Google’s Schmidt Lays Out Grand Plan For Google+

Google+ will be the cornerstone of personalisation and identity on the Internet, Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt told reporters at a Sun Valley California conference yesterday.

Speaking at investment bank Allen & Co’s annual media conference, Schmidt (pictured) said he was encouraged by strong demand for Google+ invitations.

If this continues Google+’s Circles concept, by which information can be shared privately within user-defined groups, it could also become central to the company’s other products such as Gmail, YouTube and search.

“The whole company is ramping up on top of it,” he is reported to have said.

“The assumption is that everything will move over to using the Plus infrastructure over time.”

So far, the biggest problem with Google+ has been the number of people disappointed at not getting invitations, he said, but added that it was necessary to limit users intially, in order to iron out bugs.

A sense of identity

He believes that, ultimately, having an online identity system will allow for greater customisation of numerous services online.

“The issue on the Internet is identity,” he said. “And if you had a strong and clear identity there’s a lot of things you could do, again with people’s permission.”

Schmidt was keen to differentiate Google+ from Facebook on the privacy issue, saying it had different defaults and took an entirely different approach.

Circles would be a good example of its privacy approach, basing sharing on groups rather than widespread and indiscriminate broadcasting.

He claimed that reviews showed that users could see that it wasn’t simply a Facebook ‘knock-off’. However he did say that Google had been talking with Facebook for two years about sharing data and contacts, but no agreement could be reached.

Keep calm and carry on

Speaking to reporters he also said that Google was calm about antitrust probes in Europe and the US and said they had been expecting scrutiny from regulators.

He also said that YouTube was getting better at making Google money. But it “depends on how you do the accounting” as to whether it’s profitable. Google acquired YouTube for $1.65bn (£883m) back in 2006.

Schmidt has been executive chairman at Google since April after ten years as CEO.