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Larry Page's Vision of the Future

Posted by timothy on from the you-too-can-be-a-kajillionaire dept.

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."

9 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Drop out..... by wpiman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well- seems he dropped out of Stanford. Seems all the successful CEOs drop out- Gates, Ellsion, and Page. Seems all the people he was preaching to are already doomed to be losers.

    1. Re:Drop out..... by whh3 · · Score: 5, Informative

      He dropped out of GRADUATE school. There's a difference. Bill Gates never finished undergrad.

      From the google website:
      (http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate /execs.htm l#larry)
      "Page became an honors graduate from the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in engineering, with a concentration on computer engineering."

      "While in the PhD program in computer science at Stanford University, Page met Sergey Brin and together they developed and ran Google, which began operating in 1998. Page went on leave from Stanford after earning his master's degree."

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    2. Re:Drop out..... by Headcase88 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Damn! Imagine how rich I'd be if I dropped out of Elementary School >:(

      --
      "When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
  2. Page's Take on Business by Pavan_Gupta · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Page's Take on Business by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
      just because a successful business man says don't bother going to b-school doesn't mean he's right. it depends very much on what he said in context. if by "don't go, i just ready books," page meant "don't go to b-school to gain business knowledge, because it's better to gain experience," then his advice is probably a good one. if the message you took home is that someone became successful without going to b-school and he said don't bother, so b-school is useless, then that's not a very smart interpretation of his message.

      i know it's not quite the same thing, but a lottery-winning millionaire simply recommending "don't bother to take jobs, just buy lottery tickets" and listening to it simply because he/she is wealthy is dumb, don't you think?

  3. I was there too (though I've not graduated) by mnemonic_ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Files back online... by adamjh · · Score: 5, Informative

    mp3 and wav files moved to University webspace -- should be able to withstand the /.ing. cheers.

  5. Re:Torrent? by ploss · · Score: 5, Informative

    Torrent set up here: http://notespace.org/Larry_Page-Graduation_Speech. mp3.torrent

    --
    What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex!
  6. The Google and the future from another one by hermank · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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