Google Culture Clash
Too much traditional marketing (indeed traditional business) is focussed upon "talking the talk" when the real need is to "walk the walk."
At the Google Zeitgeist conference in London yesterday, Larry Page and his CEO Eric Schmidt took part in a Q & A session. Inevitably, someone raised the China question and the buttoned-down Schmidt's justification centred upon the US government's having interacted with China as long ago as 1973!
Cue next question? Oh no - at this point Page stirs and in front of the assembled media utters the fabulous line "I don't think that's a very good answer" and proceeds to give a much more considered one. While I'm not sure how long the link will be valid, you can see the whole geek vs corporate suit death-match here!
Larry Page walks the walk and in that single instictive reaction did more to tell the Google story than any amount of corporate jargon about paradigm shifts and rosy futures.
posted by john dodds @ 2:13 AM
2 Comments:
John - I finally got to view the video on this. What I find interesting is how Eric was flip and arrogant in his body language and his response. Larry came across as honest and concerned. You genuinely felt that Larry had a hard time making the decision - you felt like Eric was just looking for the easy way out (hey, who really wants to justify their actions by saying the US government did it too).
Remove the title Google CEO and you'd question whether the guy really gets it. My philosophy is that if you have to try too hard, then don't try - especially when it comes to jokes.
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