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15:29 July 12th, 2007

Google’s Brin on Yahoo, Facebook

Posted by: Kenneth Li
Tags: Uncategorized

Google co-founder Sergey Brin stopped to chat with reporters during a lunch break on Day 2 of Allen & Co.’s annual mogul retreat in Sun Valley. Google’s other co-founder Larry Page was scheduled to attend, but did not show up. Brin talked about how Yahoo and its former CEO Terry Semel caught a bad rap from the press. He also had something to say about one of the hottest topics this week: Facebook.

On whether Google was interested in buying  Internet social network Facebook:
“Facebook? I really like the Facebook guys … We dont really look at companies for acquisitions unless they are really interested . If they come to us, wed certainly be open to talking. But I think theyre building a great company of their own.”

On growth of social networks taking away attention from Google:
“Social networks are creating lots and lots of content, which was the subject of the panel, and thats for more for us to search. We certainly love to see lots of successful Web sites out there creating lots and lots of Web pages.”

On Yahoo’s performance:
“I think theyre a very successful company. If you look at their metrics, theyve done quite well over the past few years. Medias been unfair for them. Im not sure theyve done so poorly on search. Youre just comparing them to our numbers.”

But why was Semel pushed out by shareholders?
“(Yahoo CEO Terry) Semel left, I dont know that shareholders had anything to do with it.”

Any acquisitions in mind?
“Nothing comes to mind.”

Where’s Larry?
“He wasn’t feeling well, so I came. We’re interchangeable.”

(Photo: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Google co-founder Sergey Brin,  Allen & Co. managing director Nancy Peretsman /Reuters/Rick Wilking)

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