Thiel tells Schmidt: ‘Google is out of ideas’
July 18, 2012
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and investor Peter Thiel took aim at each other in a recent debate, CNET reports.
Schmidt said technology and access to information has increased productivity and quality of life worldwide. Thiel thanked Schmidt for “doing a fantastic job” as “minister of propaganda” for Google. The tech sector has made remarkable strides in the areas of computers and software, he said, but has seen a “catastrophic” failure in other areas, such as energy innovation; ”Google is out of ideas.”
Schmidt called for more and better education, while Thiel proclaimed the inflation of an “education bubble.”
Comments (16)
by Nyk
Thiel is 100% right. Nowadays Google is more concerned about spreading gay rights to Poland or Singapore (i.e., to civilized countries – and not the Muslim countries in which gays are actually hanged from cranes) than inventing anything useful.
by Tab Cocovillea
By the way, the actual exchange is more illuminating than the summary.
http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2012/07/17/bst-thiel-schmidt-innovate.fortune/
by Tab Cocovillea
With Eric Schmidt safely out of the way, it has opened up whole new avenues of opportunity for both Sergey Brin and Larry Page to run out of ideas.
by Umberto Tosi
Given Peter Thiel’s deluded social, economic and political notions – like solipsistic “Libertarian islands” – I’d take the remark as a compliment. Thiel apparently is disappointed that Eric Schmidt isn’t a crackpot, and fortunately didn’t take Google down the Thiel rabbit hole despite investments.
by star0
I’m wondering what Thiel is talking about, exactly, when he says that Amazon is the only company investing in tech in a meaningful way. Perhaps he’s referring to Bezos’s investment in such things as nuclear fusion, and Amazon’s investment in robots to automate their factory (as well as their recent move towards same-day delivery; I posted a news article about it in the forums a week or two ago).
by Marcos Marin
They don’t need ideas. They can simply Google it up!
by trakk
When there is a limit to everything in the universe, wont there be a limit to google’s creativity too :)
by nfordkrz
I have to admit that I’m surprised that a company with the resources of Google has not made more progress in developing a full AI natural language processing system yet. That would not only revolutionize search engines, but would be a giant step towards the Singularity, and of course it would make Google the most powerful, richest company on Earth.
by Gorden Russell
Somewhere soon a couple of grad students will come up with a new start-up company doing just that…and then Google can buy them out for billion dollars.
by hut
you do not trully believe in the religion of singularity, right? We are far far away from simulating or creating intelligence.
Most likely we will modify ourselves first.
by Sherrie
We all need different types of education, along a lifelong learning path. Society, and Thiel in particular, can benefit for a re-examination of their goals. Life is about living and while profit has its place excessive profit and a hardened wealth sector, complete with control of inheritance laws through control of the legislatures worldwide via campaign donations and, depending upon the country, threats of violence all but strangle real progress. WE need to build a better world through rule of GOOD law and then perhaps both men can be accurate.
by Rob Larson
How do you define excessive profit? What makes you right and someone else’s definition of profit wrong? One thing you’re correct about, we do need more education. It’s strange that as much knowledge that is available today, we’re still struggling with unreasonable subjective ideas like “excessive profit”. How may laws do we really need? History seems to show that the more laws, regulation and restrictions we have the worse off we all are. Individuals, after all, tend to restrain themselves and act in a manner in which we’d like to be treated. Tend to, as in the majority. Perhaps what we need is less laws, less unproductive parasites telling us what we can and cannot do and simply let people determine how things go for themselves.
by Jose Font
There is always a balance that needs to be struck but right now the levers of power are tiltled in the diriection of the “excessive” (and “wanna be” excessive wealthy). For the most part, most markets are indeed rigged to varying degrees with only a relative few making out like bandits. Just announced today that JP Morgan has been “gaming” the electricty markets, for example. And yesterday it was the G20 report on oil price rigging. One can imagine just how much more is hidden, and often in plain sight because the “investment products” are so convoluted.” Making millions and millions off of thousands/second AI trades soley based on the advantage of having faster nano-second fibre link is just another example of gaming the system. The list goes on and on. What history has shown is that without rules and regulation the world will descend to Russia’s level where you only have a veneer of democracy but it is the oligarchs running things just for their own selfish benefit.
by tq
I htink there is truth to what you say at a small/local level… but this statement really breaks down as scale increases: “Individuals, after all, tend to restrain themselves and act in a manner in which we’d like to be treated”. I think we can see pretty clearly that individuals leading large corporations find it easy to act in their own self interest, even when hurting many others, without the restraint that personal contact might bring.
by Desi
Shagggz, I would “like” your comment if I could. ;)
by shagggz
I find it cute how someone whose claims to fame are such inanities as Paypal and Facebook has the gall to suggest that Google, which is ushering in the era of augmented reality and is looking like the likeliest candidate for the first synthetic intelligence to wake up into sentience, is out of ideas.