Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Executive Chairman of Google, Dr. Eric Schmidt.
Well, good afternoon. It's great to be back to the annual shareholder meeting. I hope we're going to have a very good hour, hour 15 or so here. Let me ask first, who all was here at our first shareholder meeting? Welcome back. Let's have a round of applause for the people who've been here forever. By the way, you guys were there too. You didn't raise your hands. The peanut gallery here was here the whole time. Anyway, so welcome to our meeting. I hope you guys enjoyed the lunch and the demos outside. If you don't get a chance, I think the demos are going to be there for a while. I hope everyone has registered. If you're not registered, please register so we sort of have a record that you were here, and everybody here has a copy of the agenda.
They were on your chairs, so if you don't have it, I'm sure we can get you one if you didn't find it, and on the back of the agenda is the rules for the meeting, and that's how we're going to conduct the meeting. I'm going to call the meeting to order. I want to start by introducing, we have some non-executive directors of the company here in attendance. For example, we have John Doerr. I think everybody knows John. He's right here. We have John Hennessy, right here, and we have Ram Shriram, and we have a couple of other Google executives who we'll introduce shortly, and we have some other members of Google management. I saw Kent Walker here, David Drummond, who you'll see in a bit, and of course, Larry is here and a few others you'll see as we come along.
We also have Debra Kelly. She's a representative of Computershare. Where is Debra? There she is. Hi, Debra. We see you every year, don't we? Same place, same location. And she serves as our inspector of elections, so be careful and count correctly. And Barbara Marchini, Alyson, Sam, is it Lazarakis? Sam, where are you guys? There they are. Raise your hand. Right over here in opposite corners. And they're from Ernst & Young, who are independent accountants, and they do a great job for us, and you can talk to them about all of that. I'd like to start. Let's go ahead and proceed with our legally required part of this meeting. And David, do you want to get started? This is David Drummond.
David is one of my very close friends and is somebody who has driven our strategies, our M&A strategies, our legal strategies, and pretty much everything interesting in conflict and governments forever, David.
Great. Thanks, sir.
Thank you.
Welcome, everybody, to another annual meeting. I always look forward to this day because I can walk around the campus in a tie without being looked at like I'm out of my mind. We're really glad to see all of you here. Quick few notes, and then we'll get into the agenda. Logistically, the rules of procedure that are governing us today, stockholders shouldn't address the meeting until you're recognized. We'll provide a Q&A period at the end so you can ask your questions when we've finished all of the formal business. Now, if you want to ask a question during the Q&A period, please move over to one of the microphones, and you see those in the aisles. We'll recognize you, identify yourself, and your status as a stockholder or a representative of a stockholder, and then ask your question.
So we thank you for cooperating there. Now, I've received the affidavits of mailing from Computershare and Broadridge, which state that the notice of the meeting has been duly given. All stockholders of record at the close of business on April 8, 2013, are entitled to vote at this meeting. I've also been advised by the inspector of elections that holders of our outstanding Class A and Class B common stock, representing at least a majority of the voting power of our outstanding Class A and Class B stock, that entitled to vote (this is perhaps the longest sentence ever written) entitled to vote is represented today in person or in proxy. So the required number of people is here. So therefore, a quorum is present, and the meeting is duly constituted, and the business of the meeting may proceed. So the first item of business is election of directors.
We'll elect 10 directors at today's meeting. The directors that we elect today will hold office until next year's meeting, 2014, and until their successors are duly elected and qualified. So the board of directors has nominated the following for this year's election: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, John Doerr, Diane Greene, John Hennessy, Ann Mather, Paul Otellini, Ram Shriram, and Shirley Tilghman. Now, our bylaws require that stockholders provide advance notice of their intent to nominate anyone as a director. We haven't received any notices, so I declare the nominations for directors closed. Now, the next matter submitted to the stockholders is the ratification of our appointment of Ernst & Young as our independent registered public accounting firm. Our board of directors has recommended that our stockholders ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young for the 2013 fiscal year.
Now, the next four items are actually all stockholder proposals. Our board has unanimously recommended that our stockholders vote against all four stockholder proposals that will be presented today. The first stockholder proposal is being brought by Pax World Funds. So I'd like to introduce Ms. Meredith Benton, who's representative of Pax World Funds, to present the proposal. There you are. You'll have three minutes to make the statement, and I'll advise you of time. Please proceed.
Great. Thank you. Thank you to the members of the board and to fellow shareholders. As stated, my name is Meredith Benton, and I'm a vice president at Boston Common Asset Management. I speak today on behalf of Pax World Funds and the proponent of proposal three, which seeks a report on lead battery use in companies' data center operations. Currently, shareholders are missing key pieces of information about how Google disposes of lead batteries used in its data center operations. As outlined in the proposal, data centers use lead batteries to prevent power disruptions in the event of a grid failure. Shareholders need to understand how Google tracks the fate of used lead batteries generated from operations and to ensure that batteries are properly recycled in appropriately licensed facilities that meet stringent environmental and occupational safety standards.
Recently, there have been many published articles and media reports of lead poisoning incidents in communities surrounding lead battery recycling facilities in developing countries, which have low standards regarding the disposal of lead batteries relative to the United States. As a result, there are reportedly high levels of community and occupational exposure around lead battery recycling plants in Mexico, a country that receives approximately 20% of the United States' used industrial and vehicle batteries. Additionally, we have found that several technology-focused companies have policies on the disposal of lead batteries. For example, Sprint recently adopted a life cycle policy on lead acid batteries. Sprint's policy acknowledged present and potential impacts to the environment surrounding communities and occupations associated with the lead acid battery recycling process outside the United States.
While we are encouraged by Google's admission that it has devised a system to handle, package, ship, and recycle every battery properly, Google investors have no data on which to base independent evaluations of performance or to compare the company's efforts in this area to its peers. As the owner and operator of a large number of data centers worldwide, Google is both directly and indirectly exposed to the reputational risks associated with health hazards from purchasing and recycling lead batteries. Considering this fact, we believe it is appropriate for shareholders to be able to view what policies govern purchasing and recycling lead batteries. Finally, ISS Proxy Advisory Services, a leading advisory firm, recommended that its clients vote for our proposal.
They did so stating, "A vote for this resolution is warranted, as shareholders would benefit from additional information on Google's current policies and practices, as well as prospective policies and practices to manage lead batteries in its supply chain." Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ms. Benton. The second stockholder proposal is being brought by Mr. John Chevedden. I believe John has some representatives here to present the proposal. Mr. Jacob Parent. Yes, there you are. You have three minutes to make a statement.
Excellent.
Please proceed.
My name's Jake Parent. I'm representing Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization. I'd like to move John Chevedden's proposal regarding equal shareholder voting without making any further comment on it at this time.
