Google CEO Eric Schmidt has a modest ambition: He just wants to change the world.

That's what he told New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, at an event in San Francisco organized by the Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Schmidt reaffirmed that the company's primary goal is not to make money selling ads, whether it is banner ads or ads on Web searches, online video, TV and mobile phones.

Google's goals are loftier than monetizing its products. "The goal of the company isn't to monetize everything. The goal is to change the world. We start from the perspective of what problems we do have," Schmidt said.

For instance, Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm, is devoted to causes such as renewable energy and preventing disease.

Google's infamous motto -- "don't be evil" -- is taken seriously within the company. "We don't have an evil meter we can apply," Schmidt said, but internal discussions do address the issue.

"I thought when I joined the company this was crap -- companies don't have these things. I thought it was a joke. It must be a Larry and Sergey thing. So I was sitting in a room six months in, and an engineer said, 'That's evil.' It's like a bomb goes off in the room. Everybody has a moral and ethical discussion that, by the way, stopped the product."

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20080612/tc_nf/60275