The Lost Google Tapes: Early 2000 Interviews with Brin and Page

by morgret on December 6, 2006

Something interesting to think about as everyone recovers from attending (or reading the live blogging of) the Chicago SES.

John Ince, founder and chief podcaster of PodVentureZone.com, wrote in the December 3rd issue of the SF Chronicle about interviews he conducted with Page and Brin in early 2000. The hard drives containing the original interview were destroyed, but the author recently found the tapes of the interviews at home, and has converted them into a 10-part podcast series. Excerpts of the interviews were published in the Chron this Sunday, and here are some of the more amusing snippets.

“Ince: Do you see yourself as a competitor of Yahoo?
Brin: No.”

<snip>

“Ince: Will you be anything besides a search engine?
Brin: No, with the exception of the kinds of things I mentioned, like navigation aids and things like that. Although we’re open to develop across different axes of search engines or portals.”

Regarding the transition from Ph.D. candidate to entrepreneur, Brin mentioned the learning to deal with the organizational challenges of having over 70 people with the company, keeping everyone productive and focused and the like.

On getting angel funding from Andy Bechtolsheim: “…we were showing (a demo on a laptop) to him and he said ‘Oh we could go on talking, but why don’t I just write you a check?’ “

{ 1 comment }

John Ince December 7, 2006 at 9:39 am

Thanks for posting this. Yes, it was an amazing interview.

John

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