WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange & Google Exec Chairman Eric Schmidt met for five hour chat … but it isn’t as interesting as you’d hope

When a transcript is posted of a five-hour secret meeting between WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, you’d expect it to be pretty riveting stuff. Only … it isn’t, very …

There’a a fair bit of material to interest geeks about the technicalities of information authentication, but the bulk of it is Assange’s reasons for doing what he’s done and the difference he believes it makes, which is not entirely uninteresting but not quite what one would have hoped of an exchange between the two – especially one lasting five hours.

There are a few interesting factoids along the way, such as Assange not using email as he believes encrypted emails are a flag for interception, and, as Gizmodo observed, Schmidt being unaware at the time – April of last year – what Bitcoin is.

And if you’re wondering why the transcript of a meeting that took place last April has hit the web a year later, well the interview was for a book being co-authored by Schmidt and Google Ideas director Jared Cohen, who was also present. And it just so happens that The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business is being published on 25th April.