The Reason Larry Page Doesn't Want Googlers Thinking About The Competition Is Pretty Inspiring

During an interview with Fortune's Miguel Helft, Google CEO Larry Page is transparently reluctant to talk about who he thinks is Google's competition.

Helft asks him: "Is it Siri? Is it Amazon or commercial queries?"

Page tries to dodge the question, saying: " I don't really think about it that way."

Helf presses: "Because you don't think about competition?"

And then Page drops this doozy, which is pretty inspirational for people in the tech industry:

"Obviously we think about competition to some extent."

"But I feel my job is mostly getting people not to think about our competition. In general I think there's a tendency for people to think about the things that exist. Our job is to think of the thing you haven't thought of yet that you really need. And by definition, if our competitors knew that thing, they wouldn't tell it to us or anybody else. I think just our strengths, our weaknesses, our opportunities are different than any other company."

(Of course the truth is that lots of Googlers do think about the competition, and when they do, it's mostly about Amazon lately. The reason: Google makes its money from commercial web searches, and increasingly people are just going straight to Amazon.com for that.)

More From Business Insider

• Larry Page Finally Explains Why Google Is Working On Self-Driving Cars
  

• 12 Quotes That Reveal How Larry Page Built Google Into The World's Most Important Internet Company
  

• How Much It Would Cost Google To Become A National Cable Company Like Comcast