Google takes swipe at Viacom, talks social networks from Reuters reports Google CEO Eric Schmidt as saying “Viacom is a company built from lawsuits, look at their history.”

Schmidt said this while being asked questions at a hotel bar at the 25th annual Allen & Co. “moguls meeting.” Schmidt added, “Look who they hired as CEO, Philippe Dauman, who was the general counsel for Viacom for 20 years.”

This comes in response to Viacom suing Google for $1 billion after unsuccessfully not removing copyrighted content from YouTube. You can find a big roundup of coverage on the lawsuit over here.

Since them, Viacom was sued for allegedly forcing the removal of videos that were not covered by copyright.

In addition, Schmidt has called the lawsuit against Google “just a mistake”.

Related Topics: Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Google: YouTube & Video | Legal: Copyright

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz