WIRED 100. No 1: Matt Brittin

Monday, April 19, 2010

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1.Matt Brittin, CEO Google UK
by James Silver

Google may have reported recession busting 2009 revenues of $23.7 billion (£15.9 billion), but recent months have been some of the most turbulent in the firm's 12-year history. In February, an Italian court convicted three executives over privacy violations, as it emerged that Google faces anti-monopoly investigation by European Commission regulators.

Another privacy row flared up over the launch of social-networking tool Buzz. All headaches for a vast business now stretching from mobile handsets to web browsers. Britain is Google's second-biggest territory, with revenue last year of more than £1.9bn. This makes its country head, Matt Brittin, a looming presence at 6ft 3in, the most influential single individual in the UK's digital arena.

So does Brittin think Google can persuade the public to trust it over privacy? "In retrospect we could have done [theBuzz launch] better," he says. "But we want to be there innovating at pace, and the price you pay for that is having to adapt fast. There were things we could do to make Buzz significantly better and we did that in a matter of days." As for EC regulators, he shrugs: "We're likely to have more criticism. Sometimes we need to do a better job of educating people about how technology is changing."

Google is famously top-down, with even low-level hiring decisions micromanaged at Mountain View HQ. So how much day-today autonomy does Brittin actually have? "We operate in a very joined-up way," he replies, a touch evasively. "The UK is a pioneering market. E-commerce spend per capita in Britain is nearly three times that in the US. We see things here earlier, and increasingly we're at the sharp end of developing Google products worldwide."

Posted by James Silver - On Monday, April 19, 2010

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