Co-Founder and President Larry Page used his platform as final keynote speaker at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show on Friday to speak out in favor of a variety of his pet scientific projects and to address issues concerning his company. He made the following comments during the speech, the audience question-and-answer session that followed and a subsequent news conference with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

“TWENTY PERCENT TIME:” FREEDOM FROM MANAGERS
Page was asked by reporters to further define the company’s so-called “20 percent time” project rule, under which Google engineers have the option to spend one-fifth of their work week on side projects of their own choosing.

“The important thing is that it really let’s you say ‘No’ to your manager if you are bright and passionate” about your work,” Page said from an employees perspective. “Nobody can tell you that you can’t experiment” under the rule, he said.

“I don’t think the percentage (matters) at all,” Page said of whether a Google employee spends 10 percent, 20 percent or 80 percent of their workweek on side projects. “Other people don’t do it at all. And it balances out.”

These side projects must still have business justification in order to receive company resources, he noted. “It doesn’t mean it (a 20 percent time project) gets a lot of resources. This is where we have issues in the company.”

GOOGLE PC
CEO Eric Schmidt strongly denied months of rumors that the Web search leader was preparing to offer its own, low cost personal computer for around $100.

“We have tremendous partners in the PC space and there is no need for us to do this,” CEO Eric Schmidt said in response to reporters’ repeated questions.

“We will do whatever it takes to get that (information) in peoples’ hands,” Schmidt later said. “What we tried to say is we don’t need to do that (build or market our own PC),” he said.

UNIVERSAL CONNECTORS
In his talk, Page spent the most time decrying the lack of standards in the hardware industry, specifically, the proliferation of incompatible plugs and cables, network “ports,” adapters, audio and video protocols, displays, indicators, storage, keyboards and input/output devices.

“I am just going to plea to you: Let’s get all these devices talking to each other and I think you will have just amazing innovation,” Page said, directing his comments to the electronics industry at large.>

“Why not instead just standardize the power supply?” Page asked. “Why (are) there no standards for those keyboards and little devices? One wire should be able to do everything possible,” Page argued.

“I don’t think there is much of anything that is needed besides standards. I think standards are best done by universities,” said Page, who was a Stanford University graduate student and the son of a Michigan State computer science professor.

“I am amazed we don’t have devices like this and the reason for this is that we lack standards to do it,” he said. “If one in a thousand power adapters start to catch fire and you have one of them, it starts to become an issue,” Page joked. “It is just silly,” he added.

VIDEO PIRACY
Page announced several new products, including the Google Video Store, which allows video owners to charge whatever they decide for individual episodes or segments. Shows ranging from professional basketball games to “Star Trek” to “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoons to Charlie Rose interviews are available to rent or own.

“A lot of the way to deal with these issues (of potential piracy) is to have legitimate ways for people to buy things that make sense like Apple iTunes,” Page said. “(We need to) get a positive economic system going,” he said.

Speaking of Google’s new video player and copyright protection system, Page said that, “We are going to make it hard enough for people to pirate (videos for sale)” — in part through the ability to constantly upgrade the video player because it must be connected to the Internet to operate.

GOOGLE PACK
Google Pack is a new assortment of software designed to give users a variety of basic software applications while also providing essential computer maintenance functions. Google Pack is available for free.

“There has been no software package that has been organized around user needs,” Page said. Instead, most software is developed to meet the business priorities of software companies, he argued.

Google executives responded to several questions over whether Google’s move to introduce a broad package of software was designed as a replacement for Microsoft products. A reporter also asked whether the world’s largest software company could use its market dominance of the desktop to retaliate against Google.

Schmidt argued that the structure of the industry had changed and that these questions may no longer be relevant.

“A lot of this has to do with defining the competitive structure in terms of past battles,” Schmidt said in downplaying comparisons to past computer industry battles involving Microsoft.

“(Competitively) there is going to be a lot more than the three (which) everyone always talks about,” he said, apparently referring to the rivalry between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

“This is a very, very large space. It is so much larger than that,” he said in downplaying the rivalry with Microsoft.

“The Pack is a tactic to solve a problem that is an ‘end user’ problem,” Schmidt said, referring to the computer wonk jargon the industry uses to refer to customers. He contrasted this to Google’s continuing strategy, which remains “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Read the full Reuters story here

Gadget industry giants came out swinging this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, unveiling sleek designs and tiny portable digital music players in hopes of ending the dominance of Apple Computer Inc.’s iPods.

From Samsung to Sony to Sandisk, everyone wants a piece of Apple’s pie in the portable digital music player market, where the iPod reigns.

Sandisk Corp. expects to make it a “two-horse race” in the chip-based memory segment of the market, led by the iPod Nano, and XM Satellite Radio Inc. ran magazine advertisements for its Samsung Electronics-designed MP3 player that said: “It’s not a Pod, It’s the Mothership.”

Tough talk, for sure. But in launching salvos, most acknowledged the marketing might of Apple in the $4.5 billion arena.

“We have been playing in the basement, guarding our future,” by failing to match Apple’s marketing spend, said Peter Weedfald, a senior vice president at South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which introduced new MP3 players boasting long battery life. “For 2006 (however) you are going to feel a launch; you are going to see and hear our products.”

Like its peers, Samsung has kept a low profile in the MP3 market, spending a relative pittance on marketing MP3 devices in North America versus an iPod budget of more than $100 million. Apple has keenly turned the relatively simple gadgets — computer memory married with music-playing software — into status items and fashion accessories.