Okay. Thank you very much. The third stockholder proposal is being brought by Mr. James McRitchie. I believe Mr. Parent is here for a repeat performance. Three minutes.
I'll be here all night.
All right.
Thank you, Mr. Drummond. My name is Jake Parent again. I represent Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group. I'm here to present James McRitchie's proposal that urges a policy whereby senior executives retain significant stock ownership, otherwise known as skin in the game, as Warren Buffett calls it. We believe such ownership more closely aligns senior management with shareholder interests. This is particularly important given the fact that there are several policies Google has right now that are not in line or appear not to be in line with shareholder interests. As an example, I would like to highlight a couple of these right now. The first concerns our company's failure to disclose political spending, an irony given that our company provides the world with a ready window on virtually all information.
We think that if senior executives had more skin in the game, they would support political spending disclosure as a means of championing transparency and protecting the Google brand. In the same regard, our company continues to be a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This is despite the fact that the U.S. Chamber actively lobbies against policies the company has supported on climate change, internet regulation, intellectual property rights, privacy rights, net neutrality, LGBT and women's rights, among others. For a company whose brand is so closely tied to its lofty principles, this is a serious threat to the integrity of the Google brand. We believe, again, that if company leaders would make such a choice if their compensation was more closely tied to the fate of shareholders.
Therefore, we ask our fellow shareholders to vote for this proposal on executive stock retention and urge our directors to consider it carefully. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Mr. Parent. Now, the fourth stockholder proposal is being brought by the Laborers' District Council and Contractors' Pension Fund. Mr. Isaac Velez will be presenting the proposal. There you are, Mr. Velez. Please proceed. You have three minutes.
Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board of directors, and fellow shareholders. My name is Isaac Velez, and I am pleased to be presenting shareholder proposal number six on behalf of the Ohio Laborers Pension Plan, which calls on the company to adopt and disclose a CEO succession planning policy. The laborers' union represents over 500,000 construction workers across the United States and Canada. We have over 100 individual benefit funds, which represent the deferred income of thousands of laborers and their families. These funds have collectively over $34 billion in assets and are long-term shareholders in Google. We believe that CEO succession is one of the primary and most important responsibilities of the board of directors. A recent study published by the National Association of Corporate Directors quoted a director of a large technology firm saying that, "A board's biggest responsibility is succession planning.
It is the one area where the board is completely accountable, and the choice has significant consequences, good and bad, for the corporation's future." In its 2007 study, What Makes the Most Admired Companies Great: Board Governance and Effective Human Capital Management, Hay Group found that 85% of the most admired company boards have a well-defined CEO succession plan to prepare for the replacement of the CEO on a long-term basis, and that 91% have a well-defined plan to cover the emergency loss of the CEO that is discussed at least annually by the board. The NACD report identified several best practices and innovations in CEO succession planning.
The report found that boards of companies with successful CEO transitions are more likely to have well-developed succession plans that are put in place well before a transition, are focused on developing internal candidates, and include clear candidate criteria and a formal assessment process. Our proposal is intended to have the board adopt a written policy containing several specific best practices in order to ensure smooth transition in the event of the CEO's departure. We believe that the company has misconstrued the intent of our shareholder proposal. In its opposing statement to the proposal, the company states that, "We believe it would be inadvisable to publicly report information regarding our confidential internal discussions on management succession planning or to add additional details to our corporate governance guidelines and committee charters." We couldn't agree more.
It is not the fund's intention for the company to disclose proprietary or confidential information about potential or future successors. Rather, we wish only to know that the company has a plan in place and it is regularly considering and developing internal candidates. Thank you for your time, and we urge shareholders to vote for our proposal. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Mr. Velez. So those are the presentations for the proposals. Because no further business is scheduled to come before the meeting today, we're going to now open up the polls. If you've previously voted by a proxy, you don't need to vote today unless you want to change your vote. And please note that we've received sufficient proxies before the meeting to know that the proposals we discuss today will pass or fail in accordance with the recommendations that were made by our board of directors, which are also listed in our proxy statement. However, we want to make sure everyone has a chance to vote. So if you want to vote and you requested a ballot when you registered for the meeting, please complete it now, and we'll give you a few moments for that. Okay. It looks like we're mostly complete.
Does anyone else have a ballot they need collected? Excellent. So with that, I will declare the polls for each matter voted upon at the meeting closed, and we've now collected the ballots, I believe. So let me go through the results. I've been advised by the inspector of elections that the nominees for the board of directors have been duly elected. Do we need to, sorry, are there more? Okay. I've further been advised by the inspector of elections that a majority of the shares of our Class A and Class B common stock, they were entitled to vote and are present at the meeting in person or by proxy, voting together as a single class, have voted in favor of the ratification of Ernst & Young to act as our independent registered public accounting firm for the 2013 fiscal year. Therefore, this proposal has been approved by our stockholders.
The inspector of elections has also advised me that a majority of the shares of Class A and Class B common stock, again, entitled to vote and present at the meeting in person or by proxy, and also voting together as a single class, have voted against the stockholder proposal regarding a report on lead batteries in Google's supply chain, the stockholder proposal regarding equal shareholder voting, the stockholder proposal regarding executive stock retention, as well as the stockholder proposal regarding succession planning. So that means that each of these stockholder proposals have not been approved by shareholders. Now, as soon as possible after the meeting, we'll complete the final vote tabulations and provide the final vote results on our investor relations website, as well as a filing with the SEC. So that ends the official part of the meeting, and I declare the formal portion of our meeting adjourned.
Eric will now come back and make a few remarks, and you'll have a chance to ask questions after that. Eric.
Thank you very much, David. And David will be joining us on stage in just a little bit. I want to repeat my thanks to you all for coming. We just love having you here. And I wanted to start by talking a little bit about what we're up to at Google. And then we'll have Bernie and Johanna to do some demos, and then Larry and I, of course, will take your questions, and we're very much looking forward to that. We're using the language inside of Google around big bets. This is being driven, I think, primarily by Larry. He says we need to sort of aspire greater.
And I'll tell you that if you go back and you look at nine years ago in the IPO, Larry and Sergey asked you, as our prospective shareholders at the time, to take the long-term view, to place a big bet on our leadership and product vision. And in many ways at that time, that's why I asked the folks who were here way back when, it was a leap of faith on your part, right? You believed us. Now, at the time, it's hard to imagine this now, but most people thought that search was a done deal when Google started working on the problem nearly two decades ago, Larry and Sergey started it at Stanford. And it's interesting that we forget that it was the same with Gmail, right? That email, there was nothing new about email. I remember sitting there like, "Who's got a new email?
