Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt admits he 'screwed up'

THE FORMER CEO OF GOOGLE, Eric Schmidt has admitted that he "screwed up" when it came to providing real competition to Facebook.

Speaking at the All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, Schmidt said that he didn't take Facebook seriously at first and that for years he commented that Google "missed something". He said that the industry would benefit from an alternative to Facebook, which obviously he thinks should be Google.

Schmidt said that there are only four companies exploiting platform strategies very well. These are Apple, Amazon, Facebook and, of course, Google. All of these are performing very strongly in their respective sectors, with a significant overlap between the companies in terms of the areas of the IT industry they work in, such as mobile, social networking and the cloud.

Schmidt also explained a little about Google's failure to secure a deal with the record industry to support a subscription-based music service for Google Music, which launched as a cloud storage and streaming service last month.

He said that a major obstacle was the move from a "scarcity" model to an "ubiquity" model, which means charging a small amount for a large number of copies instead of the traditional approach of charging a lot for a smaller number.

Another sticking point was distribution and mediation. The possibility of 'piracy' and people bypassing the record labels to get their music was something that the industry wasn't happy about. Yet that didn't seem to stop Apple from making the same deals that Google missed out on, so this point sounds like an excuse for Google's inability to close the deal.

When it came to mobile platforms, Schmidt held fast to the assertion that only Apple's IOS and Google's Android are real contendors, despite attempts by the interviewers to get him to recognise Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 as a third platform worth investing in for developers.

Privacy was also a hot topic, with Schmidt saying that the company is committed to providing anonymous searches and giving users control over the information it has about them. He said it's all about transparency, letting users know what they know and giving them the choice to delete it.

Schmidt also got a plug in for the Mac, saying it's more secure than a PC due to the lower number of viruses. He recommended using the Chrome browser for speed and security.

Schmidt said he'd like to stay with Google for as long as possible, even "after death if they put the coffin there". µ