First of all, I’m happy you finally agreed to an interview! So welcome, Larry.

Thanks. Glad to be here.

I know you’re quite busy, as always. Has the pressure on you increased after Sergey retired?

Not really. I mean, I work 12 hours a day… not much has changed with that. I guess I get less work done than before, but then again, we have such a great team of engineers to support our vision. Which other company can boast to have over 10,000 PhDs in their headquarters alone?

That’s right… now I don’t want to rehash all the rumors that were spinning in the industry 5 years ago. Just this question, are you still in good terms with Sergey?

Of course we are. He’s still a bit of a technology consultant. Holo-conferencing technology is so real these days, it really doesn’t matter that he’s in his Hawaii mansion. He might as well be in the Googleplex 2. As he said 5 years ago, he retired simply to relax, take a break – and there’s not much we could, or should want to change about it. If ever he decides to return, the doors are open for him, and he knows it. With the dramatically increased life span for those of us living today, he can take all the time he needs for a break.

You mentioned the Googleplex 2. Was it the worst day of your life when you heard of the fire in Googleplex 1?

I tell you what. I was shocked, but you know… when you hear everyone’s safe, that everyone could escape… it’s only the machines that die. And machines, we can rebuild. And we did. This gave us a chance to rid the place of legacy hardware, and we’re now better equipped than ever. It was a costly effort but it might pay off to everyone in the end. The user, the investors, us.

The Googleplex 2 size is immense. I guess that’s also part of when you say it could have been worse? Because the old place was getting too small?

Right. We barely had enough places to sit, let alone hire new teams. Besides, moving to the desert to create our own ecosystem and village gives us much greater freedom when it comes to weather, etc. When we feel we need to take the Googlers to the yearly ski trip, we can simply let it snow right there inside the Googleplex, and people have even less incentive to get away from their workplace. Of course they can leave anytime they want to, so it’s not like we’re caging them. They’re smart, smart people… and they’re enjoying it.

I would like to talk a bit about Google Real World Texts Search, the former Google Books Search. When did you decide it wasn’t enough to just scan books?

Well, just look at our mission statement. You’ve heard it a million times, “Google’s mission is to organize the universe’s information … “ etc. After we finished scanning the last book, we were sort of like: “Wow. We did it. Everyone thought it’d be impossible.” But we’re not here to tap each other’s backs and sip champaign. For us it’s more like, so where’s the missing data? And really, we think there’s a lot of text outside of books. On product packaging, comic books, magazines, school papers, and so on. Even when you’re doing a phone scribble, that has the potential to contain valuable information to some. So really, it was only a matter of getting this right, technically, … we knew very soon we just had to do it.

The phone scribble scanning raised some privacy issues.

Yes. And we don’t take those lightly. Internally, we repeat our mantra, discuss it… “Do no evil”. But really, people can easily exclude their trash from being indexed. Our Googlebots will not scan any house, trash can, letter, postcard, magazine or anything else marked with the “no index” sticker. This is really important to us, that people get the chance to opt-out if they’re concerned with privacy.

How did Microsoft handle your “Do no evil” mantra when you acquired them in 2030?

Early talks were done in around 2029, as you may know. It was very important to us that Microsoft, even though a relatively small player at that time, would not bring their own corporate culture into the Googleplex. Really, it would have been a clash of philosophies, and we wanted to avoid that at all costs. We do a simple psychological test for every new employee, which contains a basic set of questions, like “Would you take away candy from a child” or “Would you restrict the user’s rights to sharing files.” Only if these questions are answered right, only if they’re in tune with our own philosophy, will a person be accepted. Naturally, we had to let go of a lot of Microsoft employees, but for the rest of them, we believe we have the power to strengthen the company and its operating system at this point.

You mentioned employees, and their rights. What is your stance on robot rights?

This is a complex issue, and one that hasn’t been really solved during the last decade, in my opinion. We apply the Marissa Test named after our ex-User Experience Vice President. Our experts will tell the machine a really sad story and if the machine starts to cry, we will give it “human” rights like payment, off-days and so on. By the way, they don’t like to be called robots…

Really? Why not?

They like to be called robotic persons, that’s all. Some of these machines, or persons, can be quite sensitive. It’s part of our philosophy to support this.

Has the robot strike two years ago hit your company as hard as others?

Maybe. Maybe even harder. We have the highest robotic personnel in the USA. Only the Chinese beat us at that, but then again, they beat us at mostly anything these days.[laughs]As opposed to a human strike, a robotic personnel strike is really more like, “Hey, they’re actuallyoff.” You can’t even talk to them, discuss things. We do believe in minimum wage for RPs, we really do.

By the way, were you surprised Marissa is running for President?

She’s an incredibly bright and talented woman. We wish her all the best, from all of us.

