One tidbit from our Google earnings story today that didn't make it was this quote from CEO Eric Schmidt about whether Google should be viewed as a hardware and software company. Schmidt forcefully shot down speculation that Google would ever sell a branded personal computer.

There's an awful lot of speculation about Google playing in these markets, Google PC, those kinds of things. To me, most of those things are people projecting the last war, not the next opportunity, on us. And from my perspective, those are not very interesting business opportunities. They're well-covered in the market. We partner with many of the players. We would much prefer to deepen our partnerships with them than to go into competition with them. We are relentlessly focused on this new end-user experience which is multi-platform and based on the Internet. And that's where our future is and where the growth is and where the revenue and monetization is. It's so large, it makes no sense to divert our resources to these other and somewhat smaller opportunities.

We also had a chance to ask Schmidt about the company's interest in television advertising. While there's nothing to announce, Schmidt said, "It's a natural next step.'' The key, he said, was figuring out how to target the advertising, something IP-based TV might someday offer.

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