Interview with Eric Schmidt

Great interview at the Wired site with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. (Click here to read.) When asked about what kind of business Google is, here's how Schmidt responded:

Think of it first as an advertising system. Then as an end-user system - Google Apps. A third way to think of Google is as a giant supercomputer. And a fourth way is to think of it as a social phenomenon involving the company, the people, the brand, the mission, the values - all that kind of stuff.

As I wrote in Googlepedia, Goolgle is first and foremost an advertising company. Note how the word "search" doesn't appear anywhere in Schmidt's response.