Kevin is interviewing Sergey Brin.

Google Groups (the Usenet search capability) came about because an engineer at Google, Michael Schmidt, dreamed of it. Same for the Google API: An engineer there was enthusiastic about doing it. Cool.

What’s the business model for the API? There isn’t one. Right now you’re limited to 1000 hits a day, and maybe someday they’ll charge. But they did it because it was interesting and fun. His example of an API-based app is a plagiarism checker.

Marc: Will Google support XML structures so we can get better searches. E.g., searching for images.

Sergey: Rather than making humans write better, we should work on having computers understand better what humans are writing for one another.

Dave: Do you envision Google ever becoming decentralized? A Google for the desktop?

Sergey: I’d like to be able to search my desktop from anywhere. But we haven’t written client software. Our technical competency is running large server farms.

Sergey just did a show of hands to discover that Google is indexing the blogs from most people in the room but isn’t updating as frequently as we’d like. (We are a spoiled bunch of puppies!)

[I went to lunch before posting this and somehow lost most of it. Odd. Fortunately, you have another 28 blogs covering this to choose from.]

I asked if Google has considered optimizing itself to support its use as a DNS extender (in Dan Gillmor’s sense: since bobsmith.com is owned by only one Bob Smith, I’ll use Google when I want to find my old pal Bob Smith). Sergey didn’t really answer this question, though, preferring to answer something about the difficulty of handling complex searches.

Cory gots to ask the last question: Do you Google guys ever think about the way the world is reshaping itself around Google? …Good to end on a question that’s actually a thank you.

Categories: Uncategorized dw