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Google CEO discusses Apple relationship, mobile plans, and driverless cars in 70-minute interview

Google CEO discusses Apple relationship, mobile plans, and driverless cars in 70-minute interview

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Larry Page
Larry Page

Google CEO Larry Page has sat down with Fortune's Miguel Helft for an extensive interview covering his company's mobile strategy, current performance, and future goals. Excerpts from that interview have just been posted online, showing a guarded Larry evading the most pointed questions about who Google perceives as its competitors and how it intends to better monetize its mobile services, but he does deliver a few more forthright comments. On the topic of the internet, Google's co-founder and boss is disappointed to see it growing more "island-like" and isolated into portal websites instead of the old wide-open digital prairie it once was.

"The Internet was made in universities and it was designed to interoperate. And as we've commercialized it, we've added more of an island-like approach to it, which I think is a somewhat a shame for users."

Tackling the issue of competition, Larry does say that he sees his job as "mostly getting people not to think about our competition." Because, as he says, Google's innovation depends on thinking up the things users need but aren't even aware they need, it's of little use to the company's progress to be wondering what Apple or Amazon is doing.

"If you're looking at somebody else, you're looking at what they do now, and that's not how again you stay two or three steps ahead."

In spite of the interviewer's best efforts, there's no indication of rancor between Google and Apple, though Larry does reiterate that "it would be nice if everybody would get along better and the users didn't suffer as a result of other people's activities" when asked about his company's relationship with Tim Cook's team.

There's lots more in the source link below, including Page's views on the progress of Google+ so far, his aspirations for driverless cars and other socially good technology, and of course his plans for the Motorola Mobility division.