In a press conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said tonight that for six years he resisted the urge to build what became the Chrome browser and the operating system.
I had guessed that Schmidt, who has been a foe of Microsoft’s while at Novell and Sun Microsystems, was itching to get into the operating system business so that he could undo Microsoft’s monopoly. But the Wall Street Journal reported that Schmidt said it was the co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page who finally convinced him. Schmidt made the remarks at the Allen & Co. conference, where he dined for lunch with rival Bill Gates.
Schmidt said that Google was a small company back when he joined in 2001 and that, having witnessed the browser wars, he didn’t want to do that again. Brin and Page hired some Firefox developers who built a Chrome demo. It turned out to be so good that Schmidt changed his mind. Page said, “I think we just wore you down.”
The winning argument was that they could make computing simpler and faster. Now Schmidt said he believes that Chrome, which launched in September and now has 30 million users, and the Chrome OS, which launches next year as an operating system for netbooks (smaller than laptops), are “game changers.” He said they change the way you think about your computer.
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Schmidt and Page took pains to position Chrome as not a direct competitor to Microsoft’s Windows. They believe it will expand the market for netbooks, where Microsoft is a bit player thanks to competition from Linux. (Microsoft’s software often requires beefier processors and memory than are typically used in netbooks).
While Chrome will be free, Schmidt said that Google benefits when people spend more of their life online. Schmidt said he would talk to Apple about recusing himself from discussions of Apple’s operating system, as he did when Apple’s board discussed the iPhone. (Google’s Android software is a direct competitor to the iPhone).
[photo: Flickr, Duncandavidson]