It's all these email solutions, right?" Launching an email service was not an obvious choice for a search company, especially when we're offering 200 times more storage than the competition. Today, we have over 425 million Gmail users globally, and the other services are in decline. It shows you that you can enter a market with a big bet when everybody assumes that there's nothing interesting going on, and you can do something that just works better, and you can change the world. That's a way that Google likes to think about problems. Give you another example. When Google brought Android, most people thought Andy Rubin was nuts, literally nuts. They believed that any attempt to align the mobile industry around open source operating systems would fail.
I mean, I remember sitting there thinking, "God, these guys will never let this thing in." I remember Larry and Sergey looking at me going like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see." The assumption was that open source would never work, right? And yet now, there are more than 900 million Android phones in the world shipping at a rate of 1.5 million phones per day. Now I'm getting excited, right? By the way, it's accelerated. Think about the impact of open source. It's something which I worked on for 20 or 25 years. Now, the number one operating system platform in the world, free software for the world from a company that's doing well in its business. I'll give you another example. In 2006, we acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion with almost no revenue.
David, who brought that deal to us, I remember sitting there with David going like, okay. "Are we going to really do this?" And David said, "Yep. And you're going to be happy with it." We took it to the board, and the board said, "Okay. We hope you know what you're doing." And I remember investors going, "Oh, God. These guys have lost it." And Larry said, "Video matters. And this is the fastest way we can get to video." Okay. How are we doing? Okay. At our last Brandcast advertising event, which I spoke at, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who's just a prince in my view, DreamWorks Animation, it's a Hollywood studio if you don't know, described YouTube as, "A whole new entertainment paradigm." Okay. You don't like that example? Let's do another one. Let's do Chrome. Okay. Now I get really excited.
People asked, "Who needs another browser?" I asked, "Why should there be another browser?" But we had an idea. We had a technical team that saw a new way of building a browser that was faster and more secure. And a small interruption in the shareholder meeting, if you care about security online, you should be using Chrome. If you care about speed on your computers, you should be using Chrome. If you care about price, you should be using Chrome because it's free. Okay? Please use Chrome. Now, 750 million people agree with you and are using Chrome for a better way to go online. And in my entire career, I never thought that this would happen. And it's happening right now. Now, these are big bets. And it passed a test, and Larry likes a test. He calls it the toothpaste test.
I remember him inventing this one day. He said that basically what we want to do is we want to do products that people use once or twice a day. I guess he brushes his teeth twice a day. Me, it's once a day. There are products that fulfill an important role in their lives. The ability to find information, to access the web, to communicate with family and friends. These are things that we do all the time. These things matter, and they matter to us in ways that are very, very important. The team now, the management team led by Larry, is really focused right now internally on execution and velocity. In fact, there are meetings about these things. We're focusing hard on increasing our velocity and improving our execution. The product platforms are better thought through. They're better launched.
They're more solid. There are far fewer bugs. I'll give you an example of something new. Take Google Now. Most of you have probably not encountered it yet, but it's on your Android phones, for example, and on a few others as well if you download it. And we've always believed that the perfect search engine would understand exactly what you meant and give you exactly what you wanted. Like you're done, right? But, launched a year ago, Google Now gets you the information you need just right now, just at the right amount and the right moment without you having to ask first, right? That's kind of interesting. You don't have to ask. It just tells you. Heading for your next appointment? Well, the directions with traffic conditions, they're right there on your phone. Kind of useful. Running to catch an airplane?
Your boarding pass will be instantly available without you having to line up at the counter. Now, that's a product, right? We can get excited about. And when you land, if you're abroad, the currency rate will appear on the screen. It'll be no more scratching your head like, "What's the currency rate? I can never remember." And as Johanna is going to demonstrate, voice is a key part of the way we think technology is going to evolve, the next generation of search experience. We've even started to crack conversational questions like, "Well, I need a jacket this weekend." And it can try to figure out what the weather's going to be like and whether you're going to a black tie event. It just gets you the weather for Saturday or Sunday. It also helps you out.
You can tell Google to remind you to return your mother's phone call or add a meeting to your calendar. We believe that voice is increasingly important. As an example, you use voice to speak to the Google Glass, which is a phenomenal product. It's just easier to talk to things. And the voice recognition in the last few years has gotten good enough that you can actually talk to your computer and you're not crazy. On Chrome and Android, in a multi-screen world, our products need to work seamlessly so that you can sort of access your stuff wherever device you're using at the moment. You'll have noticed the tremendous effort that we've put into making our apps available on Android and iOS, both platforms, not just Android. Google+ , Google Maps, Gmail. And the UIs are now much, much more beautiful and much more coherent.
You'll notice this when you go through our products. This has been a big focus of the teams. With Chrome, switching devices becomes painless, right? You, in fact, end up on the other device exactly where you left off on the first device. All the tabs are there because they're across your desktop and your phone and your tablet. You can even click the back button on a different device and it just works. What? It's amazing, and with Google Play and movies and books and apps and games are all accessible from the web and Android device without any syncing. Syncing is probably the thing that drives people crazy in most of our online world. We fixed it now.
To give you a sense of this, let's take a look at this year's I/O conference, which is our very big developer conference we had up in San Francisco a few weeks ago to see the momentum that was generated by our product teams. I want to give you a sense of this engine that's producing these big bets and these products. Want to go ahead?
On behalf of Google, welcome to the 6th Annual Google I/O. We are in the middle of one of the most pivotal moments in personal computing. At the heart of this journey is the impact we can have on people around the world. Android started with the simple goal of bringing open standards to the mobile industry. Today, it is the most popular mobile operating system in the world. Google Play has just crossed 48 billion app installs. And revenue per user, which is a pretty important stat for all of us, is two and a half times what it was just a year ago. Today, I'm happy to announce Google Play Music All Access, a uniquely Google approach to a subscription music service. Chrome started as a simple journey to make the web much better, both as a platform for developers and as an experience for users.
The browser is a means, not an end. And so we're always trying to figure out how to make the browser smaller and faster. Our goal with the Pixel was to get it in the hands of developers so that they can build the next generation of web experiences. We're introducing 41 new features across three major areas of Google+ : a newly designed stream, a new Hangouts application, and a fundamentally new photos experience.
Ground Truth is taking authoritative data sources and making the best data set we can possibly make. No plugins, no downloads. This is the Google Earth experience right there on the browser, and those clouds, they're real-time. A computer you can talk to, and it will answer everything you ask it. Okay, Google. Show me things to do in Santa Cruz. With a simple touch of a mic, from the Queen of England to the most humble farmer in Africa, everyone can easily access all of humanity's information and get what they need to improve their and their family's lives.
