INTERVIEWER: There is one final
event and moment in this year's
installment of Zeitgeist.
And that is a conversation
with the people who made it
all possible, in a sense.
That is, Sergey Brin and Larry
Page, the cofounders of Google.
It is a marvelous thing
you all have created.
I remember when I first met
both of you seven years ago,
and you were so gracious to
come and address a journalism
classes I was teaching
at UC-Berkeley then.
I've always been touched
by your attentiveness.
Who could have imagined the
scale of what you've created?
I wanted to ask you--
start off by asking some
questions regarding scale.
When we first met until very
recently, everything about
Google was perceived as being
cute, charming, marvelous--
there was no one who could
say a bad word about
Google in any sense.
Recently, we've seen stories
about whether we should
be afraid of Google.
Whether Google is
becoming too powerful.
Larry, should we be
afraid of Google?
LARRY PAGE: Wow.
You just cut right
to the chase.
No, I don't think we-- I
mean, I think it's always
worth considering.
But one of the things I've been
really excited about in helping
build the company is that we've
had the wisdom of coming
later than a lot of
technology companies.
And I think, as you've seen us
do more and more things, we're
really going to try to be a lot
more open than people
have previously.
I think we-- Sergey and I
probably, really, and Eric,
really benefit from being, kind
of, computer scientists who
grew up in a university.
You know, using open source
and using some of the
tools Eric made, actually.
And see the benefit of
that kind of openness.
I think we're really excited
about being successful and
being a lot more open about
how we do things and having
a different model, kind
of, how we do things.
And I noticed lots of
our people got really
excited about that.
And they work much harder and
they're more committed and they
build more beautiful things.
I guess I'm really excited
about that-- of being a
different kind of company.
INTERVIEWER: I'm going to ask
if the house lights can start
coming up now so that people
can start seeing their-- making
their way to the microphones
while I have a couple
of other questions.
Sergey, I have a question for
you also involving scale.
One of Google's distinguishing
traits has been
rapidity of change.
The new products you keep
producing all the time, that's
relatively harder and harder as
you have a larger group even
of very talented engineers.
So, how have you found a way to
manage the combination of the
creative chaos that's been
indispensable to your success
and the scale that's a
result of your success?
SERGEY BRIN: Yeah, the way I
like to think about it is that
I'm not trying to maintain our
culture-- or to maintain
the level of creativity.
But we always try to improve
it and increase it.
And certainly scale presents
some challenges, but it also
present opportunities.
For example, if you look at
the infrastructure that
we have now, the kind of
computational facilities.
Now when we want to run a kind
of experiment that would have
been inconceivable to anyone
just a few years ago, we can
get it done in a few
hours time, maybe.
And so, this really opens
new possibilities.
You at the same time have to
make sure that the scale
doesn't slow you down in terms
of doing innovative things.
The way we've kind of
historically come at it
is we've tried to divide
our company into chunks.
The 70, 20, 10 rule.
70% try to work on the core
efforts of the company, 20%
goes to adjacent areas of
expansion, and 10% kind
of anything goes.
And in some place, as we've
expanded our breadth of
offerings, it's actually
harder and harder to find
the 10% that are out there.
But I think it's important to
let people be really creative
and think outside the box.
The real challenge in scale
to me has been offering a
coherent set of services and
offerings to our end users.
Because there's kind of a
limit-- there's a limit to my
ability, there's a limit to
everyone's ability to, you
know, choose among 50
different things.
And so, we've been trying to
change the paradigm from
products to features.
So enhance the capability of
all of our existing offerings
across the board rather than
creating a new style out there
that makes this incredibly long
menu for people to choose from.
INTERVIEWER: I have, Larry,
another semi-oddball
question for you.
Although it comes from the tone
of our conversations here
in the last day and a half.
One theme that's run through
it is the vulnerability of
a democratic society
to distorted news.
When the news doesn't introduce
people to scientific reality,
when it gets them all caught up
in hysterias, it's very hard
to deal with serious issues.
I know that you've talked
about this problem yourself.
It's also the case that many
people say that Google is, in
a sense, to blame for this.
Because Google has made it
harder for established news
media to stay in business.
So tell us how you think about
this news and democratic
information question-- whether
Google's responsible and what
Google can do about it, if
you feel it is in any way.
LARRY PAGE: Well, actually I
guess I should recommend your
book, Breaking the News, which
I read a while ago and it
definitely covers a lot of
those points in really
interesting detail.
