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

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.

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.

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.