Saudi youths have potential for innovation and their country has the resources for constructive developments, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google said while addressing the Eighth Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF 2015) held here on Monday.

In his keynote address, Schmidt said unlike other countries, Saudi Arabia has adequate financial resources for hundreds of years to invest in a knowledge-based economy to help these youths who like to experience innovations in life.

“Saudi Arabia is a great builder, which is blessed with the needed wealth,” he stressed, pointing out that money and infrastructure alone are not enough for development, more efforts must be made for innovations and new inventions.

He indicated that technology is not a problem in the global village. “The most important thing is to invent something new,” he noted, adding that open source software has become more effective nowadays. Google, he said, is currently working on smart cars which will not have drivers and it will reduce the loss of lives due to street accidents by 10 percent.

The fast developing Internet services have facilitated men to do their work faster and help them save their time and endeavors. Government and private sectors find it easier to carry out their work with the help of the Internet, he added.

Schmidt said the primary focus of Google is to innovate, and acquire other companies such as the Google Earth and YouTube to establish a strong base for innovative products and services. He stressed that Google always protects the privacy of the users through its secured data encryption. It is also planning to extend some of its services to Arabic and Chinese languages to cover a wider clientele of web browsers since he believes that English should not be the exclusive language of the Internet.