The World’s Most Important Internet Company

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If you live in California, you’re soon going to have a chance to read a privacy policy for every single app you download onto your mobile phone.

That’s thanks to a “Global Agreement” signed by California Attorney General Kamala Harris and six big companies in the mobile space: Google, Apple, RIM, Microsoft, Palm, and Amazon.

Just one question.

Who reads privacy policies?

You probably don’t. Just like you don’t read the terms and conditions when you download and install software, or sign up for an online email account, or rip the tag off a new mattress.

But!

The 1% of you who do read privacy policies are probably the exact same 1% who are losing sleep because information from your iPhone address book was secretly being uploaded to the servers of Path and some other app makers.

So the Attorney General and the six companies win for looking aware and concerned about online privacy, and the privacy zealots get to rest a little easier before going off on their next crusade. (Probably against Google.)

Plus, apps makers now all have to hire lawyers to write up these privacy policies and interns to put the policies online and build links to them in their apps. Which increases employment!

Wins all around. Well done.

See also: THE TRUTH ABOUT ONLINE PRIVACY: Who Cares?

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See Also:

• Your iPad (Still) Comes From The Hands Of Teenagers Living A Factory Life
• Microsoft Ups Its Legal War Against Google With A New Attack
• The Truth About That Microsoft Office On The iPad Story