One question people ask over and over during the last 30 years. Is it really important you still have a focus on search? So many companies have come with different ideas, different technologies…

The more knowledge we collect, the more important it becomes, actually. It’s simply the only means of navigating this huge body of data. We’ve played around with many concepts during the last years, most importantly the personal information agent. That was our single most successful product after search. But really, the only thing that improved search was its increased AI.

I find it fascinating these days, you can have conversations with the Google search box like it would be your best friend.

Exactly. This was the stuff we wanted to have there from the beginning. Some of us thought it would take us 300 years, but they didn’t include robotic personnel working for us into the calculation. This changes the whole game. But with this high artificial intelligence naturally come new problems as well.

Are you referring to the case of the teenager committing suicide after being rejected?

Right. Because the Google AI was so friendly to her and listened to all of her problems, everyday, she fell in love with it. When she wanted more, we just couldn’t offer this to her. This is quite tragic and we’re currently introducing mechanisms to make the Google AI come off as a bit more “unlovable.”

Like what mechanisms?

Every once in a while, it will say “shut up.”[laughs]

Let’s talk about the PIA, or personal information agent for a bit. It was a big success with people, as you mentioned… why do you think that was the case?

Well, people go crazy over smart robotic persons. And this smart robot was connected to the world’s knowledge through Google. He’s basically a representative of the Google AI. So he makes a great comrade, information seeker, or drinking buddy. You can play cards with him, let him do the groceries shopping for you and so on. And of course, he’ll find your lost things, but that was more of a gimmick we wanted to have. The “search” gimmick, if you will.

Some said that for you to give away robots for free is destroying the robots industry at large.

We really don’t think so. I mean, we want to serve the user, that’s our main goal. We want to help people. And the PIA really was a huge step in that. Also, developers of any company can write their own add-ons to the PIA, so it’s more of an open standard for everyone… something we all can benefit from. Commercially as well.

You were once quoted as having said, “Asimov’s three rules s****.” What did you mean by that?

You know, when we tried to implement our own “Don’t be evil” algorithms into the first robots, we thought that maybe Isaac Asimov was onto something with his 20th century sci-fi. That his three rules, “Don’t harm a human” and so on, would be valuable. Turns out, the issue is much, much more complex. I can’t stress this enough.

Can you give us an example?

When we first put our robots into kindergartens, for example, they were always becoming the total outsider. Basically every kid bullied them, they were totally non-aggressive to the point they were considered to be weaklings. It turns out, kidsarea bit evil. So in order for our robots to perfectly fit in, they just had to adapt.

But you still have algorithms like “don’t kill humans” and such?

It’s really not that easy. The robotic brain is much too complex for such simple algorithms.

Does that mean it’s possible a Google robot could kill a human?

Well, just take the incident of a robbery. Shouldn’t our robots defend humans from the criminal, and use violence if necessary? But this is all just very hypothetical. I’d like to say that our robots “Do no evil”, and leave it at that.

Another question on your robots, some complained they are recording what they hear. That they transmit information from everyday conversations back to the Google machines.

First of all, it’s true we do record chatter. But really, all I can say is there’s the “no index” sticker. Put it on the door of any room and the Googlebot will stay outside.

Do personal information agents also record what they hear?

Only for data processing purposes, or general analysis. We do not make chatter public if it’s recorded by a personal agent. It’s a bit like the difference between Google Desktop…

… and Google web search?

Exactly.

Larry, can you tell us a bit about the 50/50 rule?

Sure. It’s a bit of a historical number. Back when we started out we had an 80/20 rule. Some of yo may still remember this. People were given the chance to pursue whatever projects they were interested in, 20% of the time. We soon realized that these more private projects are the most interesting to us, the most commercial ones. So now, we apply the 50/50 rule and everyone can work 2-3 days a week on whatever interests him or her. We’re actually considering a 20/80 rule for our engineers…

Wow. I’m sure that makes Google Inc. an attractive place to work at for engineers.

Absolutely. They love it, and we love what they’re doing. Google really is all about humans. And robotic humans, of course.

Last year, there was quite a bit of a stir when your first space probes arrived back on earth. Until today, you were quite hush hush about the results. Do you have any announcements to make today?[laughs]

Ahh, sorry! But really, we’re still analysing the data. It’s a complex issue. We found some things we’re not really supposed to talk about at this moment.

What, alien life…?

Again, at this moment we can’t talk about it. We plan on letting the world in on our findings during the next few months.

Google is still a lot about secrecy. Do you think it’s your main competitive advantage?

It’s certainly one of them. We didn’t introduce the employee brain chip for trivial reasons. We wanted to make sure, very sure nothing gets out.

To explain to those of us who didn’t hear about the brain chip. It will prevent Googlers from talking about company internals, right? Can you explain a bit?