That, my friends, is the power of the new search experience that we are building at Google. The opportunities we have are tremendous. We haven't seen this rate of change in computing since the birth of personal computing. I think we're all here because we share a deep sense of optimism about the potential of technology to improve people's lives and the world.
I think you can see. Thank you. If you didn't get a chance to Google I/O next year, sign up. It was sold out in 30 seconds. That's how important that event has become. We're just still scratching the surface of what's possible. We'll talk about that some more in the question. Larry Page and I share a very profound belief in the potential for technology to improve people's lives. It's why we continue to look at new inventions. I mentioned Google Glass, self-driving cars, while continuing to invest in our core product areas. I'm convinced that future generations, my grandchild and great-grandchildren at some point in the future, we hope, won't be fumbling around in their pockets and purses for their devices. They'll be looking up, right? Looking, not down. Engaged and enjoying the world, right? Talking, seeing, living.
And in 100 years' time, I wonder, and I really do wonder, whether people will marvel that we allowed humans to drive cars. The potential to reduce accidents, to cut congestion, to get rid of a lot of wasted parking lots and events. And the mobility self-driving cars will bring to people who are with impaired mobility will be life-changing. Let's do this. Let's do the next video. And then we'll have Bernie come up on stage to show our latest revision of Google Maps. I want you guys to get a sense of what we can now do on this new platform.
Good morning, James.
Hey, good day, man.
How are you?
Doing just great.
It's me.
Auto-driving.
There we go.
Where'd we go?
Look, Mom, no hands.
No hands anywhere.
No hands, no feet.
No hands, no feet.
No, nothing.
I love it.
We're here at the stop sign.
Yep.
The car's using radar and lidar to check and make sure there's nothing coming either way.
I'm trying to find myself.
Old habits die hard, man. They don't die.
Hey, anybody up for a taco?
Yeah, yeah.
What do you want to do today, Steve?
I'm all for tacos all night, man.
All right. Well, let's go get a taco at the drive-through.
We're turning into the parking lot.
Yep.
How neat.
Here we go.
Now, we're going to kind of creep along here. Does anybody have any money?
I've got money.
No, I've got my wallet right here. You can roll down your window and order a burrito.
Yeah, push it up.
I'm doing very well. How are you today?
Good, thank you.
This is some of the best driving I've ever done.
95% of my vision is gone. I'm well past legally blind. You lose your timing in life. Everything takes you much longer. There are some places that you cannot go. There are some things that you really cannot do. Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and the flexibility to go the places I both want to go and need to go when I need to do those things.
You guys get out. I've got places I have to go.
Bye, man.
It's been nice. It's been nice.
Then think about it. You think technology matters?
It matters a lot.
I'd like to introduce Bernhard Seefeld. Come on in and go ahead and give us a sense of some new things we're doing right now.
Hey, thanks, Eric. Remember the first time you used Google Maps? And I imagine you could have that exact same feeling again. We have been working on something that we believe might do just that. We looked at what we have today and we noticed there are three things missing. Number one, you and I and everybody else, we look at the exact same map. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could build billions of different maps, one for every user? And not only that, it would constantly adapt to what you're trying to do, a map truly built for you. And number two, Google collected all this imagery from satellite to street, indoors, and even underwater. Wouldn't it be great if you could bring this all together into one immersive imagery experience?
Number three, wouldn't it be great if you could make everything simpler and more powerful by coming up with whole new ways to interact with the map itself, truly making the map the user interface? With those three principles, we went ahead and rebuilt Google Maps from the ground up based on our great data, but with a whole new user interface. Today, we're going to show you the new Google Maps. But it looks like the computer's a little bit of a stage fright. So before we switch over. Okay. Stage fright resolved. This is the new Google Maps. This is a map that is built for me. It shows all the places that with the same data that we used to create Google Now for you.
We know my interests, places I like to go to, where I booked a restaurant, my friends like, and that map is created from that data just for me. It has friend recommendations on it, and there's this place, Kichi, over here, which my friend Stephanie liked. I searched for it a couple of times, and that's why it appeared here. Actually, I'm really considering going there, and so I'd like to see how it looks inside. Amanda, let's take a closer look. We just flew into our new immersive imagery experience. We kind of get a great sense of how this place looks like, and actually, it's really nice. I'm definitely going to go there, but also, given this imagery experience, it's a great way to travel. Let's take a quick trip to Rome. This is the St. Peter's Basilica.
It's a nice 3D model, but what about a more realistic view, so this is the Google Earth experience in a browser. No downloads and no plugins. It just works, and down in the bottom, you see a row of images, and these are other great things to see in that area, so we point them out for you. For example, you could go inside and have a close look there, and what you see here is a 3D photo tour that was automatically generated from user-uploaded photos. There was no manual work involved. It's all algorithms that put this together in a short movie for you so you get a sense of how the place looks like. Let's go back outside, and as we zoom out and we are leaving the Earth's atmosphere, you can see that we see the whole world, and those clouds, they're real-time.
That's the current weather. Looks pretty nice around here. So if we can go further, though, this is how the Earth looks from space. You can see that the Milky Way in the background is in the correct position. So are the stars. So we can look around. And as the sun appears and it sets behind the Earth, the night lights come out. So this is the future of Google Maps. Thank you. We had the opportunity to launch this at Google I/O a couple of weeks ago. And the feedback has been tremendous. It's really very positive. We were very happy with the feedback. And if you'd like to try it yourself, go to maps.google.com/preview and sign up. And we'll send you an email in the next few days. And with that, I'd like to welcome Eric back on stage.
That was fantastic. Thank you. Okay. And Johanna? Let's go ahead. This is Johanna Wright. And talk a little bit about Google Now.
Hi. I'm going to show you some demo highlights from what we showed at I/O last week or a few weeks back, and we're just going to dive right into a scenario, so I'm on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. I'm there with my family, my husband, and two kids. We're in the kiddie section, but I want to take my son over to ride the Giant Dipper, the big wooden roller coaster at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Now, I don't know if my son is tall enough to go on the roller coaster, and so I could walk over and see, but wouldn't it be more convenient if I could just ask Google? How tall do you have to be to ride the Giant Dipper?
You must be at least 4 feet 2 inches tall to ride Giant Dipper.
Cool, so my son is tall enough, and we can go ride this. Now, the next thing I'm going to need to know, I have some restaurant reservations, and I'm going to need to know, do I have enough time to ride the Giant Dipper and get back in time for lunch? With Google Now, what you're going to see me doing is swiping in, and Google Now anticipates the information I need. I see my restaurant reservation right here for Johnny's Harborside at 2:00 P.M. It's only five minutes away, so it's plenty of time to get over, plenty of time to get to the restaurant. When I get back from the Giant Dipper, I can even click on this navigate button and get turn-by-turn directions right there, so let's fast forward. We go on the roller coaster.