I think-- I've been really
excited about possibility for
making coverage-- improving
the state of information in
general, not just news, but
that's sort of our core
mission, is really, organize
the world's information.
And in terms of doing good for
the world, I think if you can
do it better-- make that even a
little bit better, it has a
huge impact on all those civic
institutions and companies
and everything that goes on.
I think the-- in terms of the
news-- I think that-- it's been
really interesting for me to
watch the whole sort of blogger
versus reporter debates.
I mean, I love having lots of
professional people who think
really hard about the issues
and have a lot of experience
and have traveled
widely and all that.
And I think one of the things
we can do a much better job of
as an industry is to make the
professionals also
more productive.
And if you look at blogging,
one of the nice things about
bloggers is they actually
link to each other.
But when I read The New York
Times article, it doesn't
link to The Wall Street
Journal, or vice versa.
And instead they have to
kind of rewrite the story.
And then so I think there are
ways that as we evolve onto an
online-- things can get edited
over time and linked to each
other and commented
on and so on.
But those paradigms have to
change and that can help-- the
news organizations that we have
now, people aren't competitive
with some of the online things.
Which I think are generally,
you know, it's nice to
have the professionals.
And I think it'd be nice have
more professionals be able to
be more supported by
the business models.
By having more interest and
better quality and so on.
So I guess I'm a
big fan of that.
We recently released this thing
that lets people comment on
stories they're named in, in
Google news-- which
is a small step.
But we've already seen
some interesting
things happen there.
University presidents
and other people.
We felt like you can enhance
the debate, for example, if
we're able to comment directly,
like, for example, when
we're mentioned in stories.
And also make it more
interesting to read and make
people more money as a result.
So I think there's a lot of
things that can be done.
I'm excited about helping
improve that online.
INTERVIEWER: And can you
imagine Google ever owning an
existing news operation itself?
As some people have proposed?
Orville Schell from Berkeley
used to suggest you should
buy a newspaper represented
here, The New York Times.
LARRY PAGE: Well, I wouldn't
have predicted Rupert Murdoch
would buy the Wall Street
Journal so I think it's hard
to predict the future.
But we don't have any plans
to do anything like that.
INTERVIEWER: I know Mr.
Sulzberger I think
is here, too.
You can talk later.
A question, now,
for Sergey also.
Can you tell us either what
kinds of things or what
specifics you and Larry
and Eric disagree about?
And how you resolve them
when that comes up?
SERGEY BRIN: Well, we
have relatively few
disagreements, actually.
And most of the time,
usually don't care so much.
Or certainly all three of
us might not care so much.
So honestly, I typically just
go for two out of three.
That's why it's good to
have an odd number.
And significant disagreements
when people really feel
strongly about something,
though, I think you really
have to take the time
and talk it through.
I remember the most
controversial thing I recently
did was to reduce the amount of
snacks we have available.
And it took a long time to
persuade first Larry and Eric.
But even having accomplished
that, the rest of the
staff was resistant.
And no matter what we said,
food kept arriving in vast
quantities for the snack bins.
After about a couple of
years, I prevailed, and they
reduced the amount of food.
AUDIENCE: They've recently
ramped it back up.
SERGEY BRIN: I know.
So it's one of--
INTERVIEWER: Story of life.
SERGEY BRIN: It's true.
You need to watch those things.
People kind of don't realize
that-- they also complained
it wasn't as good.
But you know, if you restock
something and it's available
for the taking and you want to
reduce the consumption, you
have to make it less appealing.
So there's really no way
to get around that.
INTERVIEWER: So, please come to
the-- I have one more brief
question for each of our
founders-- please come
to the microphones.
My question for Larry is,
tell us about the X prize.
Why is Google involved in this?
LARRY PAGE: Well actually,
Sergey should address
that a little bit.
I've been on the board of the
X prize for a while and been
really excited-- I guess I've
been really motivated by people
who have tried to win prizes.
So there's the human-powered
airplane by Paul MacCready,
for example, he was always
kind of a hero of mine.
And I was amazed-- you know,
he won that for, I think it
was a 50,000 pound prize.
And he actually lost-- he sort
of spent twice as much money
as that doing it, which
is typical of prizes.
And so, just the effectiveness
of that as a way
to inspire people.
And I came across
Peter at the X Prize.
