Business 2.0: Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise appearance yesterday at the tail-end of the Web 2.0 conference, and had a few choice words for all the previous guests who had engaged in Google-bashing.
“We fundamentally believe in sending people to other Websites. We believe in giving people access to content, not producing it. If you search for a stock symbol on Google, the top site that comes up is Yahoo Finance. We want to send people to the best sites. We are really not about creating our own content to keep people on Google,” Brin said.
Everyone is trying to cast Google’s ambitions in terms of past metaphors like the operating system or the Web portal. Google is something significantly different. It’s value comes from its ability to match people with what exactly what they are looking for, when they are looking for it, and taking a cut of any advertising that might be associated with such matches. Brin doesn’t want to keep people on Google because he knows there will always be something more interesting somewhere else on the Web. And if he can keep on helping you find it, Google will continue to thrive.
