Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, sat in the hot seat at the keynote session for the Web 2.0 Summit on Tuesday. He was asked to explain moves such as the YouTube acquisition, the company's employment strategy, and their "office suite," which he does not like to call an office suite.

John Batelle, founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing and author of "The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture," got the rare privilege of being able to ask Schmidt whatever he wanted for a little over 30 minutes.

"So why did you buy YouTube? Was Google Video not doing well?" Batelle asked.

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"Because we liked them," Schmidt said. "Actually Google Video was doing extraordinarily well. It was growing fast but we went over and visited the YouTube group and their business was growing even faster and so we wanted to be a part of that."

Schmidt admitted that even though YouTube has the right idea in terms of socially networking video, Google has the golden ticket for driving traffic.

When Batelle complimented Schmidt on the company's office suite, including Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Schmidt took issue with the "office suite" moniker.






Schmidt was further questioned about the company's focus on radio, newspapers, and wikis.

"The company may appear to be chaotic but it is actually very, very coherent," he said.

He also discussed the company's challenge to the Patriot Act, an appropriate topic for voting day.

"We will do whatever it takes to follow both the law and the principles," Schmidt said. "We have a system of law and we won't win everything but we're going to try very hard and we will follow the decision of a federal judge. There is clearly going to be somebody who tests the limits of the Patriot Act and its an important constitutional issue. If we don't like it, we can replace the people that have made those laws."

The Web 2.0 Summit began on Tuesday and runs through Thursday in San Francisco.