Now we're in the restaurant enjoying our lunch. My husband and I start talking about the upcoming week. I have a business trip to New York this week. Usually on Wednesdays, I take my daughter to school. But I can't remember when my flight is. Do I have enough time to get her to school and then get myself to the flight? Since I don't remember when my flight is, wouldn't it be convenient if I could just ask Google? When does my flight leave?
Delta Air Lines, flight 1940 from SFO to JFK leaves at 8:00 A.M. on June 12th.
We can see the flight leaves at 8:00 A.M. My husband is going to have to drop my daughter off for school. The last time that I went to New York, I was actually there not for work. I was there on a family vacation. My friend Katie asked that when I'm back in town, I give her a call and we go out somewhere for dinner. Before I forget, why don't I get in touch with Katie? Send an email to Katie. I will be in New York next week, and I'm wondering if you want to get together. Ooh. This is what happens with live demos. Send an email to Katie. I'm coming to New York next week, and I'm wondering if you want to get together. Ooh, I'm really brave. Anyway, I'm not going to send an email to Katie.
But I do want to make sure I call her when I get to town. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to set a reminder. Remind me to call Katie next Wednesday. So that one worked. And what you're seeing here is our reminders feature that works on times, dates, and even locations like home and work. Now I'll set this reminder. And let's fast forward again. I fly to New York. And typically, when I would get out of my plane, I'd be getting in my taxi. I'd rifle through my backpack to get my hotel reservation to tell the taxi driver where to go. Now, with Google Now, I think this is on the podium. Where's the Wolf Vision, Steve? Okay. Sorry. So I would typically be rifling through my backpack to find my reservation.
But with Google Now, which anticipates the information I need right at the right time, again, I'm going to swipe in. And I'll see here my hotel reservation at the W. I also see my reminder to call my friend Katie. Now, after I've talked to the taxi driver, after I've called Katie, I'm just so excited to be in New York. I'm thinking about that trip we went on last year, how I saw Katie, how she got to meet my kids. And I want to see those pictures. And I'd like to show them to Katie. Wouldn't it be awesome if I could say something like this to Google? Show me my pictures from New York last year. And these actually are my pictures from New York last year. And right here, you see Katie reading a book to my kids. That's pretty awesome.
What we believe search should do is it should answer questions about the world around you and also about your own life. You should be able to talk to it in a very natural way, like you might talk to a friend. It should understand exactly what you mean. Finally, it should anticipate what you want, what you want to ask, even before you ask it. I hope through these demos, you're able to see how all of this stuff is starting to come together. Thank you.
Thank you very, very much, Johanna. Thank you both to Bernie and to Johanna. It gives you a sense of what the magic-making looks like at Google with a lot more coming. I wanted to finish with sort of three points that I think are important to stress. And then we'll take questions and comments. First, I would like to encourage you all to take the long view. Not every bet that Google places is going to work. We're going to make mistakes. It's part of the experimental process. Since we started our spring cleaning in the fall of 2011, we've closed down more than 70 products and features that didn't have the impact that we hoped. By the way, in many cases, these were good products. They just didn't scale right. But trying and failing is important. It's an important part of the way we innovate as a company.
Because we recognize that the pursuit of such projects is key to our future, we will continue to seek them. Second, new technologies always, always raise new issues for society. This was true when the telephone was invented. It was true when the camera was invented. We have a responsibility as a company to be thoughtful about how we design our products. We always need to focus on the end user benefit. That's the principle that drives the decision-making inside the company. Finally, this is an issue very close to my heart. We have 5 billion people not online today. Most of the people of the world, they don't have the benefits of the world that we live in. They're people just like us, trapped in the wrong systems or without the right educational opportunity.
I think we have a duty to think about those people, to create the technology that enables them to get online so that they can access the information, the communications, and yes, the entertainment that we're all so fortunate to enjoy today. I'm proud to report that I, Larry, Sergey, the management team, are committed to the principles that I've outlined here, that we take this as more than a business, more as an opportunity, but as a cause to make the world a better place. Thank you very, very much. It's my privilege now to invite David, obviously, up. I wanted to talk a little bit about Larry. When I met Larry 12 years ago, I knew I had met somebody who was a very good computer scientist.
In the last decade, Larry has, I think, proven his status as the finest computer scientist of his generation and certainly one of the top in the world, and using a very, very fine eye for products, I would give him the credit under his leadership now, in addition for many other things, the extraordinary quality of Google's product offering today. Larry, would you like to join us? Thank you. Do you want to?
Thank you, Eric. You're too kind.
But in my case, I'm an engineer. And it's true, Larry. You really are that good. Why don't you have a seat? I think what we wanted to do is have questions or comments. And I think maybe Johanna, if you wanted to come up as well, you're welcome to. Yes, sir.
Yeah. Come on up.
Hi. Good afternoon. I'm Justin Danhoff. I'm representing the National Center for Public Policy Research, a company shareholder. I have a quick two-part question. First, last May, Google announced it would begin censoring the company's shopping platform by, in part, removing listings for illegal items such as guns and ammunition. This decision and the company's implementation of the policy strongly coincided with President Barack Obama's push for additional gun control laws in the country. I'm aware that the company's senior management, many are avid supporters of the White House, as are many shareholders here. And I also understand that gun sales create valid liability concerns and are encumbered by a burdensome regulatory structure. But because of the way Google's shopping platform is structured, this new policy means that the company is likely rejecting revenue sources from gun and ammo suppliers.
Given the timing of the policy, the first question I have is, can shareholders be confident that your choice to remove gun and ammo listings was based on profitability business concerns, or was Google making a public policy statement?
If you want me to get the second part in, I'll go with that. And then. We'll try to answer your question. Yes. Gentlemen?
Sure. Let me answer that. One of the things I work on at Google is our policies around our products and what we allow and what we don't. And you may not know that we have advertising, of course, is our main source of revenue. Our policy with advertising is we have not allowed gun ads since almost the inception of our programs. So we've taken a position that it's best for Google for certain things not to be advertised on our systems. And that's been our view. And we are being consistent in that view with the shopping platform. So I can assure you it's a long-standing view that we've had, not any kind of a recent public policy.
Your second question?
Okay. Secondly, I guess. Thank you. Concerning Google's homepage, this past Easter Sunday, a day when more than 2 billion Christians worldwide celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the company decided to honor the birthday of deceased labor leader Cesar Chavez on your front page Google Doodle. This decision offended many Christians, legions of whom are company shareholders and customers. While it is true that President Obama declared March 31st as Cesar Chavez Day, Easter comes only once a year. Instead of his birthday, Google could easily have honored Chavez on the day of his death, the founding of the United Farm Workers Union, the anniversary of UFW's historic grape strike, or even Labor Day. While we do not dispute Google's right to celebrate what it wishes on its homepage, the company surely knew the decision to honor Chavez on Easter would insult millions, if not billions, of Christians.
