He spoke on how technology should be used, specifically on how technology should be getting out of the way. Page’s mention of how “we’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible and what’s next” lead into his assurance that having to turn off multiple smartphones before he stepped onstage was absurd: it should be simpler than that.

“Technology should do the hard work, so you can get on and live your life. We’re only at one percent of what’s possible, and we’re moving slow relative to the opportunity we have.” – Larry Page

Reminding the audience that “software should run everywhere, and easily,” Page made it clear that he’s not a fan of the “trouble” they’ve had with Microsoft in the past – this referring to patent issues and licensing matters of all kinds.

“Every story I read about Google is about us vs some other company, or something else, and I really don’t find that interesting. We should be building great things that don’t exist. Being negative is not how we make progress.” – Larry Page

This chat showed more than what was spoken about by Page. It was a show of power, or a show of what might be seen as courage in Page’s willingness to stand in front of the developer and press and take questions. Questions, in this case, not in any way pre-screened or filtered.

Page mentioned not just Microsoft, but Oracle – how it wasn’t pleasant to be in court with them. He made it clear that “the right solution to education is not randomness” with regard to Google Search making informed decisions on what people should see in search results. Page’s session was an attempt to show Google as a friendly, real, human group here in 2013.

Rubin wrote a heartfelt letter to all of Android’s partners. He jumps back through the successes of Google’s Android since its inception. He comments on how the Open Handset Alliance, which started with only 34 members, now has over 85 members. The team had worked day and night to develop Android and help it reach its milestones at an incredible pace. He emphasized how even with a small team, they were ambitious and able to release Jelly Bean last year, an update that brought significant improvements to Android’s user experience.

Dear friends,

In November of 2007 we announced the Open Handset Alliance with 34 founding members. Today, I’m grateful to the over 85 OHA members who have helped us build Android and drive innovation at such an incredible pace. The Android ecosystem has seen tremendous growth since the launch of the very first Android device in October 2008. The volume and variety of Android devices exceeds even my most optimistic expectations — over 750 million compatible devices and counting!

At its core, Android has always been about openness — the idea that a thousand brains are better than one. Just as the ecosystem has grown, so has our team at Google. I am incredibly proud of the phenomenal group of people that spend their days (and nights) building the Android platform and services. Just look at last year…a lean yet incredibly ambitious team released Jellybean with Google Now, launched Google Play in many languages and countries and collaborated with several partners to build three new Nexus devices to help drive innovation in the ecosystem.

Today, the success of Android combined with the strength of our management team, gives me the confidence to step away from Android and hand over the reins. Going forward, Sundar Pichai will lead Android, in addition to his existing work with Chrome and Apps. Hiroshi Lockheimer — who many of you already know well — plus the rest of the Android leadership team will work closely with all of our partners to advance Android and prepare the platform for new products and services yet to be imagined.

As for me, I am an entrepreneur at heart and now is the right time for me to start a new chapter within Google. I am amazed by what we have accomplished from those early days (not so long ago!), and remain passionate about the power of a simple idea and a shared goal — an open source platform freely available to everyone — to transform computing for people everywhere.

Thank you for your support,

- andy

Rubin will be succeeded by Sundar Pichai, the Senior VP of Google’s Chrome and Apps division. Pichai went forward with Chrome despite all of the doubts he received for creating yet “another browser”, but now it’s one of the most popular web browsers available. Pichai has big shoes to fill, but if anyone in Google could do it, it’d most likely be him. Rubin is off to work on his next big project at Google, and has not stated what it’s going to be yet.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

Back in late 2008, Google’s stock price fell all the way down to $247.30. This was all due to the recession that swept the nation in 2007. Good Guy Google made a decision to re-price its stock options for its employees that would allow them to make more money once Google’s stock picked itself back up. Late 2008 began a pretty dark period for Google. Investors were scared that Google was losing its dominance in the market. They were also scared when Facebook started booming with popularity because they feared that it would replace Google as the most important online advertisement medium.

Things started picking back up in late 2009 when the recession began to fade out and Google’s stock began to rise. Despite the rise, Google’s stock was still falling behind in the market. This resulted in a change of leadership in April 2011. Larry Page took over the Google CEO position from Eric Schmidt, and since then Google’s stock has risen over 35%. Things have turned around. Facebook’s popularity has died down while Google’s is consistently rising. Google’s own social media service, Google+, has been gaining a lot of traction since its inception in 2011. Some reports say that it may be the 2nd most popular social media platform.

