Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was on Fox Business News today, and she was plenty Bartz-y. When Fox anchor Liz Clamen asked her repeatedly if she was on the way out, she said she was there to stay, adding “Do I look like a wimp?”
No. You do not. Even if you think Bartz is running the company into the ground, you have to give her credit for not holing up and hiding the way her predecessor Jerry Yang did, for continuing to be herself and holding her head high amid a pretty nasty storm of rumors. She further added that she wasn’t hiring a strong number two, saying she didn’t need one.
The question is, do we believe her? I don’t mean that question as a knock on her; frequently CEOs say they’re not going anywhere or not doing a deal or not launching a product just before they do. But Bartz didn’t help her credibility with her answer to Clamen’s question about whether she was tough to work for. She said: “So change just happens with new management and it’s actually refreshing for all of us. So 15,000 employees, three people left? That’s OK.”
Am I totally misunderstanding this or is she saying only three people have left Yahoo in the last year and a half? I think I’ve talked to three this week. I’m not convinced Bartz was a good fit for Yahoo, but I’ve long been a fan of her outspoken, here’s-the-way-it-is management style. And that statement isn’t how things are at Yahoo.
I’m somewhere between those onlookers who loathe Bartz and those who love her. I know a lot of talented executives who have left Yahoo in part because of her. They aren’t haters; they just don’t feel she gets the product or the business. And few metrics have been up during her short tenure, other than profitability which is up 80%, but that’s mostly through cost cutting and frankly, Yahoo had a lot of fat to cut. But on the other hand, I think Bartz is cleaning up a big mess that was a long time in the making. Not even a fictional wonder-CEO could do that in 18 months.
Let’s remember: The business hasn’t grown for six years and Bartz has only been there 18 months. She’s not the one who turned down Microsoft’s $31 a share offer. She’s not the one who bungled an acquisition of Google, YouTube or Facebook. And while we had some fun at her expense over her comments about the technical challenges of blogging– I can tell you from experience Yahoo’s in house content management system was impossible to use. Should it have taken this long and a pile of money to update it? Of course not. But it shows just how asleep the board and prior management was when it came to building a strong modern content creation company– not just a content aggregation company. Eight years after Google bought Blogger, and at least five years after most old media companies embraced blogging platforms like Moveable Type and WordPress, Yahoo is finally figuring it out. You can’t put that on Bartz.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Yahoo CEO job has a way of making smart people look inept. Maybe she wasn’t the best pick, but who is this magical better person who’s out there just dying to take her spot?
Back to the Fox segment: There were two rumors Bartz didn’t deny. The first was when she was asked about the takeover rumors and she, as expected, said it wasn’t appropriate for her to speculate. The second was about Yahoo’s investment in Alibaba. She didn’t say they were selling the assets– even when needled by Clamen– but she didn’t say they weren’t selling them, the way she categorically denied an upcoming ouster or talk of a strong number two joining her team. She definitely signaled that she views Alibaba as a wise financial investment and of little strategic value.
Given how much of global Internet traffic is increasingly coming from overseas, and how brilliantly Jack Ma has navigated infrastructure and political challenges endemic to a country like China, I just don’t see how Bartz doesn’t get how much Yahoo could learn from Alibaba or on a more basic level, the advantages of having someone like that as an ally. For sheer entertainment value, I’d give an arm to see Bartz, Jerry Yang and Jack Ma at a board meeting, when and if Yahoo get its contractually-obligated second seat on Alibaba’s board.
From the transcript:
CLAMAN: I need to ask you about Alibaba, this Chinese site in which you have a near 40 percent stake that is extraordinarily valuable. Everyone is wondering are you going to cash in on that. What are you going to do with Alibaba?
First of all, is it 7 billion in value? Is it 11 billion? I can’t get a straight number from anybody.
BARTZ: Well, I think one of the reasons you can’t get a straight number is it’s a private company, so there’s a lot of people that are doing their best analysis of that.
You know, the company five years ago had some trouble in China and made such a wise decision to move the business out of China and not operate in China cause we see what can happen in some of the issues with that.
CLAMAN: Meaning Google and that situation.
BARTZ: And we partnered up with a fantastic entrepreneur named Jack Ma. Five years later, everybody is salivating because it was such a good decision and such a good investment.
So we continue to watch this investment. We’re on the board of Alibaba. And we’re also always watching what is best for the shareholders.
CLAMAN: Would you wait until it goes public or do you not want to miss an opportunity that may be before that?
BARTZ: You’re always evaluating things like this, Liz. Any investment you’re evaluating should I take some out now, should I wait and do these things later.
We have a team of very strong financial experts that both work here and advise us, and we will do the right thing for the shareholders, no doubt about it.
CLAMAN: It must be tempting, though, when you look at — OK, let’s use the low number — $7 billion, if that’s what Alibaba is valued at, to say, boy, you know, this would get some of the analyst heat off my back.