Read the full Reuters article here…

If consumers find the brewing battle between next-generation DVD technologies — HD DVD versus Blu-ray — a headache, they are not alone. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, top U.S. electronics retailers, called the issue “nightmarishly unfriendly” and “stupid.”

Stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and CompUSA may sell millions of devices, either HD DVD or its rival, Blu-ray, and some day one version could be obsolete, drawing the ire of their customers. What’s more, many will chose not to buy any device, instead waiting for one format to win.

Blu-ray is backed by Sony Corp. and HD DVD is championed by Toshiba Corp. The two technology camps failed to reach a unified technological front that has set the stage this year for a formats war like the costly VCR vs. Betamax battle of the 1980s.

“We are frustrated,” said Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson, on the sidelines of a panel discussion at the Consumer Electronics Show on Friday. “We are going to wind up with some number of consumers probably buying a format that dies and we are probably going to wind up having to selling it to them. They are not gong to be happy with us.”

Both Blu-ray and HD DVD hope to spark the sagging home video market with new high-definition DVD players and discs, offering greater capacity and interactive features. A single-layer Blu-ray disc has a capacity of 25 gigabytes of data, which is enough to hold a two-hour high-definition movie, or 13 hours of standard television programming. Rival HD DVD has a single-layer capacity of 15 gigabytes, but its backers argue it is cheaper to manufacture.

“The problem is that what you want is huge penetration into homes as quickly as possible,” said CompUSA chief executive Larry Mondry. “The Beta-VHS wars lasted 10 years. We are doing it again and we are just stupid as an industry.”

Starting this year, it is likely that electronics retailers are going to have to make space in their stores for both sundry devices related to both formats, including the players, the movies and other programming that play on them, and accessories.

Decision on what to stock will have to be made by the retailers sooner, rather than later. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Toshiba and Thomson each announced plans to sell in the next few months high-definition DVD player in the U.S. priced at around $500.

Meanwhile, Sony Corp.’s Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox and Lionsgate , all of which are exclusively supportive of HD DVD rival Blu-ray, released names of titles for the Blu-ray format.

Following Google’s founder Larry Page’s keynote speech at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, Fred Katayama interviews Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer about Google Video Store and Google Pack.

The line of celebrity appearances this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, where media companies were once sidelined, tracked deals by Time Warner’s AOL, General Electric’s NBC Universal, Viacom’s MTV, note Reuters reporters Kenneth Li and Daisuke Wakabayashi.

Media companies, have “always been observers in Las Vegas,” said Leo Hindery, managing partner of InterMedia Partners, a private equity firm specializing in media, and former CEO of cable operator AT&T Broadband, referring to programmers’ outside status at the gadget show. This year, media’s “credentials are just as important as Google’s and the guys who make the devices,” Hindery added.

Watch the video: Fred Katayama reports as Semel unveiled the new service at CES in Las Vegas.  

Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Terry Semel is set to describe later how he hopes to propel his company beyond the Web browser and onto cellphone and TV screens. The television plan seeks to target the emerging market for consumers buying PC-connected TVs that embed Internet connections directly into video watching, company executives said ahead of Semel’s presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Yahoo Go TV will allow consumers to link their existing base of Yahoo contacts and other resources directly into their televisions, allowing them to watch digital photos, check news or sports or other Yahoo services from the same account they use on their computer or mobile phone, Yahoo said.

Not only the latest high-end MediaCenter TVs, but any TV that a consumer can connect to Windows XP should work, the company said. At its most basic, consumers can use their remote control to see whats playing at their local theater or share pictures from a recent vacation with friends, all on their television screen.Marco Boerries, the executive in charge of the Yahoo Go project showed how a user might take a picture on a Nokia phone and instantly share it with friends or family over Yahoos Flickr photo-organizing system who are watching TV. Boerries said Yahoo expects to launch Yahoo Go Mobile within weeks and Yahoo Go TV in the coming months. The full Reuters news story is here

TiVo has partnered with services like Yahoo!, Fandango (on-line movie tickets) and Live365 Internet radio to allow TiVo customer to access the services through their TiVo machines. REUTERS/Steve Marcus

Computer memory company Sandisk Corp. on Thursday introduced a family of tiny digital music players and said it plans to challenge Apple Computer Inc. for dominance in the “flash” memory player market that represents the low-end of Apple’s gadget business.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Sandisk introduced a 6-gigabyte player using flash memory, made with chips that are smaller and lighter than those based on hard-disk drive technology. Because flash memory has  no moving parts it is far more durable than disk drives.

Sandisk said its Sansa e270 is now the highest-capacity flash-based player in the market, and will be priced at about $300.
 
At a press conference at CES, Sandisk said it intends to take on Apple, whose hot-selling iPod Nano music player runs on flash memory.
 
“Ultimately, we would like to make this a two horse race, and reach 35-40 percent market share,” Nelson Chan, the president of Sandisk, said at a news conference.

He cited industry research data showing that Apple enjoyed a market share of around 49 percent, with Sandisk at about 29 percent in December.

Because Apple sells both flash-based and far higher capacity disk-drive players, it still dominates the overall global market for digital music players, with some estimates ranging upward of 75 percent of the music player market. In the past year, several former competitors have withdrawn from the market in the face of Apple’s success.

Actor Tom Hanks, starring in the upcoming Sony Pictures movie ”The Da Vinci Code”  jokes with Sony CEO Howard Stringer (L) and the movie director Ron Howard (R) at the Sony keynote address at CES. (Photo: REUTERS/Rick Wilking)