Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressed attendees on Saturday, sharing his 'aha' moment: he realized that "ads do have value if you could figure out the right ones to show. Google gives advertisements to users at the right time, and in the right place."
He pointed out that only 1,000,000,000 people are currently using the internet, and that we are not even close to mass. 5,000,000 terrabytes of information exist in the world, only 2-3% of which are currently indexed and searchable, according to Schmidt. His timing for when all of the world's information will be searchable? 300 years.
Schmidt gave an example of an unsuccesful Google ad: The Atlanta Skydiving Center, whose tagline was "Only one death this year." Not one person clicked on the ad, which while it seems like a failure was no loss for the advertiser. In Google's model of pay per click, their ad was free.
He acknowledged that the power is moving from the advertiser to the end user. While advertisers thought that they make the decisions, Schmidt called the world "inverted," noting that they (users) truly decide. The evolution of advertising at Google was described by Schmidt as "inexpensively luxurious."
Schmidt said that if anyone is starting a business today, in order to market it correctly you should first use Google, then Yahoo!, and then go to the sales structure. "Cost per revenue dollar is so much lower than any other way you can spend your money."
He asked the crowd to imagine a world where bandwidth is free, and storage is infinite. What would the world look like? Would speed be instantaneous, as users ultimately want? If you could store 100%, and if you opted in of course, Google would be able to deliver you all of the info you need at the right time.
"If my rental car knows who I am, why can't we program the radio to give me the ads that I want? If I have to listen to ads on the radio, they might as well be the ones that I want to listen to," he said.
During the Q&A portion of his presentation, Schmidt acknowledged that not everyone agrees that all information being searchable is good. He admitted that he feels that technology itelf is neutral, and can be applied for either good or evil. He let the crowd know that Google as a company does believe in and respect copyright laws, and they don't agree that everything should be copied.
The question was posed, "Will people ever have the option to see no ads on the net?" Schmidt thinks the answer is almost certainly no. However, if you switch the question around to "Will there ever be parts of the internet that are ad-free," then the answer is yes. We will merely have a different way to pay for it.


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