Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

Tom: I'm Tom Friedman, from the Flat World. As a newspaper reader, it seems like google is in the news every day. Where are you guys going? What is the new, new thing for google, and what is the macro frame around it?

Eric: The news this week, of course, is that we're integrating our search works into a common set of answers called universal search. People wanted to be able to ask the right question and get the right answer in one place, not in separate search tools.

Tom: Some people say the Net is the dialtone of the 21st century, and that access should be free and a right, that it's essential to how we think and collaborate.

Eric: I don't know if it's as important as healthcare, but it almost is. If you don't have access, you really don't have access to the modern world. There's hope, though. Unlike other industries... we live in a world of rapid tech improvement and deflation in prices, thanks to Moore's law. It's improving by a factor of 10 every five years. A lot of the things we're talking about now, weren't broadly available five years ago. Prices are falling, fiber is spreading, wireless is opening up.

Tom: Is there a Moore's law for search?

Eric: Most people would call it the network effect, with more people putting knowledge in and adding value to it. An easy way to understand it, is that you can use a personal version of google, and we can tailor your results based on your interests. Ten years from now, it might say, good morning, you're like, like you're always late. Like it can mimic the way you think.

Tom: Right now people in the room are searching and creating content.

Eric: It's like a google meeting - no one is paying attention. (laughs)

Tom: My motto is that I want to see all 10 fingers on the table.

Eric: It's a battle we've lost. And it's a permanent change.

Tom: What's the political impact of this instant access, and to author content, and globalize content?

Eric: let's talk negatives first. A very small group can analyze the foibles, mistakes and errors that happen in life and exploit them. I can't imagine you're perfect. Our politicians aren't, and if they make a single make, they get excoriated, because someone is trying to take them down. As for the positives, most people understand it in terms of before and after tv. Once politicians are in front of a camera, their personality changes. The same thing might occur with personalized media. People want a specialized message, so a politician might have to record 50 different greetings so users get personalized responses. As for loftier goals, people who care about truth can use the medium to fact check. We need a truth detector. It's easy to have a compendium of every word and deed. But it could also be used to identify truth and lies. It also means people will be skeptical in believing something the first time they hear it, because they're getting bombarded from so many angles.

Education will have to change, and students will be taught to confirm their biases, learn the truth - learn how to search and navigate.

Tom: A friend of mine has a book coming out about how you live your life. It'll be more important now because life is so transparent. Bush couldn't get elected if he were in Yale now with a profile on MySpace.

Eric: And what of Tom Friedman? (laughs)

Tom: Now, potential bosses can google you, find your facebook site, etc. How do you at google handle it?

Eric: At the age of 21, I think it should be okay to change your name. Anything you do before that can go away unless there's a court order. (laughs)

We're developing a lifetime of memories that not everyone would want to know. As you get older you understand your actions are consequential. My daughter calls this too much sharing at a young age. We're beginning to see a backlash in schools. Kids want friends, and expose themselves too much to fit in... The other consequence is that people are always in the media. Everyone has a phone with a camera. You're all, if you will, digital agents of photography. If there's an accident outside, you'd all be able to document it. It can all be online and searched. So you then have another problem - info that was once hard to get to is now easy to find, and stuff people try to hide gets out there. It's a matter of living with a historical record, and people are going to be more careful of how they talk to each other, and what they offer of themselves.

Tom: You and I knew each other when the world was round. How does life change now that you're a public figure?

Eric: One scenario is that we could all adopt a lifestyle of Paris Hilton. Every hour being completely in the media, and it doesn't matter what people say about you. Most public figures are affected by what's said about them, and sometimes what's said is false. We tend to find stories where there are not, and an isolated incident happens a couple of times, and people conclude those incidents define your entire being, even if the info about those incidents are sketchy. And once biases are set in peoples' minds, they're hard to unset. Once you have a view of Bush or Clinton, you don't change your mind. It's called confirmation bias. Everything you hear gets interpreted to support your pre-existing viewpoint.

Tom: In the Bahrain election, they were using Google Earth to take pictures on what was going on behind the walls of property owned by the ruling family. It became a big issue as people learned about it. What happens if a king somewhere says to google, "Your google earth is a national security threat." How do you handle it?

