To commemorate his first year since resuming the position of CEO after a four year stint in the late 1990s, Google co-founder Larry Page on Thursday published a lengthy, impassioned letter to investors and the public defending the company’s recent strides towards social media and increased advertisements. Page’s bottom line: Google is in it to change the world and help people realize their dreams, but it needs to make money, a lot of money, to be able to keep doing that.
In one key passage near the end of the letter, Page riffs off Google’s famous “Don’t Be Evil” motto, writing (emphasis added):
We have always believed that it’s possible to make money without being evil. In fact, healthy revenue is essential if we are to change the world through innovation, and hire (and retain) great people. As a child I remember reading about Nikola Tesla, a genius whose impact was severely limited by his failure to make money from his inventions. It was a good lesson. Today, most of our revenue comes from advertising. We take pains to make sure that users know when something is paid for, and we work hard to make these advertisements relevant for users. Better ads are better for everyone—better information or offers for users, growth for businesses, and increased revenue for publishers to fund better content.
Page also defends Google’s recently changed privacy policy, writing: “The recent changes we made to our privacy policies generated a lot of interest. But they will enable us to create a much better, more intuitive experience across Google—our key focus for the year.”
Read the whole letter in full (it’s a long one, around 3500 words) here.