Google will continue to rise, and it doesn’t look like it will be falling anytime soon. The company has a lot going for it. It’s going to be opening its own retail stores by the time the holidays roll around, it’s Android operating system is only getting better and better, and its services are continually increasing in popularity. There are a lot of things that Google is planning that should keep investors happy and optimistic.

[via CBS News]

Page described how investors “always” speak to him about how they’re “going to spend too much money on these crazy things”, this referring to one-thought-crazy projects like YouTube, Chrome, and Android. Page continued, “Those are now the things they’re most excited about. … If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.” Continuing on with talk of Tesla Motors, Page praised their focus on commercialization.

“Take one company I admire, Tesla. They’ve not only made a really innovative car, but they’re probably spending 99 percent of their effort figuring out how to actually get it out to people.” – Page

With Tesla on the brain, Page spoke about the inventor whose tragic story may have incidentally made Google a possibility by turning its co-founder towards not just invention, but the marketing of inventions.

“When I was growing up, I wanted to be an inventor. Then I realized that there’s a lot of sad stories about inventors like Nikola Tesla, amazing people who didn’t have much impact, because they never turned their inventions into businesses.” – Page

Have a peek at the timeline below to see more of the musings of Larry Page over the past few weeks and months. Also have a peek at the Nikola Tesla Museum story from August of 2012 to get a better idea of what Nikola Tesla really did for our modern world, and see one more connection between the Tesla motor company and the inventor by the same name.

Reuters suggests that the two heavy hitters were conducting phone conversations last week and that it won’t be the last one either. These talks have covered a range of intellectual property matters, including the ongoing mobile patent disputes between Apple and Android OEM’s. Most recently they won a huge battle vs Samsung and I’m sure you’re all well aware of that money draining outcome.

Discussion and friendly talks have also been being conducted on lower levels instead of just the CEOs, hinting that both companies could possibly be looking to end these tiresome lawsuits and patent issues. Hopefully we can all just get along and agree to a “truce” as Reuters puts it – although that is unlikely.

Apple’s late Steve Jobs has openly denounced Google’s Android as a “stolen product,” and went as far as saying he’d use every penny of Apple’s cashcow to “destroy Android” and even followed that by stating he was willing to “go thermonuclear war on this.” Apple and Google’s relationship with apps like YouTube and Google Maps have been growing further and further apart in iOS, so the current state of the relationship is unclear. The next phone call between the two CEOs was scheduled for this Friday but was apparently canceled for unknown reasons. Hopefully something positive comes from these talks but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Page will be missing next week’s Google I/O, which is the company’s annual developer conference, as well as the company’s quarterly earnings call next month. Schmidt says that Page will continue to run the company despite his condition and absence from the next few several events.

Google did not further elaborate on Page’s condition, although it seems serious enough that he’d have to cancel his appearance at such a major event as I/O. Some analysts wonder if there’s more to his condition than having lost his voice. After the news, Google shares dipped 2 percent.

[via NY Times]

Google has just wrapped up the earnings call but there were a few things we wanted to share with our readers. For one Larry predicts that CPC (basically pay per clicks) of ads will continue to grow as expected, but Larry himself said, “CPC on mobile will pass that of the desktop and PC soon.” Leading us to believe they will continue to push Android and the mobile ad market extremely hard moving forward. When he says “Mobile” that is smartphones and tablets both — and not just Android. This leads us to the more important hardware comments by Larry, and that is regarding Android tablets.

Google CEO Larry Page:

There’s been a lot of success on some lower-priced tablets that run Android, maybe not the full Google version of Android, but we definitely believe that there is going to be a lot of success at the lower end of the market. As well, with lower-priced products that will be very significant. It’s definitely an area we think is quite important and that we’re quite focused on.

During the Q&A the question on Android and tablets was brought up more than once but everyone was very vague on responses. This reply from Larry is the only thing that truly stood out to us. With multiple reports of a budget Android tablet being released by Google themselves we immediately thought of that tablet. We’ve been reporting on rumors that Google is set to release a budget yet extremely portable and powerful quad-core 7″ tablet for the awesome low price of $199 — shattering everything else available and setting the tone for Android tablets. If his comments today about “lower-priced products being significant,” and an area they are “quite focused” on wasn’t a hint then I don’t know what is.

We are starting to see the same thing from others such as Samsung. Just today we got a chance to check out their new Galaxy Tab 2 7-inch with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for only $249. With Samsung and hopefully Google bringing impressive tablets to market at a low price point, hopefully the rest follow suite, including app developers. Obviously we didn’t hear anything juicy and this is pure speculation, but can’t hurt to wonder and dream right?