(LAUGHTER)
BARTZ: You know, I have a job that absorbs the heat. That is my job. And so, hey, listen, sometimes it is not fun that you get a little more heat than you expect. But we have such confidence in what we’re doing and we have such confidence in that investment that we will not do anything silly because of supposed heat. We will do the right thing as a management team and the right thing for the shareholders.
Google made a stunning revelation this morning: the existence of a secret self-driving car project. Even more amazing: it has been in testing for months, on actual roads across California, and things seem to be running smoothly. Fans of Total Recall, Minority Report, and Knight Rider are hyperventilating at the prospects. And while the technology is likely still a long way from being widely implemented (The New York Times piece on it suggests eight years), there is one big question: why?
Google’s answer seems to be a “betterment of society” one. “We’ve always been optimistic about technology’s ability to advance society, which is why we have pushed so hard to improve the capabilities of self-driving cars beyond where they are today,” Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, who spearheaded the project (and also runs Stanford’s AI Labs, and co-invented Street View), writes today.
That’s great. But Google is still a public company in the business of making money for its shareholders. So one can’t help but wonder what, if any, money-making prospects there are here?
“The Google researchers said the company did not yet have a clear plan to create a business from the experiments,” according to the NYT. Further, they quote Thrun as saying that this project is an example of Google’s “willingness to gamble on technology that may not pay off for years.”
We know Google has a history of idealism — co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, in particular — but this project cannot come cheap. And the fact is that Google remains basically a one-trick-pony when it comes to making money. They are so reliant on search advertising revenues, that if something suddenly happened to the market, they’d be totally screwed. Android may prove to be their second trick, but it’s not there yet.
But there may be more to these automated cars than just an awesomely cool concept. At our TechCrunch Disrupt event a couple weeks ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a speech about “an augmented version of humanity.” He noted that the future is about getting computers to do the things we’re not good at. One of those things is driving cars, Schmidt slyly said at the time. “Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense,” he noted. “It’s a bug that cars were invented before computers.”
If your car can drive itself, a lot of commuters would be freed up to do other things in the car — such as surf the web. One of Google’s stated goals for this project is to “free up people’s time”. That matched with Schmidt’s vision of mobile devices being with us all the time every day, likely will translate into more usage of Google.
That may sound silly and not worth all the R&D an undertaking as huge as this will require, but don’t underestimate Google. This is a company who cares deeply about shaving fractions of a second off of each search query so that you can do more of them in your waking hours. Imagine if you suddenly had an hour or more a day in your car to do whatever you wanted because you no longer had to focus on driving? Yeah. Cha-ching.
Or imagine if your on-board maps where showing you Google ads. Or you were watching Google TV in your car since you didn’t have to drive. Or you were listening to Google Music with Google ads. It’s all the same. This automated driving technology would free you up to use more Google products — which in turn make them more money. Make no mistake, Google will enter your car in a big way. And automated driving would up their return in a big way.
And, of course, none of this speaks to what, if anything, Google would actually charge for such technology implementation. You would have to believe that if and when it’s available, this automated driving tech would be built-in to cars. Would car manufacturers pay Google for it and pass off some of the costs to customers? Or would this all be subsidized by the above ideas?
It’s way too early to get into that, I’m sure. And in 8 years, there will be things out there that we can’t even imagine right now. But it’s interesting to think about. The Google Car.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I have little doubt Google is being sincere in their broader hopes for such a technology. Here’s their key blurb on that:
According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half. We’re also confident that self-driving cars will transform car sharing, significantly reducing car usage, as well as help create the new “highway trains of tomorrow.” These highway trains should cut energy consumption while also increasing the number of people that can be transported on our major roads. In terms of time efficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that people spend on average 52 minutes each working day commuting. Imagine being able to spend that time more productively.
That first part is awesome. If we could halve the number of traffic deaths each year, it would be world-changing. And if energy consumption could be cut, it could re-shape economies and save our future. But again, don’t gloss over the last part. Freeing up those 52 minutes a day to be productive — that’s a lot of potential money for Google.
And that’s great too. If Google can spend the time and money working on such amazing technology they should be rewarded for it. There’s no rule that says you shouldn’t be able to make money by changing the world. And Google can’t be praised enough for trying.
More:
- Google Has A Secret Fleet Of Automated Toyota Priuses; 140,000 Miles Logged So Far.
- Google’s Self-Driving Car Spotted On The Highway Almost A Year Ago
[images: Dreamworks and TriStar Entertainment]
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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was on Fox Business News today, and she was plenty Bartz-y. When Fox anchor Liz Clamen asked her repeatedly if she was on the way out, she said she was there to stay, adding “Do I look like a wimp?”
No. You do not. Even if you think Bartz is running the company into the ground, you have to give her credit for not holing up and hiding the way her predecessor Jerry Yang did, for continuing to be herself and holding her head high amid a pretty nasty storm of rumors. She further added that she wasn’t hiring a strong number two, saying she didn’t need one.