And it was an amazing story
with Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne
which is hanging over in
building 43 right across
the courtyard there--
SERGEY BRIN: A copy of it.
LARRY PAGE: A copy of it, yes.
It's made from the
original mold.
You could probably fly it but
it might break into pieces.
In any case, I was just really
excited about that and tried to
get them-- encouraged them to
branch out into more
different areas.
And Sergey actually got
really excited about
doing a moon mission.
And we convinced him it would
be easier if we just put up
some money, which we only had
to pay out if it
was successful.
And so that's how
that came about.
It's been a great collaboration
and a lot of fun.
INTERVIEWER: So you can either
say more about that or a
related question, what
technology or what
application-- what's most
exciting to you right now?
SERGEY BRIN: Well, I'm
personally excited about
materials advancements
and nanotechnology.
Carbon nanotubes and whatnot.
It's not particularly related
to our existing business so
much, but I feel like the kinds
of improvements we're seeing in
both the strength of materials,
lightness, battery capacity,
things like that.
I think these things can
actually make very material
differences in our lives.
The cost of solar power.
You know, you see the
photovoltaics dropping, and if
they continue to drop, what
that'll mean for
our environment.
All those things
are very exciting.
And it's actually not
that popular, I think, a
subject these days for
students and whatnot.
So I think it's somewhat
underinvested.
But has dramatic capability
to change the world.
INTERVIEWER: It is your turn
now, so I'll turn first
here and then here.
Please identify yourself
and then ask a question.
AUDIENCE: Sure, Delly Tamer
founder of LetsTalk.
A quick question.
First, congratulations on
having changed the world.
The press keeps talking
about the next Google.
I was going to ask you, what
are you doing so that you are
the next Google and who do you
fear the most among
existing companies?
SERGEY BRIN: Well, first,
I certainly do hope that
Google is the next Google.
But I also hope to see many
other successful companies.
And certainly on the internet,
our whole business depends on
the fact that there are lots of
these other great websites.
What we do on searches, we
send people to other sites.
And there-- I mean, there's
just a huge diversity of
fantastic websites out there.
There's How Stuff Works--
that's a website I like
to read personally.
Some of these news sites,
social networking sites--
MySpace, Facebook, that have
lots of attention and usage.
All these things are
part of our ecosystem.
And we want it to be
rich and diverse.
And we certainly hope to
continue providing by far the
best in class of monetization
to these kinds of sites so they
can stay in business and
continue to produce
great content.
And certainly continue to
navigate people to the
places they should get
to via great search.
And now, as well, some of our
other kinds of communications
facilities that allow people
to tell each other
about these sites.
LARRY PAGE: I was going to
say, I think it'd be great if
Sergey mentioned solar power.
I think there's a lot of
opportunities there in
solar thermal and other
kinds of solar power.
It'd be great to see a huge
company come about there and
really produce a lot of energy.
INTERVIEWER: Yes?
AUDIENCE: Tim Carter
from askthebuilder.com.
I was lucky enough to come to
the first and second Zeitgeist.
And I want you to realize that
information that was made
possible through those
conferences has changed my
business dramatically and
caused it to grow, so I have to
believe that there's other
people in the audience-- and we
want to thank you personally
for putting these on, because
they're just fantastic events.
And, thanks very much.
SERGEY BRIN: We should
thank, maybe, a round of
applause for the team.
The Zeitgeist team.
Stand up.
[APPLAUSE]
LARRY PAGE: They're shy, but
we'll bring them out later.
We didn't really do much.
We just kind of show up.
AUDIENCE: I think you and Eric
have a lot to do with it.
But needless to say,
I'm a content creator.
And earlier this morning, there
was a really good presentation
by the advertising and
marketing panel where they were
talking about quality.
Not only quality of people that
they need technically to
produce the ads and the
marketing, but my question to
you-- because you're so
interested in organizing the
world's information and
content-- is do you have any
suggestions or advice for
those of us who are in the
content creation business?
What we could do to make
it better-- to better fit
into Google's vision?
That's kind of a broad
question, but what would
you like to see us do, I
mean, to make it better?
SERGEY BRIN: Hm.
Well, I think one of the things
that tends to really decrease,
perhaps, the utility of sites
is when maybe they go a little
bit overboard on the fanciness.
Really fancy javascript
and flash stuff and
everything flying around.
And that's-- that has, you
know, two negative effects.
One is it's actually
harder for users.