Eric: On a case by case basis. In Bahrain, we one that one. Kings and other leaders need political support, and they will respond to political pressure. In Bahrain, when they shut google earth, there was such a backlash, they had to turn it on again. And the backlash made it a bigger deal than if they'd just let it be. Unless the censorship has a moral basis, or is a huge invasion of personal privacy, most people will say, Why can we see this pictures? Google earth has brought a third dimension of information to people. Unless you fly a lot, you don't get to see the world from above, and it's pretty phenomenal.

More recently, the Thai govt blocked YouTube because of content that lampooned the king and the government. Google agreed that the content related to the king should be blocked because it was a clear violation of local law, but the other videos were political speech and were kept online.

Tom: And what about China?

Eric: Let me explain a little bit about how the Chinese structure work. There's something that's often called the Great Firewall, and it prevents some info from entering China. To enter the country, we had to be subject to their media laws, and there are a specific set of terms involving political expression. It's perhaps the hardest question we've had to face, the most difficult one. So we decided to enter the country, and if we decide to omit some result - about one out of 10,000 searches - we tell the user that the content was blocked. And you can imagine what they do next- they find away to go around the firewall and access it. So far, that structure hasn't broken yet. The arrival of the Net in China is changing politics - around 140 million Internet users there. You have to believe that the arrival of broad access to info has to be good for the evolution of the eventual state of democratic China.

Tom: should Google be a regulated utility?

Eric: There are plenty of governments globally trying to regulate us, trying to manage access to knowledge, and we certainly wouldn't encourage it. The company faces many of the issues we're talking about now. Two years ago, these weren't top of list. I wasn't as familiar with the legal structures in all of these countries. Now we're trying to do that, trying to be more transparent. And if you don't like what we're doing, you don't have to use it. We then purchased youtube and use it much as we can to document what we're doing. Smart people will try to learn what we're doing and then criticize us, which is healthy.

Tom: What did you learn from youtube:

Eric: We knew what we were getting into, but we're learning the incredible complexity of the media world: rights, production management, etc. It can slow down decisionmaking. People can get much more upset about a video than just words - it has a stronger impact. If I told you presidential candidate spend X to have his hair blown dry, it's one thing, but a video would change it. Or when Senator Allen said Macaca on video, it might have been a component in what happened to him. Youtube is different than what happened in TV. The average person watches a few videos, and curates their own. It's not programmed by professionals. It's user-programmed. Some day mobile phones might have an upload to youtube button so your life gets uploaded there instantly. And highly important info can be delivered to a community quickly.

Tom: So if I wanted to get hired by Google, how do you do it?

Eric: We have hundreds of recruiters globally. Though you and I could just have a direct conversation.

Innovation is the greatest strength of America. The Net is the best platform now for people to innovate. And the cost of innovating has gone down dramatically, so the barrier to becoming an entrepreneur is low. On the Net, all avenues get tried, and the best ones will often succeed.

Jeff Jarvis: I cover the election and YouTube on Prezvid.com. What should candidates be doing?

Eric: We've got YouChoose, where we're highlighting their videos. One of the Democratic presidential debates will also be on youtube, which I'm proud to announce, and I'm hoping we'll do one for the Republicans as well.

Andrew Rasiej: Candidates don't always seem authentic on youtube.

Eric: It's a generational shift. Perhaps the next generation of candidates will be more comfortable with it. Online video tends to need more humor, excitement, perkier, for it to be effective. People lose interest when they see a long monotone on their screen.

Q: What about the military's blocking of sites like Youtube and Myspace?

Eric: We would prefer that they not. (laughter) People are pretty good at deciding how to spend their time, so we're not in favor having access limited.

Steve Pederson: About personalized search... You want to provide the most relevant results, but at what point do you worry it could be used to provide info based solely on your political view and doesn't challenge their world view?

Eric: I think that's why we need to invest more in education. As a company we're not going to make a value judgment on how to search. I would hope that people would know not to have a narrow point of view. People who are searching are learning, and learning is always part of a good life.