To many people, Google's decision seemed an intentional insult, so we are not suggesting that the company should celebrate Easter or any religious day with a Google Doodle, but rather that your timing was insensitive and could harm the company's business and reputation, so from a business point of view, what went into the company's thinking in making this decision, and what did the company gain from unnecessarily upsetting so many customers?
I would answer by saying that we always face choices. And there was no intent to slight anyone. And there are plenty of opportunities to acknowledge the incredible role and importance of religious holidays in other areas. Larry, would you like to add anything to that? There was certainly no intent. And if there was offense, it was certainly not intended. And I do apologize.
Yeah. Green.
Okay. Yes, sir. And welcome back.
Good to be here, Dr. Schmidt. I'm John Simpson. I am a shareholder. I am also director of Consumer Watchdog's Privacy Project. I'm wearing our Google tracking jacket. Last year, as some of you may recall, we tracked you around the parking lot.
I remember the ice cream machine.
The ice cream machine in Washington and so on, where we tracked folks through the Hart Senate Office Building. But I'm by myself today. I do have a pair of Wiseup Spy Glasses I could give you if you wanted them, but that's another thing. I have two serious questions relating to Google Glass. You are seeing that as one of the greatest things to come down the pike. We have some serious doubts. We see it as perhaps unleashing one of the most privacy-intrusive, perhaps even Orwellian devices ever. Users will be able to surreptitiously photograph and video us as we unsuspectingly go about our business or our kids as they play in a neighborhood park. Google Glass is a voyeur's dream come true. But ironically, as I read the rules of today's meeting, I couldn't have worn a pair in here. You don't allow photography or taking video.
It seems to me to be a little bit hypocritical to sort of actively bet and aid possible privacy violations by so many others outside, but so jealously to protect your own privacy. Which brings me to the question. Will you offer people who have been photographed or videoed with Google Glass, without their permission, the ability to have those images removed from Google's database and not be used for advertising and marketing purposes? Much like you will allow images to be blurred on Street View if I don't want my home to be shown. Will there be some policy that if I find out Glass video has been taken of me in an intrusive way, can I get it removed from your database?
Yeah. I think there's a number of questions there. How many of you have a cell phone on you today? So most people. That has a camera on it, and it's in the room. So I think as a society, we are obviously, there are cameras everywhere today. We've seen a lot of this kind of concern over unreleased products. I remember the day when we released Gmail, people were very, very worried about it. And we've seen this as a kind of a constant thing. We have products that are announced, but not yet in the hands of lots of people. People worry about all sorts of things that actually, when we use the product, we don't find to be a big concern. So I have Google Glass. I love using it. I love taking pictures of my kids. And I think it makes that process easier.
I think we've gone to some pains to make sure we pay attention to the privacy issues around that and so on. But at Google, where we have lots of these out in the wild, when you go into the bathroom, you don't collapse in terror that someone might be wearing Glass into the bathroom, just like you don't collapse in terror that somebody might be holding up their cell phone as they go into the bathroom. It's just not that big a deal. So I would just encourage you all not to try to create fear and concern about technological change until it's actually out there and people are using it and they understand the issues. I think we get much better outcomes.
You had a second question.
The second question relates to someone who would be using Glass in a way where the subject knows that they're being photographed. They're happy with it and so on. But down the road, for whatever reason, the person does not want that video anymore. Are they going to be able to remove that from the Google database, or is it there forever?
That's a more general question about whether you should have the right to control what other people do with your image or whatever, and I think that's a pretty complex question.
I'm talking about me as the user who's put it up. It's my video. Now I've changed my mind, and I don't want it there anymore. Can I take it down? I'll put it another way. It would be analogous to being able to send with Google Glass a Do Not Track message. And if that were sent, then would Google honor it?
Look, Eric, in general, we try to make sure that any way users can control their own information or information they've created, that's a value we have. So that's consistent with that. But you're getting into very specific scenarios.
Okay. Thank you very much. Let's go behind. Thank you.
Yeah. My name is Tim Plöverkorn. I represent a German investment company owned by family business owners called Investmentaktiengesellschaft für langfristige Investoren TGV and a German publishing company called VNR owned by that group. Looking into the VNR figures, we found that from 2010 to 2012, our AdWords spending shrank from over $7 million to $5 million per year. Actually, we are willing to spend much more. But therefore, we would need a permanent contact to support us. From what annual sales levels on, does Google assign a permanent salesperson to an advertiser, $1 million, $5 million, $10 million, or higher? Is the Google policy to have a long-standing relationship with clients, or is it like the diplomatic corps change personnel every three years before they get too cozy with a customer?
In general, the answer to your question varies by country. I don't actually know the numbers in Germany. I can tell you that what typically happens with smaller vendors is they have online services. Then they graduate to somebody they can talk to on the phone. And then as they get larger, they have a person who comes visit them. And then they have a whole team that visits them along with me. Right? So there's sort of a hierarchy. So what I would encourage you to do is to have an extraordinarily successful business, and we'll all visit you. Right? And I don't exactly know the threshold points, but I can tell you that we very much want a long-term relationship with you. We essentially don't lose customers. And we want to sort of deepen those relationships for all the obvious reasons. Yes, sir. And welcome back.
Thank you. My name is Sheldon Ehrlich. And I wanted to thank you for a really good lunch today. As I drove up, I noticed protesters outside from the Service International something or other, SEIU. And as a result of that, I interviewed a number of your contract personnel. I asked them if they wanted to become members of the Service Employees International Union. And some of them didn't know what I was talking about. But those that answered me said no. And I hope that Google will withstand the pressure from a rather corrupt union to disrupt the lives of their employees, contract employees, by having them join the SEIU. I wanted to make a comment on the Laborers International Union. I remember that 13 years ago, that was also one of the most corrupt unions in the country. They were involved.
The guy who ran it, whose name is spelled C-I-O-A or something like that, Coia, was going to be indicted or something like that. And he made a deal with the Clinton administration and escaped his correct punishment. And I just wanted to say that. So thank you.
Thank you. David, you want to comment?
Oh, I'm sorry. I had one other question. I had a real question.
We'll address your question. Sure. I will address your question.
You, I just read that you're not going to have porn on the Glass.
That's correct.
Congratulations. Do you allow porn on Chrome?
Chrome is a browser that accesses everything on the internet, and fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, adult porn is present on the web.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks for that.
