Google CEO Larry Page is worried. He looks out at companies, including his competitors, and sees a startling lack of ambition. They're making and remaking the same products over and over again, but failing to deliver anything new. Rather than being satisfied with improving a product by 10 percent, which Page sees as a strategy that eventually leads to irrelevance, he wants Google to improve things by 10 times that amount.
In wide-ranging interview with Wired's Steven Levy, Page spoke about a number of topics, including Facebook and Steve Jobs' intention to "go thermonuclear" on Google as its Android operating system threatened Apple's dominance in the smartphone arena.
First, though, there was his anxiety.
"I worry that something has gone seriously wrong with the way we run companies," he said to Wired. "How exciting is it to come to work if the best you can do is trounce some other company that does roughly the same thing? That's why most companies decay slowly over time. They tend to do approximately what they did before, with a few minor changes. It's natural for people to want to work on things that they know aren't going to fail. But incremental improvement is guaranteed to be obsolete over time. Especially in technology, where you know there's going to be non-incremental change."
According to Page, that's why Google X is so important. The experimental department allows Google to test out multiple projects, to turn the impossible into the possible. Already, Google X has made noise with Google Glass, essentially computerized glasses that hold the potential to change the way we interact with the world. And of course there are the self-driving cars, which seemed outrageous at first but have performed so well that the manufacturers like Toyota and Audi are bringing their own efforts to the market.
"You know, we always have these debates: We have all this money, we have all these people, why aren't we doing more stuff? You may say that Apple only does a very, very small number of things, and that's working pretty well for them. But I find that unsatisfying," said Page. "I feel like there are all these opportunities in the world to use technology to make people's lives better."
Spending money on fantasy projects isn't easy, though Page says companies that don't will find themselves falling behind.
"Investors always worry, 'Oh, you guys are going to spend too much money on these crazy things.' But those are now the things they're most excited about-YouTube, Chrome, Android. If you're not doing some things that are crazy, then you're doing the wrong things."
Touching on the competition, the Google boss deflected Wired's attempt to bait him into being snarky about Apple, simply saying that he's very proud of the success Android has had.
Page wasn't as nice to Facebook though. Page did note that the social network is "strong" in its field, but tempered that praise by saying "they're also doing a really bad job on their products."
Considering the interview was conducted before Facebook revealed its Graph Search, which many believe is aimed at Google, you've got to wonder if Page is thinking anything worse about his competitor.
Read the rest of the interview here.
