Kindle
Well -- not all together in the same story, though that might have been even more interesting.
The CBS television program 60 Minutes featured a lengthy segment on Google this evening which included astute comment from John Battelle, who moonlights as BoingBoing's Reuben Kincaid when he's not writing books, building empires, and tracking search tech trends here. Snip from the transcript:
"If anybody got a Porsche or a Ferrari right now at Google, they’d probably be drummed out of the company," observes John Battelle, an author and entrepreneur who has been following Silicon Valley companies for 20 years. He says, "Google has a brand image to maintain. And their image is they’re all about innovation and they’re all about the Internet, and they’re all about trust. They’re not about selling out. They’re not about getting rich quick. So you’ve got a culture like that; I think if anyone were to buy, you know, a new Mercedes convertible and drive around with the stereo blaring, and miss work a couple days because they’re rich now, that would not be acceptable behavior at Google.The show also included a killer piece on Indian film star and hyperbolic superbeauty Aishwarya Rai. Snip:"But trust me," he adds. "There’s a Mercedes convertible in every one of their heads. There is. And it will…come out. Over time, it will come out."
The reason Bollywood films have such universal appeal is because they’re squeaky-clean. There are no sex scenes, not even kissing. Every time you think someone’s going to do it, they'll burst into song instead. "I'd assume that's really a reflection of our society," Rai says, when asked to explain the films' modesty. "Of course people kiss and of course people have a very healthy love life. This is the land of the Kama Sutra. But nevertheless, in our society you don't really see people around the street corner kissing or being extremely, overtly, physically demonstrative publicly. They do it privately but not publicly."
Link to Google piece with BoingBoing's own John Battelle, and Link to seg on Aishwarya Rai.
Update: BoingBoing reader Manish Vij has this video clip of the first 2:45 of the Aishwarya Rai interview. Link. Anyone got a pointer to video of the Google segment?