QuestionerGiven that you're now in IBM, are there any other entrenched leaders in technology that are, to use one of your terms, inevitable, in the same way that Coke and Gillette were? For example, is Google inevitable? Is it reminiscent of the advertising agencies you owned in the 1970s, i.e. a toll bridge on all digital spending, that's highly likely to keep growing over time? What are the one or two things about Google, for example, that you think are real risks? And what about Apple?
WarrenWell, those are extraordinary companies, obviously. And both, they're both huge companies, they make lots of money, they earn fantastic returns on capital. They look very tough to dislodge where they have their strengths. I, you know, I would not be at all surprised to see them be worth a lot more money 10 years from now, but I wouldn't want to buy either one of them. I do not have, I do not get to the level of conviction that would cause me. me to buy them, but I sure's how it wouldn't short them either,
CharlieCharlie. Well, I think we can fairly say that other people will always understand those two companies better than we do. We have the reverse of an edge, and we're not looking for that.
WarrenNow he's going to say isn't the same thing true in IBM. Well, I don't think it is. I think IBM is easier to understand. Yeah. The chances of being way wrong. in IBM are probably less, at least for us, than being way wrong with Google or Apple. But that doesn't mean that those, the latter two companies aren't going to do, say, far better than IBM. But we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have predicted what would happen with Apple 10 years ago. And it's very hard for me to predict, you know, what will happen with the next 10 years. There's certainly, you know, they've come up with these brilliant projects. There's other people trying to come over with brilliant products, and I just don't know how to evaluate the people that are out there working either in big companies or in garages that are trying to think of something that will change the world the way they have changed it in recent years. And what do we know about computer science? There's no reply.