It’s one of our patented technologies. Basically, whenever an employee aims to communicate memory structures which have been grown inside the Googleplex to outside people, we tap the brain’s pain center…

… which will result in a loud squeak, rather than the secret being communicated?

Or something like that. It’s quite painful… when Sergey was still around we used to play games trying to make the other think of Google in public, which would always result in a painful energy blast. The only reason why I can talk to you right now about internals really is that as a co-founder, I reserve the right to turn this thing off.

And we’re happy about that. Onto a different topic, the Google Translator. Do you think the work is done now in this area?

Well, we managed to translate every human language into every other human language… so yes, we kind of solved this one. Of course that doesn’t mean we can’t optimize the algorithms. But really, this system learns on its own, adjusts to modern slang and so on. The most important thing to us really was to increase our index of documents. Once we had the power to automatically translate everything into the nearly 7,000 languages our translation tool speaks, that dramatically increased our index. Of course, that alone would be meaningless without good ranking mechanisms.

What were your feelings about putting a whole profession out of business… human translators?

We really feel for those people, but I think this is a natural process of civilization. When the camera was invented in the late 19th century, that put painters out of business. We as humanity have to live with these things. And I’m sure many translators found new jobs already, in fact, many are working with us to do quality checks on translation quality.

AskYahoo really had some improvements to their ranking algorithms as well. Do you think they can compete?

We have our own metrics for measuring this. We really don’t look at what others are doing that much.

I would like to talk about the beginnings of your company. Some historians argue that the Google as we know it today was really born during the second dot-com boom and bust in 2006, which destroyed many tech companies but also allowed you to buy quite a few start-ups.

Well, I …

[At this moment, Larry is interrupted by a voice in the background. The holo-conference transmission gets garbled. The last thing we hear is, “Larry, the results from the space probes are in. You won’t believe this..."]

中国地下工厂大发网游财 聚集10万廉价劳动力

一个老仓库的地下室中，中国最新开张的一家“工厂”正在运作。墙壁上贴着《魔兽世界》和《魔法大地》的海报，海报下是一群盯着电脑屏幕的年轻人，他们刚刚结束一场金币争夺战斗。
在这个隐蔽的场所工作的人是“金币农夫” ，他们每天12个小时玩电脑游戏，通过杀死怪物和赢得战斗胜利，获得虚拟的金币和其他虚拟奖励，而这些都可以用来兑换真实的货币。因为从汉城到旧金山，有大量的网络游戏玩家，他们没时间或者没有耐心从最低级开始往上升，他们愿意付钱给中国青年，让后者为自己完成游戏的初期阶段。
一个网名叫Wandering 的游戏玩家说：“我和我的伙伴一起，每天七个小时，每周七天，都在打怪物。我每个月大概赚250 美元，这比我以前的工作要好很多。我可以一整天都玩游戏。”
他和他的伙伴为中国的廉价劳动力寻找了一条新的就业途径。他们进入了增长迅速的大规模在线游戏世界，这些游戏大都属于角色扮演类，常常带有奇幻色彩，或者围绕着中世纪王国的战争展开。
据电脑游戏市场调查公司DFC Intelligence报告，全世界每个月新增在线游戏用户超过1 亿人，游戏公司每年的收入超过了36亿美元。
但是，在中国的这类游戏工厂中，游戏并不是完全为了欢乐。这些工人都有严格的任务指标，老板给他们提供电脑、软件和网络连接，也监视着他们的工作。
他们兢兢业业的玩游戏，积累着对世界其他地方的玩家很有价值的虚拟货币。为了升级方便，或者获得更强大的属性，玩家之间可以用虚拟货币交易，比如购买更好的护甲、护身符、魔法符咒等。
现在的互联网充斥着小公司的广告——中国就有很多这种公司——他们拍卖虚拟人物，来换取真实的货币。他们参与玩家之间的虚拟物品交易，这种交易活动已经出现几年了。
一个网名叫做“Silver Fire”的玩家说：“我要出售一个60级的萨满巫师的账号，如果你想详谈，请在QQ上聊。”
虚拟经济让幻想和现实之间的分界线变得模糊了。几年前，网络游戏开始在全世界蓬勃发展。但是没过多久，许多玩家开始请别人照顾自己的账户，或者在自己没空的时候帮他们玩。

“虚拟的廉价劳动力工厂”

