Google's Schmidt Flirts With the ‘Creepy Line' … Again

Lobbyists, China and how Google sees all

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at the Newseum in Washington D.C. when he dropped yet another bon mot of creepy: "We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about."

Seriously, Eric? Still thinking about deploying those Google implants into our personal computers, and by that we mean our brains?

And it's fitting that he was at the Newseum when he said it, because there isn't a newsperson in the world who isn't going to gobble sound bytes like that.

Importantly, though, he had tons of insightful, germane and probably prescient things to say, too.

The editor of The Atlantic did the interview and posted videos of the event.

Some quotes to mull from one of Silicon Valley's taller ivory towers:

* Politics: "Washington is an incumbent protection system."

* Academia: "We have 90 percent of the top researchers in the world. We also have a bizarre policy to train people and then kick them out by not giving them visas, which makes no sense at all."

* Getting the economy going: "Businesses much prefer consistency over change."

* Creepy: "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."

Good luck with that.

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