Google criticises Twitter

CEO brands it a "poor man's email"

3 March 2009 23:24 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has hit out against Twitter saying it's nothing more than a "poor man's email system".

The comments made at Morgan Stanley's technology conference on Tuesday come as Twitter continues to grab more and more followers.

"Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man's email systems", he said this afternoon as Silicon Alley Insider reported the CEO referring to Twitter.

The comments don't just stop there however:

"In other words, they have aspects of an email system, but they don't have a full offering. To me, the question about companies like Twitter is: Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or do they fundamentally evolve to have storage, revocation, identity, and all the other aspects that traditional email systems have? Or do email systems themselves broaden what they do to take on some of that characteristic?"

"I think the innovation is great. In Google's case, we have a very successful instant messaging product, and that's what most people end up using".

"Twitter's success is wonderful, and I think it shows you that there are many, many new ways to reach and communicate, especially if you are willing to do so publicly".

Many commentators believe Google is nervous about the meteoric rise of the micro-blogging service and its ability to track live events considerably faster than the search engine giant.