And your-- you know, it might
slow down your computer.
And you might be on and iPhone
or some other device that
can't deal with the
really fancy stuff.
Or maybe even, iPhone's
actually a pretty good
web browser, but even
lower-end mobile device.
LARRY PAGE: Actually, I was
just traveling and I was
trying to find a restaurant.
And their only webpage was
a flash-based webpage
and I had my iPhone.
I actually couldn't
find the restaurant.
I had to call somebody.
SERGEY BRIN: So, decreased
utility for the user.
And, not that I
particularly want
you to worry about this so
much, but it does make it
somewhat harder for
our search engine.
To, you know, parse
through all the stuff.
What's the real
information on the site?
Yeah, so I would just try to
discourage people-- you know,
use new technologies when
it really makes sense.
And there's a really,
really good reason for it.
You know, we do that, for
example with maps-- that
uses some fancy javascript.
But only if there's a very
good reason, and try to keep
things as simple as possible.
LARRY PAGE: You should give
your people stopwatches, too.
And time how long extra-- what
extra time those features take.
And then you can calculate--
you multiply it out then
compute an average person's
lifetime and you can compute
how many people you've killed.
AUDIENCE: Thank you
very much, thank you.
INTERVIEWER: Yes?
AUDIENCE: Outer space is really
cool, but I'm not sure how
much Google could do with it.
Inner space, or healthcare, is
a really interesting market.
I'm curious what your
strategy is in that.
SERGEY BRIN: We've been,
certainly, many people
like [? Esther ?]
and many others have
approached us about health.
And the information technology
challenges within health.
And we've been trying to see
where we can contribute our
technology that really
will help there.
I don't think we have anything
to share with you today, but
generally, I have a sense of
optimism about what our health
team might be able to
accomplish, simplify things.
But it's not going to be able
to, you know, somehow reform
healthcare on its own.
I mean, I think what we'll
provide will be a small
piece of the puzzle.
And fundamentally, our
goals are shared.
For example, Microsoft's doing
heath work, and we want
to see them succeed.
We want to see lots of
companies that are trying to
improve the state of
information technology within
health be successful.
And I want it just from,
you know, a personal
selfish point of view.
I mean, I feel like I have sort
of suboptimal healthcare
because I don't have my records
very easily accessible
or easy to use.
And I feel everyone in
this country and the
world deserves that.
INTERVIEWER: Larry, did you
want to say something--
LARRY PAGE: You know, I was
just saying, it's a pain to
fill out all the stuff, and
it's also a pain to-- I mean,
there are some countries that
track prescription drugs
and things like that--
nonprescription, even.
And they use that to determine
what's going on with their
public health system
and things like that.
So I do think that having
information while it's
happening in the healthcare
systems that's available for
scientific study and public
health and so on is very useful
and could be done very
cheaply but we're somehow
unable to do that.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, over here.
AUDIENCE: Hi guys.
The ecosystem you've
created is amazing.
It allows little companies
to grow and thrive.
Can you have the same impact
on display advertising?
As you've had on text and
search-based advertising?
Is that in your wheelhouse?
Is that something
you're pursuing?
Can you disrupt display
advertising as dramatically as
you have in the search world?
SERGEY BRIN: We certainly-- we
don't like to use the word
disrupt-- but we certainly hope
to make it a lot
more efficient.
Both more valuable for the
sites and more effective
for the advertisers.
And I'm pretty
optimistic on that.
We have a lot of things
that we're doing right
now in the early stages.
We have our site-targeted
campaigns.
We have graphical ads.
I think some flash formats are
now available and some html
widget formats are
also available.
So we're continually
producing new things.
But in the long run, yeah, we
certainly want to have as
much-- as big of a change in
display advertising RPM-wise
and conversion-wise as we've
been lucky enough
to do for search.
I can't guarantee that that'll
happen, but that's our goal.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
INTERVIEWER: And over here,
please identify yourself.
AUDIENCE: Gerry
Corbett with Hitachi.
Gentlemen, thank you
for putting this on.
It's a great conference and
probably one of the best
that I've been to and
this is my third one.
But I wanted to ask about a
past Zeitgeist in which you
folks talked about how to
deal with the clutter
of power supplies.
And if you could give
us an update on that,
I'd appreciate it.
SERGEY BRIN: Yeah, and
I'm actually late on
my delivery on that.
I was hoping to have solved
it by this Zeitgeist.
