Google chairman Eric Schmidt's video blog on Bloomberg news was just two minutes long, but covered a variety of topics and gave viewers a pretty good preview of Google's goals moving forward and how they align with the industry.
Schmidt's first point -- about the importance of mobile -- was probably his least interesting and most obvious. Still, any quotes from one of the world's leading technological minds is at the least something to write about, especially because he rarely gives interviews, according to Bloomberg.
"There are more tablets and phones being sold than personal computers," Schmidt said of the trend towards mobile. "People are moving to this new architecture very fast."
"Mobile was winning. It's now won," Schmidt declared.
Schmidt moved on to the next question from the presumed interviewer (only Schmidt's responses were actually recorded) about market "disruptors," the big ones he is "most sure about" being "big data and machine intelligence." Basically, Schmidt was speaking about a large portion of Google's business -- tracking user's preferences and making corresponding business decisions -- and alluding to the fact that many other companies were now also capitalizing on the same practice. A disruptor Schmidt said he was unsure about was the world of commercial genetics, evidenced by the FDA's recent crackdown on 23andme.
Schmidt admitted Google's failure to fully capitalize on the rise of social media -- an admission that would have seemed appropriate a few years ago. Facebook and the like were winning and won long before mobile did. Schmidt's comments could be revealing of Google's plans to further its only average social media presence.
"At Google, the biggest mistake I made was not anticipating the rise of the social networking phenomenon," Schmidt said. "Not a mistake we're going to make again. I guess in our defense we were busy working on many other things, but we should have been in that area and I take responsibility for that."
To finish the interview, Schmidt spoke optomistically of Google's future. Even in economically down times, people still need and use the company's services, according to the chairman.
