Post date: Mar 21, 2013 9:11:42 PM
Rubbishing quitting rumours executive chairman Eric Schmidt says that he has no plans of taking up a government says 'Google is his home' during Big Tent Summit in India.
NEW DELHI, INDIA (MARCH 21, 2013) (ANI) - Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt laid rest to speculations of him quitting the multinational corporation on Thursday (March 21).
Reports of his selling of 42 percent of his Google stakes gave birth to rumours that Schmidt was leaving the world's No.1 search engine.The visiting Google chief joked about his job being much easier than holding a post in the government, cracking up the audience at the Big Summit in New Delhi.
"Google is my home, I have been doing a series of diversification sales over the years and this is just another one. We told the press this but they didn't believe us and yet they didn't bother to check that it was just an extension of the previous years," said Schmidt during the one day conference.
Meanwhile Schmidt said Google Inc's Chrome and Android operating systemswill remain separate products but could have more overlap, a week after the two came under a single boss.
"We don't make decisions, some companies do this- we don't make decisions based on who the leader is? We make the decisions at Google based on where the technology takes us. Chrome and Chromium are the world's best HTML file authoring and developing systems, if you are not using Chrome as in advertisement for example right now, you should be using Chrome, it's faster, it's safer, it's more secure than any of your browser choices. In Android which is primarily a job alike development environment it solves a different problem. There will be more commonality for sure but they are certainly are going to remain separate for a very long time because they solve different problems," he said.
Google last week said Andy Rubin, the architect of Android - the world's top-selling mobile operating system - was moving to a still-undefined role while Sundar Pichai, in charge of its Chrome web browser and applications like Google Drive and Gmail, was taking on Rubin's responsibilities.
Schmidt, Google's chief executive from 2001 to 2011, is becoming more outspoken on issues involving technology and world affairs, and was in India as part of a multi-country Asian tour to promote Internet access.
He further spoke about his visit to North Korea to convince the government to open up its windows to the internet and hence usher in economic growth.
"The North Korea is the last place or sort of no internet connectivity. They have a one million or so, a network of cell phones run by an Egyptian conglomerate. There is essentially no connectivity out of the country, it is the last really closed country in the world, which is very bizarre in it self. My goal was to convince them to take the infrastructure that they have and simply turn on the data services. It is a realm of these simple political decisions to turn on," said Schmidt.
Google's Big Tent events would be hosted across the globe in order to serve as platform for debates on issues relating to internet, technology and its future association with the society.
Earlier on Wednesday (March 20) Schmidt had pointed out the untapped source of around 600 million Indians who are yet to join the World Wide Web.
India has one of the world's youngest Internet population, with 75 percent of users under 35, and many of them have much more disposable income than their parents did.
Schmidt further picked India over China as he faced questions over which country would he be keen to watch.
"In the short term- China gets all the attention, but math favours India and I am mathematician," he said.
For many Indians, booking railway tickets online was their introduction to Internet shopping. The government railways ticket booking portal revolutionised the travel industry at a time when buying train tickets meant waiting for long hours at railway counters.
Less than a tenth of India's 1.2 billion population have access to Internet although its 100-odd million users make it the third biggest Internet market after China and the United States. Internet users in India are seen nearly tripling to 300 million over the next three years.
Despite the new rules to block offensive content, India's Internet access is still largely free unlike the tight controls in neighbouring China.