Google CEO Eric Schmidt has gone all hippy on us at his keynote at the Mobile World Congress. He rather awkwardly tried to cover up the fact that Google only had one new app to talk about at the Mobile World Congress by launching into a bizarre monologue about how Google can save the World.
Proclaiming that Smartphones will save the world, Schmidt argued that ‘people who love the Earth can love it more’ thanks to Google Earth and Google Maps. He talked about how we will never need our memories anymore, as Smartphones will store all the data about where we’ve been, who we’ve been with and what we’ve been doing.
Schmidt highlighted how we can ‘be who we want to be’, using Google Translate to speak to people in any language. He explained how no one will ever get lost again because of Google Maps on our devices. He proclaimed that phones will help save lives by enabling you to find people who are in trouble if you know CPR. Yes, he actually said that.
It all started to get even more unusual when he suggested that the Android platform can help end wars and bring down repressive governments.
Essentially what we saw was Schmidt’s attempt to deflect attention away from the fact that Google had very little to present. In fact, from my count it was just one app, albeit one that looks pretty neat.
The new Movie Studio application will allow users to edit video quickly and easily on their Android device. Demonstrated on a Motorola Zoom device running Honeycomb (below), Google showed us some of the features of the device, which include multiple media types, effects, filters, and direct upload to YouTube.
It looks nice, but its announcement was overshadowed by Schmidt’s clowning around as a Big Brother figure.
In fact he warned the audience at the Congress, that you can either embrace the changes to the mobile world, or get terrified by them. Personally, I’m getting out of the conference and away from all these megalomaniacs.
