Google's Schmidt reflects on a decade at the helm, announces Google Offers

Google Inc.’s (GOOG) Eric Schmidt, now executive chairman after stepping down as CEO earlier this year, opened up during his keynote at the D9 Conference last evening about some mistakes, the platform wars (it involves a “gang of four”) and the good and bad that will come from mobile technology in the years ahead.
During a demo of Google’s recently announced Google Wallet, he also announced Google Offers, a clear competitor to Groupon Inc. and LivingSocial that’s being rolled out in Portland, Ore., today as a new product that teams up alongside Google’s near-field communications strategy. Google Offers will be launched in San Francisco and New York this summer and more cities are planned soon.
Schmidt said a wallet is ideal for mobile devices because “your phone is your ultimate personality in a digital world.” Most of the key vendors have indicated they are moving to NFC and with a fraud rate that’s much lower than the terminals being used in retail around the world today, Schmidt said the solution pays for itself and he expects widespread adoption of NFC in kind.
Schmidt spent a considerable amount of time talking about mobile. Google is now activating 400,000 Android devices every day. On a more grand level, Google is partnering with companies like Apple Inc. (<a href=(AAPL) — the two companies recently signed a new deal for maps and search on the iOS platform, for example — but there’s no denying Google is competing very aggressively with them as well.
On that note, Schmidt was careful to layout the key distinctions that separate Android and iOS. “We made a decision not to curate. We made a decision to focus on an open platform,” he said. “The Apple model is the inverse of Google’s model.”
He also talked about the unintended consequences of innovations in mobile technology. Facial recognition, for example, is a technology that Google developed then halted the product entirely because of the likely ramifications that could come from such a technology. “We built that technology and withheld it,” he said, adding that it’s the first technology he can think of that Google developed then stopped in its tracks completely.
The problem is that the exact same tools that can be used for innovation in technology will be used by terrorists and dictators around the world and it’s virtually impossible to stop that, he said. “There are plenty of app I don’t like that are still legal,” he added. “The worst cases are the biometric databases where you have surveillance.”
Schmidt made some other key points about Nokia Corp. (<a href=(NOK), the platform wars and missed opportunities in social.
* On Nokia: “We would have loved and would still love to see Nokia as an Android licensee.”
* Today’s platform wars are being waged primarily by a “gang of four,” he said. That gang includes Google, Apple, Amazon.com Inc. (<a href=(AMZN) and Facebook Inc.
* And finally, on social, Schmidt said Google has thus far missed the boat. “I clearly knew that I had to do something and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.”