Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt claims that he understands fears over the company's control of information, as he tried to allay any such concerns.
Speaking in Pittsburgh before the G-20 summit, Schmidt said that the real check on Google behaviour was that people would leave the company very quickly if it did anything untoward with their data.
Answering a question about fears that Google was acting like Big Brother, Schmidt said that he understood the concern, but that Google was run on a set of principles about the handling of information.
If Google misused people's data he said: "People would leave us very quickly. They would go somewhere else, find another choice, or stop using search engines entirely."
He added: "The real check on our behaviour apart from hopefully our good morals good leadership and decision making, is that customers would flee, the press would hate us, and we would be in big, big trouble."
In the speech, Schmidt also said that economic growth could only be driven by cutting-edge technology and the free and open flow of information.
He claimed that we were only at the cusp' of the technological revolution that is coming about as a result of the internet and related technologies, adding that technology is changing everything about how we live, work and play.
Below is a video of Schmidt's speech.
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