Okay. Welcome back. I'm glad to see you're with us.
Thank you, Kathryn Alexander.
Go ahead, Kathryn.
I like iGoogle very much. Every time I open my computer, which is more than twice a day, I see immediately the time, the date, the weather, the news. I don't know if anybody else here enjoys or uses iGoogle. Do you? Can I see hands? And yet you intend to drop this. I would ask you to reconsider.
Okay. Thank you, Kathryn. And thank you for coming. Who would like to answer that? Johanna or Larry?
Oh, I totally want Larry to answer this.
Johanna would like Larry to answer this question.
I mean, I think these are some of the more difficult decisions we have to make. I think I love iGoogle too. Unfortunately, it didn't have much growth or that much usage. And we weren't invested in it as a company to make it better versus some of the other newer things we're doing. So I think we very much believe that we should have a product that addresses the needs you just mentioned really well. And I'm sure we'll get there. But unfortunately, we'll go through a process of change in order to get there.
So, I would add by saying, watch this space. Yes, ma'am.
Hi. Good afternoon.
Oh, I'm sorry. I did it the wrong way. I apologize. I forgot in the back. My error. Yes, ma'am. Could you start?
Thank you. Hi. I'm Kathy Parks. I'm a shareholder and I have some lightweight questions. When is Google going to open a store next to Apple and Microsoft at Stanford Shopping Center?
Do you think we should be between the two, next to Apple or next to Microsoft?
And then move on down to university. Okay. That was that. And Johanna, is that your voice that answered back? That sounded like you.
It's not my voice. Actually.
That's a good idea, though.
Okay, Johanna, you really regret being on stage, don't you?
It's okay. I actually wanted to say a little more because I think it's such an interesting thing. What we end up doing is we hire actors to speak. And they read books. And they read multiple sentences. And then what we do is we create these voices synthetically out of vowel sounds coming together. And we have different ends of sentences and consonants coming after vowels. It's really interesting. And maybe.
So it's not really a person?
No.
It's really the union of people?
No, no. It's a single person. But the words are made up of different sounds.
You know, they've actually made one of these for me. They've emailed me.
Oh, no.
Based on, we have a company meeting every Friday, and they created a synthetic voice for me.
Wow.
But I haven't tried it yet.
Okay. Look forward to hearing that from Larry. Now for you. Thank you very much. Yes, ma'am.
Hi. My name is Lauren Jacobs. I'm representing the Service Employees International Union, which owns 215 shares of Google Incorporated and our pension plans. I want to speak today on why people are out in front of the Plex today. SIS officers have come together with other officers across the Silicon Valley to improve conditions. SIS is a company used here by this campus. Women who have worked for this company have reported sexual harassment by SIS managers, and instead of the company investigating those charges or looking into them, many of those women were terminated when they stepped forward. Many of these workers are part-time, do not have enough hours to achieve health insurance and provide for their family. I think this does not resonate with the values that this company has stated.
You have been a leader in talking about we can do things in a way that our employees are treated well and still be one of the wealthiest and most productive companies in the world. I think on this issue, we really would ask that you think very carefully for the sake of our company here to look at hiring a responsible contractor. Saving a few pennies on this may be a short-term gain, but in the long run, does not benefit this broader community of Silicon Valley or the company. Thank you.
David, would you like to answer that?
I'd just say thank you for your comment. I just say that we treat these things very, very seriously. We're very concerned about making sure our vendors have fair employment practices. The issue, obviously, is SIS's issue about union, not union. We certainly don't take a position anti-union. We have vendors, obviously, as I'm sure you know, that are unionized and some that are not. Thank you for raising the concern.
You should have been better. We don't believe that the workers should be forced into either decision. It's their choice. And they need to be free to do that without being intimidated by the company sending spies to meetings where their meetings are not.
So we'll take this as thank you. We'll take this as feedback about our vendor selection.
Absolutely.
And thank you very much for the feedback. Let's see. Where were we in the order? Yes, sir.
Hello. My name is Tom Zhang. I'm a shareholder and ex-Chinese Googler. My question is about the Chinese strategies for Dr. Schmidt and Larry. So Chinese online users, internet population is over 564 million. It's 80% more than the U.S. population. And China is the second largest economy. How can we ignore the market? Our market share dropped from 30% now to below 5%. So Dr. Schmidt visited North Korea. So China's business environment is much better than North Korea. So my question is, when will you return to China?
Would you like me to do that or?
Yeah. I was in China after we went to North Korea. We went to China, and I agree with you that China is an extraordinarily diverse, economically impressive country. I was troubled when I was in China about the continued reports of censorship, spying on citizens, and so forth. These are things which violate the principles that Google operates under. It is our sincere hope that the Chinese citizens will put pressure on the people who are preventing them from having proper information. I can report to you that we have quite a successful business in China. We have an engineering team that builds global products, which I met with, and I can tell you that our revenue and advertising is growing very nicely, so we are in China.
We decided to put our search on the Hong Kong side because of the presence of a censorship firewall, which exists between Hong Kong and the mainland. We want the Chinese government to stop censoring information, in particular, political speech. And Google takes a very strong position on that. And I understand that that means that we may not serve these citizens who are victims, if you will. And you would love us to. But we have some principles that are being violated by the Chinese government. And we take it very seriously. Yes, sir.
Hi. My question is specifically for Mr. Larry Page. In the past, when you do mergers and acquisitions, I noticed that you have paid always a premium of 70%. Now, is that the standard for Google? And what about the recent article that I read at TechCrunch about your intent or idea, that is, Google's idea of buying a company by the name of Waze?
I'm not going to comment on any particular discussions we're in now. I guess maybe the premium you're referring to is with Motorola. But look, I think whenever you do an M&A transaction, I mean, it's a pretty complicated transaction. I think we're pretty good at it. David's team actually runs that. I think it's a tremendous job. We do all we need to do to get the deals done and do it expediently. I think we have a great team doing that. We're quite good at it. We pay a variety of different prices, obviously, for assets we acquire. We do that on almost a weekly basis. We acquire things.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Can we do in the way back? Yes, sir. Yes. That's you. Go ahead.
Hi. My name is Tony Chen. I'm a private investor and shareholder. Your company's evolved a lot over the last 10 years, growing from a search company and now more into lots of different products, which is great. And you're sort of becoming an incubator or a company with a bunch of a lot of startups, if you will, that are on these side businesses that are working and seem to be profitable. And I like that very much. But my question is kind of the leaders or the management of these individual divisions or startups within your company, what's the environment like for them there within this bigger company? Do they have all the freedom that they need or the resources to drive the products to their logical conclusions?
