Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Interview With AllThingsD

Google chairman Eric Schmidt sat down with  AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher for a very insightful interview. The interview covered a wide range of topics, which include his thoughts on Apple moving to their own maps, patent wars and Google self-driving cars.

Click on the video link below to view the interview.

Here are some of the take away from the interview:

• Schmidt believes that the “Gang of Four” idea – the most influential tech companies  are Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google.  He thinks Microsoft is a well-run company, but they haven’t been able to bring state-of-the-art products into the fields we’re talking about yet. different, all competitors, all making enormous investments.

• Schmidt stated, “Apple should have kept our maps. Apple decided a long time ago to do their own maps … [now they’ve] discovered that maps are really hard.”

•  Schmidt: “The Android-Apple platform fight is the defining contest. Here’s why: Apple has thousands of developers building for it. Google’s platform, Android, is even larger. Four times more Android phones than Apple phones. 500 million phones already in use. Doing 1.3 million activations a day. We’ll be at 1 billion mobile devices in a year. Compare this to the PC industry. Phone user population is six billion, one billion smartphone users. Much bigger than the PC industry — maybe a billion, 1.5 billion installed.”

•  Schmidt: “Facebook is attempting to become the world’s communication hub. Off to a good start. Amazon wants to be the world’s store. All of these guys compete, but they also link up in different ways.”

• Schmidt on patent war: “I can’t talk about it because I don’t know the details and because it actually just gets me too upset.  Patent wars are a disaster for all of us. Everyone can find prior art for everything. So the new trick is to get judges to block devices country by country. It’s bad for innovation, it’s bad for choices.We are now spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fight these fights against patent trolls, and we’re winning.”

• Schmidt on Apple’s patent win in court: “I don’t know enough about it. I know that Samsung is very upset. … It’s better if I don’t comment on the jury’s decision. The victims here are not Google and Apple. It’s the little companies that can’t acquire patents to protect themselves.”

• Schmidt: Let’s talk about cars. “It’s really an error that we’re allowed to drive the car.” A computer can obviously do this better “once we get a few bugs ironed out.” There are 30,000 people killed on American highways. It’s a terrible tragedy. If there’s some way we can help, that’s a good thing. Most likely scenario is that the car manufacturers end up using some of the technology, and we’re in talks with them.

• Schmidt on being CEO of Apple, Amazon or Facebook: I was on Apple’s board, and I’ll always have a soft spot for them. I was very good friends and very close to Steve Jobs, and we miss him dearly. Jeff Bezos has made remarkable moves. And again, Facebook has a billion users. I will choose the one with the most cash? That would be Apple.

Source: AllThingsD