According to the billionaires over at Google, the recession is over and things are improving. During the opening moments of a New York City press conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt used the time to reinforce a message he has been giving for a few months now: that Google thinks the worst is behind us, things are looking up now, and that the company is spending accordingly:

"We are clearly seeing aspects of recovery, and what is notable is that we’re seeing aspects of recovery not just in the United States but in Europe. I had been in error in assuming that there would be a lag, that it would the US first and Europe second. Asia, of course, was never significantly hit in the first place. So that means from a Google perspective that.. we never stopped hiring, but we told our team internally and again, we’ve said to many other people tht we are increase are hiring rate and our investment rate in anticipation of a recovery."

Google co-founder Sergey Brin was also present. During the hour long press conference they covered quite some ground.

Gmail users will happy to learn that Brin was upset by the recent Gmail outages. He said that Google is now working to both prevent future failutres as well as to react more quickly if and when they do happen. He noted, however, that conventional email systems fail much more frequently (Gmail uses cloud computing).

Previously, Schmidt has said that he expected Google to begin making an acquisition per month. At today's press conference, he noted that those would likely be small, 5 to 10 person companies, and that it is unlikely they would be in the market for something similar in size to their YouTube acquisition. Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube. Reading between the lines, Schmidt is saying that we shouldn't expect them to offer up billions for Twitter.

Further speaking on acquisitions, Schmidt commented:

"I think that DoubleClick and YouTube will be two of our best acquisitions. DoubleClick is already close to paying back, and YouTube will get there soon. But bear in mind that any major acquisition now will involve a regulatory review, because of our size and because our competitors will make sure of that."

Schmidt also defended the proposed settlement that Google reached with authors and publishers regarding its Google Book service. In summary, he said it wasn't perfect, but that it was workable.

As for the company's browser, Chrome, Schmidt stressed the importance of porting it to Apple's Mac platform. He added that it would likely happen within months.

Lastly, Schmidt revealed that Google was working on ways to help publishers sell their work online, either through subscriptions or one-offs. He noted, however, that they have no interest in promoting one publisher's results over another, contrary to what AP officials recently suggested:

We have to be very very careful not to favor one media organization over another, with regard to speed or latency.”