News Blog

On stage at D5, on what will later be known as Google Day, Walt Mossberg asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt about the the $1 billion Viacom lawsuit against YouTube. "It was probably just a mistake," he said.

Some mistake.

Schmidt began his upcoming legal defense on the stage: "It's really about the DMCA. It's pretty clear that there's a safe haven for sites like ours."

Walt asked if Schmidt believed in intellectual property. He does, but said that the law says that in this case responsibility for enforcing copyright should be shared, and that Viacom rushed into the lawsuit: "Had they simply waited, the tools would have been available."

Walt pressed the issue: Why should Viacom have to wait? "From a legal perspective, we met the terms of the law."

Sounds like an artful dodge, but that is that what these suits/negotiations are all about.

Walt asked Schmidt if he was going to try to mobilize the YouTube user base to get clunky old industry-service digital rights laws updated to be more balanced towards consumers. Said Schmidt, "There's a line of advocacy we probably should not cross." But that, "the user content explosion is so profound, it will eventually cause the world to change."

On Google.com

Moving beyond the legal issues, the discussion turned to Google.com. Would Google upgrade its user experience? Schmidt: "We announced Universal Search. People love it." But: "I don't think we're going to go very far beyond the single search box." Personalization is where the action is in modernizing the Google experience.

Walt brought the discussion to the new "human-powered" search engine, Mahalo. "It doesn't scale," Schmidt says. And, "there are new artificial intelligence techniques that can use all the information we have and produce a pretty close approximation of what a human can do." Eric: We're waiting.

On advertising and evilness

We should also look forward to better Google-powered advertising. "When we show fewer, more targeted ads, we make more revenue, because we run an auction."

Schmidt was very clear that Google is all about the consumer. "We will trade off revenue for end user benefit," he said. He pushes the message that "we are one click away from losing the end user," and thus this mission, which is closely related to the "Don't be evil," slogan, is actually core to Google's success.

Where's my Google phone?

If you're waiting for a Google phone, don't hold your breath. "Internally, we say, mobile, mobile, mobile. Everone has a mobile phone." But he indicated that while Google will continue to build mobile apps, lots of them. "We're building the software," he said. A mobile operating system, perhaps? "The model is not as simple as an operating system and a platform. It's really a set of services."

Let the games begin.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

CARLSBAD, Calif.--Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the D5 conference Wednesday night for a rare joint appearance.

I'm in an overflow room with a half-dozen other reporters, many of whom flew to San Diego to watch the main event on TV from a room several hundred yards from the ballroom.

The keynote kicked off with a 1983 video of a young Jobs hosting the "Macintosh software dating game" with three software CEOs--Gates, Mitch Kapor of Lotus and Fred Gibbons.

In the video, a young Gates in a blue polo shirt tells Jobs how important the Mac is to Microsoft. "During 1984 Microsoft expects to get half of its revenue from Macintosh software," Gates says.

It moved on to a video of the famous 1997 Macworld conference where Jobs announced Microsoft's investment in Apple. In the video, Gates appears via satellite to a chorus of boos from the Macworld crowd.

Four people then walk out on the D5 stage--Gates, Jobs and Wall Street Journal columnists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. Jobs is wearing his trademark black mock turtleneck, jeans and tennis shoes. Gates is wearing a button down shirt, dark pants and shoes.

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates. Ready for grilling.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The discussion began with Swisher asking each what the other's biggest contribution was.

"Bill built the first software company in the industry," Jobs said. "The business model turned out to be one that worked very well for the industry. Bill was really focused on software before anyone else had a clue."

Gates responded by first noting that he is not the author of a popular Steve Jobs satire site.

"I want to clarify I'm not Fake Steve Jobs," he quipped.

Gates praised Jobs for pursuing the idea that the computer could really be a mass-market product and then for betting heavy again on the Mac, despite the Lisa's lack of popularity.

They then delved back into the early days of the Mac when Microsoft and Apple worked closely together.

"When Steve first came up, it was going to be a lot cheaper computer than it ended up being," Gates said. "That was fine."

They discussed the Mac versus PC ads.

"PC guy is great," Jobs said.

"His mother loves him," Gates quipped back.

"PC Guy is what makes it all work," Jobs said, leaning over to Gates. "It's worth thinking about."

It was noted that when Microsoft was developing the Xbox it used Macs as early hardware references, since the Xbox used a member of the PowerPC family of chips that Macs used at the time. "We never ran an ad on (that)," Jobs said.

"Steve is so known for his restraint," Gates replied

Both Gates and Jobs shrugged off the notion that the computer is waning as more and more work is handled via the browser. "The PC has proved to be very resilient," Jobs said, later clarifying that he was referring to the PC generally, not Windows specifically.

At the same time, both talked about the explosion in portable devices and the opportunities there.

Mossberg shifted discussion to the Internet. He noted that Apple talked about personal Internet services when it introduced .Mac several years back, but that it hasn't really kept pace. "I couldn't agree with you more and we'll make up for (lost time) in the very near future," Jobs said.

The formal discussion ended with each of them being asked about any misunderstanding in their relationships.

Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates, onstage at D5.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

"We've kept our marriage a secret for over a decade now," Jobs joked. Gates stayed silent for a while then said that neither of them really have anything in general to complain about vis a vis the other. "It's been fun to work together," Gates said. "It's nice when somebody sticks around."

Jobs noted that in their early meetings, the two were often the youngest people in the room and now they are often the oldest.

He then quoted the Beatles' song "Two of Us," off the Let It Be album. "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead," he said. The pair got a standing ovation, and Jobs appeared to get a little broken up.

The two were asked about what they see as their legacy, particularly with Gates balancing his Microsoft work with his humanitarian work.

"The most important work I got a chance to be involved in, no matter what I do, is the personal computer," Gates said. "That's my life's work."

He said he was fortunate to develop skills that lend themselves to his humanitarian work, but he said it's software that's still first on his mind. "If you look inside my brain, it's filled with software, the magic of software, my belief in software," Gates said.

Both men noted what stood out about the other. Gates said he admired Jobs' intuitive taste when it comes to picking both people and products. "The way he does things, it's just different," Gates said. "It's magic."

For his part, Jobs said that he admired Microsoft's ability to partner with other companies.

"Because Woz (Apple's co-founder, Steve Wozniak) and I started the company based on doing the whole banana, we weren't so good at partnering with people," Jobs said. "I think if Apple could have had a little more of that in its DNA, it would have served it extremely well," Jobs said. "I don't think Apple learned that until...a few decades later."

The discussion ended with Gates predicting that most of the things that are now the stuff of science fiction, virtual reality and the like are likely to come true, with the exception of a teleporter. Unless Steve has one up his sleeve, Gates said.

Apple iPhone open to third party applications?

(Credit: CNET Networks)

During the interview with Walt Mossberg at D5, Steve Jobs apparently let slip (according to the transcript from Gizmodo and Engadget), that even though the Apple iPhone won't start out of the gate with support for third-party applications, Apple is open to it and is working on making that possible later this year. Both transcripts imply that Jobs was concerned about security issues, which is what presumably was holding up the process. The lack of third-party support was one of the biggest complaints about the iPhone when it was first announced earlier this year, so if Apple actually makes this happen, it'll make a lot of people happy. (And one of them is me.) Now if only they'll work on 3G support as well.

(Credit: Apple.com)

At D5, Walt Mossberg interviewed Steve Jobs. A lot of interesting talk about the business, but at the end, Jobs dropped some real news on us:

"Wouldn't it be great if you could see YouTube in your living room?" he asked. In mid-June, Apple TV will get a new menu item: YouTube.

Interactivity (search, in particular), uses a TiVo-like letter grid, which is slower than a real keyboard (hey, maybe you'll be able to use your iPhone as a remote?), but when you need to locate the latest robot dances, it does the job.

Other video sources may come later, Jobs allowed.

Last week, word got out that adventurous developers had created their own AppleTV plug-in (among others) for playing YouTube videos; the plug-in is called "A Series of Tubes."

Apple.com has already been updated with a Quicktime demo of the new plug-in.

Palm started to tease people last night with a cryptic press announcement saying that Palm founder Jeff Hawkins would be introducing a "new category of mobile device" at the D5 conference, to be followed by a live videocast.


Jeff Hawkins unveils the Palm Foleo at D5.
(Credit: CNET Networks)

I'm at the conference, watching Hawkins on stage. The new product is "Foleo," an Internet interface appliance. It's got a full-size keyboard, and a nice screen. It's for accessing e-mail and the Web, and it's slim, light, and very nice-looking. But it's missing something critical: network access. That's right, it's not that useful on its own. It requires a connection via another device, like the Treo that Palm hopes you're already carrying, or any other gizmo that can share its access via Bluetooth. Update: The Foleo does have integrated Wi-Fi, though Hawkins seems to be downplaying this feature for some reason.

The device, at about $500, is priced closely to low-end laptops. It's a lot smaller, of course, and it has Palm software so it will likely be more robust and useful on the fly than a laptop. Also, it synchronizes data to and from a smart phone. So it's a workable companion to people who live cellphone-centric lives. There are a lot of execs like that. The thing is, most of them already have laptops.

Stay tuned for more. Also, see TreoCentral for the early scoop.

More info:

• 5 hours of workable battery life, and the charger is cell phone-size, not a giant laptop brick.
  
• Weighs under 2.5 pounds, and is less than an inch thick.
  
• No touch pad -- uses a pointer like a Thinkpad.
  
• It runs Linux.
  
• All solid-state, of course, no hard disk.

Two bags full, and a windbreaker too. Play the vid to see the contents.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

I'm at the D5 conference, the one put on by the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. It's a high-end schmoozefest, and like many executive conferences of its type, all attendees are presented with "goodie bags" filled with conference sponsors' promotional items when they check in.

I've seen overflowing goodie bags before, but nothing like this. In fact, the D5 bag is actually two bags, one of which is a very nice Timbuktu backpack. For my report, see the video.

I'll be reporting on the happenings here from the conference ballroom and the demo rooms. There's a big Palm announcement coming up. We also have a reporter here specifically to cover the much-anticipated Gates/Jobs joint interview tomorrow. Stay tuned for more.