Google UK boss dismisses big name rivals

MANAGING DIRECTOR of Google UK & Ireland, Matt Brittin, has claimed industry heavyweights Microsoft and Apple are not Google's main competitors.

The Google boss addressed academics and students at the BBC's Quay House in a talk coinciding with the opening of the University of Salford's new state of the art MediaCityUK campus.

During his speech Mr Brittin outlined the company's ethos of 'fast and happy' in addition to improvements made to the Translate facility and web browser Google Chrome.

Mr Brittin opened the floor to a short Q&A session, answering questions posed by the audience where he was asked about Google's competitors.

He said: "Who is the main rival of Google? I think when you talk to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, our founders, they would say it was two guys in a garage.

"Google was a start-up two or three years before any revenue came in and it was a maths project. It was a maths project that brought a completely different way of finding things on the internet.

"YouTube was a start-up in a garage. Facebook was a start-up in a very expensive part of a university somewhere. It is always some sort of innovation that comes from someone with a very clear vision of solving a big problem in a completely new way.

"You won't find people at Google spending a lot of time analysing the backside out of Microsoft or Apple or Yahoo or Facebook. What you will find is people trying to solve problems and trying to put things out there and see if they work."

The Google boss also demonstrated the company's Insight For Search feature which allows people to view trends across specific categories and timeframes.