“I think that served their interests,” Page tells his interviewer, Brad Stone, of Bloomberg Businessweek. “For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.”

LEGACY:

His casual comments, coming at the end of an online excerpt of a longer interview to be in print in an upcoming issue, have sparked controversy on the Web.

“Google CEO Larry Page apparently is trying to rewrite history,” .

One of the most startling parts of Steve Jobs’ authorized biography last year was the , and by extension, its main creator and chief advocate, Google.