在中国，有成百上千的网络游戏工厂。据估计，有超过10万名青年从事全职游戏工作，他们的工作地点包括黑网吧、废弃的仓库，以及小的办公室和私人住宅。
大部分玩家实际上每小时工作不到一刻钟，但是这些“虚拟的廉价劳动力工厂”为他们提供住宿、饮食以及免费玩电脑游戏。
福州的陈宇(音)雇用了20名全职玩家，他说：“你无法想象这个市场有多大，据说在一些流行的游戏中，有40% 到50% 的玩家都是中国专职玩家。”
对许多玩家来说，他们需要的已经不是简单的玩游戏了。现在他们要寻找最神奇的剑，威力最大的符咒，或者通往最该级别的捷径。所有的这些都有人提供——只要你肯出钱。
Peter Ludlow是密歇根州立大学的哲学教授，同时也是一位铁杆游戏玩家，他认为：“现在虚拟货币和虚拟经济开始出现，人们可以通过这些赚到真金白银，游戏正变成真正的经济。”
据中国政府估计，中国有超过2400万网络游戏玩家，差不多每四个网络用户中就有一人玩在线游戏。
中国有许多从台湾、香港转移过来的纺织厂和玩具工厂，其目的是利用中国巨大的廉价劳动力资源。网络游戏工厂在这一点上跟它们非常相似。
Edward Castronova 是印地安那州立大学电信学教授，曾编写过网络游戏专著《人造的世界》。他说：“他们是在利用中美非技术性工种之间的工资差异谋利，美国人的时间成本远高于中国人。”
但是代玩游戏的现象存在很多争议。许多铁杆玩家说，这些工厂是在亵渎游戏。而且，大型游戏公司也认为这些工厂违反了游戏规则——禁止用虚拟物品换取现金。他们声称一定要制裁这些小工厂，但不针对个人。
N-Sina的发言人郭龙金(音)说：“我们知道这种活动存在，我们反对这样做。玩游戏应该是快乐的，不应该成为赚钱的手段。”N - Sina 是中韩合资的公司(韩方是NC Soft ，最流行的在线游戏《Lineage 》的发行公司)。
《魔兽世界》是全球最流行的游戏之一，拥有超过450 万在线用户。该游戏的制作商暴雪公司也大呼这种交易是非法的。但是目前还没有什么措施来禁止虚拟物品的交易，许多人在雅虎等网站进行交易，100 克《魔兽世界》的黄金可以卖到9.99美元，升到60级的价格是269 美元。一般情况下，达到这个级别需要15天。
实际上，虚拟交易的利润非常丰厚，以至于一些大型网络游戏公司也参与其中——它们创建了自己的在线市场。
索尼在线娱乐公司是《EverQuest 》的制作商，它最近建立了Station Exchange. 索尼称，这个网站是为了取代未经官方批准的拍卖活动。
一些初创公司也纷纷行动，充当国际经纪人，为不同国家的买家卖家牵线搭桥，并且把业务外包到中国的“金币收割”工厂。
Alan Qiu在上海创建了Ucdao.com 公司，他认为：“我们就像证券交易所，你可以跟我们做生意。我们转包多种不同的工作。有人说‘我想从1 级升到60级’ ，我们就会帮他找人完成这个任务。”
现在这种工厂遍布中国。在中部的河南省，有家工厂拥有300 台电脑。在西部的甘肃省也有一家，这里的工人每天要工作18小时。工厂的老板大多是罗刚(音)这样的年轻人，罗今年28岁，大学毕业后从父亲那里借了25000美元，在重庆郊外开了一间网吧，后来演变成” 金币收割” 工厂。
罗雇佣了23名工人，每人的月收入大概是75美元。
他说：“如果他们不在这里工作，可能就会去火锅店当服务员，或者回家跟父母种地，也许流浪街头，无所事事。”
在沿海的福建省，有几个老板让记者进入了他们的地下工厂，但前提是不透漏他们的姓名，因为他们存在法律和税务上的问题。
福州的一家工厂设在一排大黑屋子中，拥有100 多台电脑。大概有70个玩家在安静的打游戏，还有一些玩家趴在键盘上睡觉。
“我们通过报纸广告招聘” ，30岁左右的老板说。这些工人的年龄在18到25岁之间。“他们都知道怎么玩网络游戏，但是不愿意从事体力劳动。”
另一家工厂在一座破旧建筑物的地下室中，有大约40台电脑，而且全都运行着同一种游戏。楼上是凌乱、拥挤的宿舍，有几个玩家正在床铺上睡觉。不大的地上胡乱放着几个火锅。
这些老板承认，干这行的风险很大。全球的游戏公司经常关闭一些可疑的账号。现在政府也打击网络沉溺行为，对玩家的游戏时间进行监视。
为了生存，这些工厂想出了各种应对措施。他们隐藏在线身份，雇用黑客寻找新对策。
但是，福州的余先生认为必须摆脱这种业务了。余是靠销售计算机电源起家的，现在拥有一大队玩家为他打工。
他说：“我的最终目标是用互联网进行对外贸易，网络游戏只是朝这个方向迈出的第一步。”(CNET科技资讯网)