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Google Chairman Eric Schmidt rattles off all types of goodies at D9

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I just finished watching Eric Schmidt’s conversation with Walt Mossberg at AllThingsD9 and here are some of the many notable things he said:

  1. The biggie: The Gang of Four.  Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.  Four companies that are dominating their spaces right now and a lot of the friction is happening between these four in new spaces.  Each are partner/competitors with the other.  Half trillion market cap between them and growing wildly.  All based on platforms.  Very interesting way to look at things.  IBM was this in the 80s and Microsoft in the 90s.
  2. Google Offers starts devaluing Groupon in Portland tomorrow.  The service rolls out in NYC and SF this summer.  Deals. My gut tells me that Groupon is going to be very sorry it didn’t take the $7B or whatever nutty price Google was offering and run with it.
  3. He took the fall for letting Facebook win social “Four years ago, I wrote memos and I did nothing about those [in regard to Facebook] CEOs should take responsibility. I screwed up.”
  4. He had three important things to say about Apple: 1.Google just reupped with Apple on Maps (as per our story from last week) 2. Kara Said Steve Jobs called Android a Probe in your pocket [Schmidt didn’t respond directly] and 3. On security, he said get aMac, dump your PC.
  5. Face recognition is too creepy.  Google has stopped developing the technology for the fear it may be misused by evil-doers, though they would accept an Android app that did that into the Market.  Speaking of creepy, he said that he wants his coffin to rest at Google (to explain that he wants to stay a long time).  Also he almost said “Google knows where you live” but then he started getting shocked by GooglePR reps remotely and backed off.
  6. The Google Wallet was a condensed version of the demo we saw last week.

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All in all a very interesting talk.  We’ll post the full video when it is available.

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