How does that environment compare with, say, what they might see outside in the VC world if they were in that avenue trying a startup?
I mean, that's a great question. It's something we spend a lot of time on. I think ultimately, the results are in the results. Like Eric mentioned, Chrome and Android and Gmail and all those things. And I think if you were a startup, you would kill to have those things. And so I think we've done a good job just looking at the results that we've achieved. And that's probably the main way we'd measure that. I think Google's unique in that we're able to make some more significant bets than you might make as a startup. I was reading some of the criticism of Silicon Valley recently. We're too focused on sort of the startup world and small innovation. And I think you saw it with the automated cars or some of the other things that we're focused on now.
Those are big bets and important bets that we're making. And they might seem crazy. But I remember when we released Gmail, everyone thought we were crazy. And that doesn't seem crazy anymore. Chrome doesn't seem crazy. Android doesn't seem crazy anymore. So we have a track record of that. And I'd like to see for Google and for other people to try to focus on more ambitious things, take a little more risk, have a little bit of failure, but also get some really important things done for the world. And I think we're more interested in that than most people. And that's why people work at Google. That's why they like working with me and with Eric and Sergey and all the other people here. It's because we're taking a long-term view.
Thanks to all of you, we can take that view and invest in some important things. That's relatively unique in the world.
Thank you. Thank you. We've actually run out of time. But we've got some important questions here. So if I could have the indulgence of the audience and of the questioners, I'd like to have the three of you state your questions. And we'll speed answer them. And then we'll declare the meeting a success or at least over. You guys go ahead. One, two, three.
I'll summarize my question. My name is Ben Field. I'm the Executive Officer of the South Bay Labor Council, which represents 89 unions locally, 100,000 working families. I also want to raise a concern about your security contractor, SIS, which, to make a very long story short, has a long record of corporate misbehavior. The question is, since this contractor is un-Googly, to say the least, would you in the future consider taking into account whether your contractors, including your security contractors, provide good quality jobs that provide benefits and paid sick days off? Thank you.
The answer to that question is yes. Yes, ma'am.
My name is Åke Lindqvist. I'm a shareholder. I have two short questions. One is, when will you split the stock? And if not, why not?
We've actually announced plans to do that, which you can study. At the moment, it's involved in some litigation.
I'm sorry. I missed it. The other question is for you, Dr. Schmidt. Since your trip to North Korea, have you heard anything about the dear leader in terms of whether his country is slowly going to open up?
I actually met with the respected leader. The dear leader is now embalmed. And after he spoke with Dennis Rodman, he declined to speak with me. So I think the reality is we're probably not going to know what they're up to. It's very hard to predict what they're up to. Yes, sir.
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to address you. My name is Rudolph Alfonso. And I'm a shareholder. And I'd like to read this. I attended the shareholders' meeting of 2011. My question today is, what progress has Google made in regard to clean energy and climate warming in the past two years? Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 2013, was an alarming article on the front page reads, "Bay Area top climate scientist, Dr. Ken Caldeira, tirelessly warning the world regarding climate change and subsequent global warming.
Sir, why don't you ask your question? I think we actually agree with you on this premise.
The question is, what progress has Google made in regard to clean energy and climate warming in the past two years?
Okay. Larry or myself.
Yeah. I mean, this is an issue we care a lot about. We've had an effort to work on the technology for improving energy and making it greener and so on. We've shut that effort down. It was not one of the things that we felt that was making a lot of progress. In our business operations, we've made actually a lot of strides in our data centers. That's something we work very hard on. And we've also, I think, invested very significant amounts of money now in bringing renewable energy to our operations and making sure we're creating additionality in the creation of wind farms and solar projects and so on to run our company and trying to be an example for other companies to do that.
I think that's been a great and profitable business for us and also one where we've done quite a bit of good. I'm sure we can do more.
This area is. I recognize you were very, very interested in climate warming. Thank you. It's a very important issue.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time. Let's get these quickly. Yes, sir.
Don Rislund, shareholder. What can we anticipate in the near future in terms of any dividend or any stock split?
Nothing to announce on dividend. And there is, in fact, a proposal involving a stock split, which is a complicated transaction that you can review. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Please come in.
My name is Marion Dillo. My stock is held in street name. I want to thank Google for the invitation to the annual meeting, particularly the luncheon. Being 96 now, I thought it might be a first to come.
Congratulations.
Everything is so well organized. Everything is so well organized. We park in the parking lot. We register. We get chauffeured over to the campus. And they say lunch is ready. So what could be better than that? So to the board of Google, I want to thank you for the gourmet luncheon and the gift to take home. I bet you when I go out on the street, they'll be envious of me with a Google bag. Thank you again.
Okay. Thank you very much, ma'am. Okay. Yes, sir.
My name is Mark Jacobs. I'm from Folsom, California. Every year, I drive down here and spend three hours. And part of my reason to come to the annual meeting is to see products. And this year, I was very disappointed just to see Google Chrome and Google+ . Why not have a vehicle out here so people can look at it even if they can't drive it? Why not have the Glass so that we can see what it looks like and other products that have at least been announced in beta so we can look at them and perhaps touch them and have other product demonstrations like the new Google Drive, etc.?
Okay. Thank you very much. We will thank you for the feedback. We have three.
My name is Jack Eastwood. I'm a stockholder, and I have come each year to ask that you don't split the stock because I'd like to see it to go the way Hathaway has gone and that the guys that like to play with the stock and drive it down, you've done a good job. This year, I'm really happy, and if you want to split it, go ahead and split it.
Thank you very much. Yes, sir.
One more thing. Yes, sir. Go ahead. If you're going to have pornography, at least have good pornography.
Yeah. I'm not even going to answer that question. Yes, sir.
I have a quick question about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As Larry was just saying, Google does hold very important things like climate change and making sure that we have a better planet to live in the future. So why, when the chamber has opposed our company on that issue along with intellectual property, with labor issues on trade, all kinds of different things, why do we continue to have membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? David?
Sure. It's a good question. Look, we actually have debates about this. So there are a number of things that the chamber's up to that we actually disagree with. And we're very vocal about that. On balance, they do things that are actually also good for our industry and for our business. So we're members for now. But it's something that we do review.
Okay. Thank you. And our final question. And welcome back.
Thank you. Hi. My name is Stanley. I'm an owner of Google shares since 2006, and I'm talking about the film that is coming out tomorrow. I know here there are two people who are over 40 and would like to be an intern with Google. How do these people register? And what are the chances? Thank you.
My advice to you on this matter of the movie is the movie is phenomenal because it's about Google, and I think you're going to love it.
Thank you so much for coming to our shareholder meeting. Thank you, Larry, David, Johanna. Right. We'll see you in a year.