We actually reviewed a number
of technological fixes and
there's in fact a couple of
companies out there that have
some really nice technologies
that might help for
universal power supply.
And we're currently talking to
them, see how we can help them.
And see how we can
move partners along.
But I've got to be
honest with you.
It's a harder problem
than I thought.
And it's not really-- well,
except for the advent of
mini-USB plugs for cell phones
becoming more and more
standard, it's not actually
improved much over
the past year.
In fact, many laptops and
things have introduced new
and diverse power supplies.
And, yeah, I've been
unsuccessful to date.
LARRY PAGE: The new
laptop supplies with an
additional one volt.
Different plugs.
SERGEY BRIN: Yeah, so.
And that's sort of
failure on my behalf.
Because I don't think I've
been as aggressive about
it as I could have been.
But there are a couple very
promising technologies in the
works that, combined with some
business magic, maybe
could actually start
to tackle the problem.
INTERVIEWER: So these are the
two limits on your power.
Snacks and power supplies.
You can do anything else,
but those are where you
run into the world.
LARRY PAGE: They're all
rapidly multiplying.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I'm Randall
Rothenberg, I'm the president
of the Interactive
Advertising Bureau.
You're great members of ours.
As you know, there's a rising
tide of sentiment in Washington
and probably in state capitals
as well, around regulating the
internet around privacy issues.
There's an FTC hearing
in a couple weeks on
behavioral targeting.
There is a bill that passed the
House that actually would
heavily regulate the
use of cookies.
What should we as an industry
be doing to deal with the
potential of regulation?
How do we calm and educate
the public about this?
And what is Google doing?
SERGEY BRIN: Yeah, I really
think education is the key.
And the thing that people
don't-- you know, kind of
miss-- is that we deal of a ton
of privacy issues every day.
But almost none of them, or
really none of them, have
anything to do with
cookies or advertising or
anything like that.
The number one privacy issue
we deal with is, there is
some information about
someone on the web.
Sometimes it's embarrassing,
sometimes true,
sometimes not true.
And people just publish stuff.
And it's across many,
many websites.
And it's a real
issue for people.
What we do today is we say
you have to talk to the
site's owner to get the
information taken down.
And then if you do, then
we'll rip it out of the
index really quickly.
But as we move forward, that's
obviously not adequate
for people in some cases.
In some cases, the site
doesn't cooperate.
Some cases they're right,
some cases they're wrong.
You know, maybe they were
convicted of some crime that
people should be aware of.
Maybe not.
But I think we really need to
think about this question.
Because the rules around,
whatever, libel and whatnot,
I mean they were really at
a different time in a
different situation.
When information didn't
travel around the world in
a fraction of a second.
So I think it's really worth
thinking about, how do we want
to manage privacy ourselves in
an online world where anybody
can publish anything
at anytime?
And that's by far the
number one thing.
That privacy issue that
we are addressed with.
Number two behind that is
probably various things
where people get their
machines hijacked.
Or somebody manages to get
their password, breaks into
various accounts of theirs.
Sort of, there's a whole
rigmarole of stuff like that
that we have to deal with.
And honestly, the kind of
privacy concerns that people
have around cookies and whatnot
are more of sort of big
brother type fears.
They're not actually so much a
privacy issue as, do these
people feel comfortable that
you are a large successful
company or advertiser and
do they really trust
what you're doing?
Even though the, sort of the
privacy implications by
comparison are very small.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, sir.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Dan Murray, Ravenwood
Marketing.
There was an article in
Tuesday's Wall Street Journal
about efforts to save energy
and save electricity and it
talked specifically about
servers as a huge energy user.
I think it estimated 14% of
energy-- of electricity--
used in this country
is from servers.
I just wanted to better
understand-- I know you guys
are very active in this area--
your efforts to cut down on
electricity use with your
massive, massive server farms.
LARRY PAGE: Yeah, one
thing we did, actually.
We announced a whole initiative
along with Intel and a whole
bunch of computer manufacturers
to try to implement green
technology within servers.
And those things have to do
with power supplies and sort of
best practices, which we've
been lucky enough to be
involved in building large
amounts of servers ourselves.
And we've noticed, you know,
there's some things you can
to do to reduce power
significantly and make sure
that all the power you're
taking out of the outlet is
really going into the CPU
or whatever is part
of your computer.
And those things can
make large differences.
