Larry Page's Vision of the Future

adamjh writes "Yesterday, Google co-founder Larry Page gave an amazing talk to the 2005 graduating class of the University of Michigan College of Engineering. In true geek form, I made sure to record Larry's entire speech on my mobile phone in order to share with the Slashdot community a rare glimpse into Larry's thoughts on the past, present, and future -- on topics ranging from dropping out of Stanford to start Google to "Thinking Big" and the abundance of venture capital to traveling to Mars, curing world hunger, and well, much much more."

Comments

Textual transcript, anyone?

[rice_burners_suck]

You must have boatloads upon boatloads of bandwidth to be able to post something like that right on the front page of Slashdot.

I'll wait a few hours before hitting that link, but man, I wish there were a textual transcript of the same, because that would be easier to analyze, quote, and reference.

Re:Textual transcript, anyone?

[siobHan]

Well, there is boatloads of bandwidth, but I don't think he'd like to see his bill.

About 8GB was transferred in about 18 minutes, before it was shut down.

J

Page's Take on Business

[Pavan_Gupta]

I couldn't agree with Page more ..

larry page: "I know a lot of you are planning on going to business school, but I don't think you need to go to business schoool"

larry page: "I just read a bookshelf of business books"

From a man worth 7 billion dollars, it sure seems to me like his statement on how to run a business is pretty reputable.

Re:Page's Take on Business

[thoth_amon]

College doesn't teach you how to make money, it teaches you how to conform, how to fit into the machine. To be a leader, you have to UNlearn a lot of what they teach in college, even the best colleges. With a great college education, you can be a successful part of the machine. You will probably make middle-to-upper-middle wages if your degree is in the sciences or engineering; you will probably become a manager at some point, or if you are especially good, maybe an executive. Unless you learn leadership and independent thinking, you will never be really rich; you will always implement somone else's idea and ultimately you will always be, at most, a well-treated slave.

Re:Page's Take on Business

[Anonymous Coward]

I know how Schmidt was hired. The VCs had Page and Brin meet with lots of successful people in the Valley, and they all told them that they needed someone with experience. They listened, and they paid Schmidt a billion bucks or so in stock. He's not there just for decoration, he does a lot of shit work that has to get done if a company is going to succeed, and unless one has experience or training, one won't know how to do this shit work.
Every example of a non-MBA at the head of a highly successful tech company either has decades of experience or someone with experience or an MBA working underneath him.

Anyone...

[jgold03]

want to write a transcript of the message for us... ...please :)

I was there too (though I've not graduated)

[mnemonic_]

I found it pretty underwhelming. Page is not a great speaker he's a geek. There were several ums and 4-second awkward pauses, unlike the other speeches (by students and others). He fumbled with words at times and it seemed he had barely rehearsed. And the content was nothing fantastic. "Take risks, space flight is cool [cheers from aero majors], my parents met in a coop, how many of you would work for Google if we opened an Ann Arbor office, blah." It was nice, somewhat encouraging but to me, his manner of speaking made the whole thing fall flat. He gave not pearls of wisdom, but offhand comments on fun bits of tech.

Re:In other news

[jb.hl.com]

Thank you for your kind comments regarding my post. Would you care to elaborate as to what was wrong with it?

DUPE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not slashdots fault this time!

Its his fault, ha gave the EXACT SAME SPEECH at the first robotics nationals in georgia

The Google and the future from another one

[hermank]

I did not listen to the speech. However, I found that the EPIC 2014 has more insight on the google and the future.
http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/

For those who dont want to see the flash movie, here goes the text: (some content is omitted near the end, so I would recommend to see the flash movie)

* * * *

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland, invents the World Wide Web.

1994 sees the founding of Amazon.com. Its young creator dreams of a store that sells everything. Amazon's model, which would come to set the standard for Internet sales, is built on automated personalized recommendations - a store that can make suggestions.

In 1998, two Stanford programmers create Google. Their algorithm echoes the language of Amazon, it treats links as recommendations, and from that foundation powers the world's most effective search engine.

In 1999, TiVo transforms television by unshackling it from the constraints of time - and commercials. Almost no one who tries it ever goes back.

That year, a dot-com start-up named Pyra Labs unveils Blogger, a personal publishing tool.

Friendster launches in 2002 and hundreds of thousands of young people rush to populate it with an incredibly detailed map of their lives, their interests and their social networks. Also in 2002, Google launches GoogleNews, a news portal. News organizations cry foul. GoogleNews is edited entirely by computers.

In 2003, Google buys Blogger. Google's plans are a mystery, but their interest in Blogger is not unreasonable.

2003 is the Year of the Blog.

2004 would be remembered as the year that everything began.

Reason Magazine sends subscribers an issue with a satellite photo of their houses on the cover and information custom-tailored to each subscriber inside.

Sony and Philips unveil the world's first mass-produced electronic paper.

Google unveils GMail, with a gigabyte of free space for every user.

Microsoft unveils Newsbot, a social news filter.

Amazon unveils A9, a search engine built on Google's technology that also incorporates Amazon's trademark recommendations.

And then, Google goes public.

Awash in new capital, the company makes a major acquisition. Google buys TiVo.

2005 - In response to Google's recent moves, Microsoft buys Friendster.

2006 - Google combines all of its services - TiVo, Blogger, GMail, GoogleNews and all of its searches into the Google Grid, a universal platform that provides a functionally limitless amount of storage space and bandwidth to store and share media of all kinds. Always online, accessible from anywhere. Each user selects her own level of privacy. She can store her content securely on the Google Grid, or publish it for all to see. It has never been easier for anyone, everyone to create as well as consume media.

2007 - Microsoft responds to Google's mounting challenge with Newsbotster, a social news network and participatory journalism platform. Newsbotster ranks and sorts news, based on what each user's friends and colleagues are reading and viewing and it allows everyone to comment on what they see.

Sony's ePaper is cheaper than real paper this year. It's the medium of choice for Newsbotster.

2008 sees the alliance that will challenge Microsoft's ambitions. Google and Amazon join forces to form Googlezon. Google supplies the Google Grid and unparalled search technology. Amazon supplies the social recommendation engine and its huge commercial infrastructure. Together, they use their detailed knowledge of every user's social network, demographics, consumption habits and interests to provide total customization of content - and advertising.

The News Wars of 2010 are notable for the fact that no actual news organizations take part.

Googlezon finally checkmates Microsof

Re:Peak oil (again)

[ArbitraryConstant]

Peak oil will happen, but fusion isn't going to help us. We're generations away from commercial fusion power.

Fission is the only thing that is ready and available to step up, along with a few other things like coal gassification.

Re:Ohh! What a brazen reckloose!

[NotBorg]

I'm reminded of something my brother once said about getting a degree. He said that there are two types of people with degrees. Those who can use the degree do. Those that can't, teach. He further went on to say that most of his instructors were genuinely talented at analyzing algorithms, critiquing papers, or whatever but at the same time lacked creativity. They could critique one's creation, but in general couldn't create one of their own. I believe the truth to be some what greyer, but it's still an interesting out take of his x years at school.

Re:Peak oil (again)

[HuguesT]

Oil at $100 a barrel doesn't just mean that filling up your car is more expensive. Everything depends on oil, including growing and transporting your food.

The whole capitalist system is mostly a pyramid scheme that depends on growth. Expensive everything means less growth, more unemployment and potentially a nasty negative spiral when debt repaiments are not met, at the level of a whole country.

It can be very nasty. We will not run out of oil or out of oil replacements, this is not the problem.