Google Inc.'s top executives said yesterday that they are focused on aggressively increasing the search engine's business abroad, particularly in Europe, Japan, and China, where the number of new Internet users is growing faster than in the United States.
Speaking at Google's first annual meeting since going public, chief executive Eric E. Schmidt told shareholders he anticipated that the company, which gets almost all of its revenue from advertising sales, would see a shift that would reflect its increasing global presence. The company's latest financial results show that it generates slightly less than two-thirds of its revenue domestically.
"This week, we got the necessary permit to open an office in China," Schmidt said. "As the Internet penetrates these countries, Google's market share will follow."
Google, started by a pair of Stanford graduate students in 1998, helps millions of Internet users around the world rapidly find online information. Its popularity as a brand has spread largely by word of mouth rather than through costly marketing, one of the keys to its financial success and growth.
But Google's plans to digitize millions of library books from collections at Stanford University, Harvard University, the New York Public Library, the University of Michigan, and Oxford University, has created a backlash in France and elsewhere in Europe. There, library and government officials are worried that too much of the online information will only be in English and written from an American perspective, without sufficient emphasis on differences in culture and points of view. In response, these officials have begun planning their own efforts to put foreign collections of books on the Internet.
Google co-founder Larry Page defended the company against allegations that it is attempting to spread American culture at the expense of other cultures. He said many of the books in the university collections that Google is in the process of digitizing are written in foreign languages by foreign authors.
"We have been very inclusive," Page said. "The libraries we have agreements with have large amounts of material in French and other languages. And we are happy to enter into new agreements with other libraries."
Google's annual meeting was held at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. The company did not allow on-site press coverage, which is unusual for a public company. The company did broadcast the 90-minute meeting on the Internet, making it possible for journalists and others who could not attend to listen in. Many of the questions at the meeting came from company employees, most of whom are also shareholders.
One employee asked when the company was going to remove the "beta" label from the widely used Google News Web site, indicating it was no longer in a test phase. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said there are "several little things" about Google News that need to be improved before the technology-driven company can unconditionally release it.
"Beta is a matter of pride," said Brin, an engineer.
Another shareholder asked how long Google could be expected to continue growing rapidly, which it has done for the past several years. The company's stock price has escalated steadily since it went public in August at $85 a share. Yesterday, Google stock closed at $228.72, down $2.57.
Schmidt said the company's growth would slow eventually, though he does not think it will be any time soon.
"I would love to have our growth continue," Schmidt said. "The expansion we are doing does have the ability to bring in much more revenue from companies. But there is something called the law of large numbers. Eventually, you run out of people. It is not possible to know when that will be."
Page said the company has strong global brand awareness that is likely to give it momentum, as executives focus on building the advertising business abroad. "Google is available in over 100 languages," Page said. "We are hiring people as fast as we can in different countries."