Easily 30% is kind of-- you can
take out 30% very easily and
still get the same amount
of computation you
would have before.
And you pay-- your payback is
one year in terms of your
electricity savings
into capital costs.
So we've been hard at
work on those things.
And we'll have to tell
you more about those.
I think, overall, computers are
going to use a larger and
larger percentage of
electricity because the amount
of money that they cost versus
the amount of power that they
use is steadily increasing the
amount of power they use.
And I assume they'll be
limited by the capacity
of your wall plugs.
So in Europe they'll use twice
as much power as they do in the
U.S. because they have
twice the voltage.
We also have a problem that it
will heat up any room it's in.
But I expect that will
happen pretty soon.
It's going to be a bigger
issue, I think, then
people realize.
We just need to be
conscious of that.
Hopefully, we can get green
generation in place that
can make up that power.
INTERVIEWER: We're in the
last minute and a half
or so of Zeitgeist.
I just wanted to ask each of
you one last question myself.
A theme that has run through
the entire conference, which
has talked a lot about the new
responsibility, is what people
can actually do in their lives
to make the world
a better place.
And the issues you care about.
You are both young men but
you have changed the world.
You're in a position
of influence.
What one, just short message,
would you want people here to
hear from you about how you
think they should take
responsibility to do
things that matter?
SERGEY BRIN: I found that the
way to be responsible it's
not-- I mean for some people,
they may want to do this-- but
it's not through all this
tremendous self-sacrifice.
But rather to recognize the
benefits of doing things
differently and how much
it can increase the
quality of your life.
I'll give you just
some simple examples.
You know, like I have a Prius--
Toyota Prius-- that I drive,
and why do I drive it?
It's not actually, I mean, I
don't care that much about
the miles per gallon.
It's actually a really,
really good car.
And the fact that I have the
electric motor in there, I can
parallel park on a hill in San
Francisco and I have really
precise control of exactly--
you know, I can go in a really
steep tight spot, and I
can do it no problem.
Whereas if I'm in a
conventional, it will be
like [BOOM BOOM BOOM]
and then you smash into
the cars around you.
LARRY PAGE: I've seen you
have scratches on your car.
SERGEY BRIN: Not on the Prius.
It's not completely
accident-proof.
But people don't recognize.
You know, people feel like oh,
I'm going to get a Prius and
I'm going to get this really
skimpy little dinky car just to
make the environment better,
and I'm sacrificing.
That's just not true.
If you look at light bulbs.
So I put compact fluorescent
in my house, if you
can call them compact.
But I don't get them, you know,
the ones-- because they tell
you to replace a 60-watt one
with a 12-volt compact
fluorescent, or
something like that.
You know, so you get
the same light and you
save a lot of energy.
But really, you can put
in-- put in a 30-watt
compact fluorescent.
You'll have a brighter,
more comfortable home.
And you'll have half the power.
So I feel like people kind of
have this attitude that they
need to have a lot of
self-sacrifice to
improve the world.
Where it's really the things
that can make your life better.
And a simple thing is also
just being generous, giving.
I enjoyed recently, I just--
going up to San Francisco,
gave out these socks
at homeless shelters.
And that's fun.
That's really rewarding.
I mean, it's not a
sacrifice at all.
I mean, it was one of
the-- it was I think on
Christmas, actually.
It was one of the best
Christmases I had.
So I think people should learn
to value the right things and
it's not about sacrifice.
LARRY PAGE: I was
just going to say.
I just encourage people
to question things.
I mean, you can have very
high leverage by sort of
doing the right thing.
That's why we're here.
I mean, I've been trying to
spend my long vacations and
so on in Africa and
places like that.
And you look at those-- you
figure there's a billion
people in the world that are
very, very impoverished.
Imagine you were investing
in their future.
And say, they have the same
percentage of smart people
as we do here in the U.S.--
probably more, in fact.
And people make a $100,000 a
year or something, you multiply
that by a billion, you
get a lot of money.
So, I don't know how much it
would cost to have reasonable
quality of life and education
for those people, but it's
not much compared to
what they'd earn.
So isn't there something wrong
with the world that we're not
able to invest in those people
in some way that makes sense?
I mean, that would be the
world's greatest investment
you could make.
And, sure, it'd also be a
really great rewarding
thing to do.
And I just think there's
so many things like
that in the world.
And somehow we're not making
that much that much progress
on getting them done.
So I encourage people to
think about those things.
