TORONTO – Chris O’Neill believes that Canadians worry too much about failing.
O’Neill, managing director of Google Canada, said failed high-tech ventures are actually a badge of honor in Silicon Valley, where Google is headquartered. Speaking in Toronto at the Canadian Telecom Summit late Monday afternoon, the native Canadian and Western University grad argued that failed ventures by entrepreneurs increase their odds of succeeding the next time around.
“Canadians view failure as something to be ashamed of,” he said. “That’s not true.”
Concerned that Canada won’t take steps to create a lasting digital economy, O’Neill rattled off statistics about the rapid growth of broadband penetration, Internet usage, mobile web popularity and smartphone usage across the nation. More so than many other nations, he said, Canadians use their web-enabled devices to research products and services, make social media connections and watch video clips.
“We search, we socialize and we watch a lot of video,” he said. Not surprisingly, younger Canadians lead the way, with 95% of them going online. “To them,” he said, “the web is like life, it’s like breathing.”
Heralding the advent of “the four-screen world,” O’Neill noted TV viewing appears to have started dropping for the first time in the medium’s 70-year history, “which I thought would never happen.” But, with Google invested heavily in YouTube and other video ventures, he doesn’t expect TV to follow the descent of print newspapers and magazines. “TV is not going anywhere any time soon,” he said. Instead, he predicts that today’s linear 100-channel universe will become a far more customized one million-channel universe in the near future. “There’ll be a channel for every passion,” he said. “What you’ll see is these niches en masse. People will choose to spend time with niche content.”
Despite General Motors’ recent decision to stop advertising on Facebook, O’Neill dismissed concerns about the growth prospects for online advertising. He argued that the web’s audience measurement methods are far superior to anything that the TV industry can offer. “Online provides more data than God meant to create,” he said. “So people sometimes choke on all that data. Or they hold it to the seventh decimal.”
Questioned about consumer protection standards, O’Neill endorsed the push by Rogers, Telus and others for a national code for the telecom industry. He indicated that a national standard for consumer privacy is particularly needed, calling privacy “the Achilles heel” for telecom and online providers.
O’Neill said his company plans to extend both its Google Voice and Google Wallet services to Canada. But he couldn’t offer a launch date for either service.
– Cartt.ca staff
