Larry Page Interview: Google CEO Takes Shot at Apple

Larry Page Interview: In a recent interview with Wired, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) CEO Larry Page discussed the state of his own company as well as others in the tech industry, including Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). While Page never crosses the line, it is interesting to see what the search engine executive has to say about one of his company’s top competitors.

Before we get into the specifics of what Page said, let’s take a closer look at the overall premise of his comments. In short, he feels that companies, such as Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), should be spending more resources on innovation as opposed to focusing on the competition.

While the Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) CEO makes a good point, in some regards, others will find his comments slightly off base.

Wired asked the following question to kick things off:

“Now you have a separate division called Google X, dedicated to moon-shot projects like self-driving cars. Why did you decide you needed to set up an entire department for this?”

Here is what Page had to say in return, his first mention of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL):

“I think we need to be doing breakthrough, non-incremental things across our whole business. But right now Google X does things that can be done more independently.”

“You know, we always have these debates: We have all this money, we have all these people, why aren’t we doing more stuff? You may say that Apple only does a very, very small number of things, and that’s working pretty well for them. But I find that unsatisfying. I feel like there are all these opportunities in the world to use technology to make people’s lives better. At Google we’re attacking maybe 0.1 percent of that space. And all the tech companies combined are only at like 1 percent. That means there’s 99 percent virgin territory. Investors always worry, “Oh, you guys are going to spend too much money on these crazy things.” But those are now the things they’re most excited about—YouTube, Chrome, Android. If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.”