The question is, do we believe her? I don’t mean that question as a knock on her; frequently CEOs say they’re not going anywhere or not doing a deal or not launching a product just before they do. But Bartz didn’t help her credibility with her answer to Clamen’s question about whether she was tough to work for. She said: “So change just happens with new management and it’s actually refreshing for all of us. So 15,000 employees, three people left? That’s OK.”
Am I totally misunderstanding this or is she saying only three people have left Yahoo in the last year and a half? I think I’ve talked to three this week. I’m not convinced Bartz was a good fit for Yahoo, but I’ve long been a fan of her outspoken, here’s-the-way-it-is management style. And that statement isn’t how things are at Yahoo.
I’m somewhere between those onlookers who loathe Bartz and those who love her. I know a lot of talented executives who have left Yahoo in part because of her. They aren’t haters; they just don’t feel she gets the product or the business. And few metrics have been up during her short tenure, other than profitability which is up 80%, but that’s mostly through cost cutting and frankly, Yahoo had a lot of fat to cut. But on the other hand, I think Bartz is cleaning up a big mess that was a long time in the making. Not even a fictional wonder-CEO could do that in 18 months.
Let’s remember: The business hasn’t grown for six years and Bartz has only been there 18 months. She’s not the one who turned down Microsoft’s $31 a share offer. She’s not the one who bungled an acquisition of Google, YouTube or Facebook. And while we had some fun at her expense over her comments about the technical challenges of blogging– I can tell you from experience Yahoo’s in house content management system was impossible to use. Should it have taken this long and a pile of money to update it? Of course not. But it shows just how asleep the board and prior management was when it came to building a strong modern content creation company– not just a content aggregation company. Eight years after Google bought Blogger, and at least five years after most old media companies embraced blogging platforms like Moveable Type and WordPress, Yahoo is finally figuring it out. You can’t put that on Bartz.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Yahoo CEO job has a way of making smart people look inept. Maybe she wasn’t the best pick, but who is this magical better person who’s out there just dying to take her spot?
Back to the Fox segment: There were two rumors Bartz didn’t deny. The first was when she was asked about the takeover rumors and she, as expected, said it wasn’t appropriate for her to speculate. The second was about Yahoo’s investment in Alibaba. She didn’t say they were selling the assets– even when needled by Clamen– but she didn’t say they weren’t selling them, the way she categorically denied an upcoming ouster or talk of a strong number two joining her team. She definitely signaled that she views Alibaba as a wise financial investment and of little strategic value.
Given how much of global Internet traffic is increasingly coming from overseas, and how brilliantly Jack Ma has navigated infrastructure and political challenges endemic to a country like China, I just don’t see how Bartz doesn’t get how much Yahoo could learn from Alibaba or on a more basic level, the advantages of having someone like that as an ally. For sheer entertainment value, I’d give an arm to see Bartz, Jerry Yang and Jack Ma at a board meeting, when and if Yahoo get its contractually-obligated second seat on Alibaba’s board.
From the transcript:
CLAMAN: I need to ask you about Alibaba, this Chinese site in which you have a near 40 percent stake that is extraordinarily valuable. Everyone is wondering are you going to cash in on that. What are you going to do with Alibaba?
First of all, is it 7 billion in value? Is it 11 billion? I can’t get a straight number from anybody.
BARTZ: Well, I think one of the reasons you can’t get a straight number is it’s a private company, so there’s a lot of people that are doing their best analysis of that.
You know, the company five years ago had some trouble in China and made such a wise decision to move the business out of China and not operate in China cause we see what can happen in some of the issues with that.
CLAMAN: Meaning Google and that situation.
BARTZ: And we partnered up with a fantastic entrepreneur named Jack Ma. Five years later, everybody is salivating because it was such a good decision and such a good investment.
So we continue to watch this investment. We’re on the board of Alibaba. And we’re also always watching what is best for the shareholders.
CLAMAN: Would you wait until it goes public or do you not want to miss an opportunity that may be before that?
BARTZ: You’re always evaluating things like this, Liz. Any investment you’re evaluating should I take some out now, should I wait and do these things later.
We have a team of very strong financial experts that both work here and advise us, and we will do the right thing for the shareholders, no doubt about it.
CLAMAN: It must be tempting, though, when you look at — OK, let’s use the low number — $7 billion, if that’s what Alibaba is valued at, to say, boy, you know, this would get some of the analyst heat off my back.
(LAUGHTER)
BARTZ: You know, I have a job that absorbs the heat. That is my job. And so, hey, listen, sometimes it is not fun that you get a little more heat than you expect. But we have such confidence in what we’re doing and we have such confidence in that investment that we will not do anything silly because of supposed heat. We will do the right thing as a management team and the right thing for the shareholders.
Google made a stunning revelation this morning: the existence of a secret self-driving car project. Even more amazing: it has been in testing for months, on actual roads across California, and things seem to be running smoothly. Fans of Total Recall, Minority Report, and Knight Rider are hyperventilating at the prospects. And while the technology is likely still a long way from being widely implemented (The New York Times piece on it suggests eight years), there is one big question: why?
Google’s answer seems to be a “betterment of society” one. “We’ve always been optimistic about technology’s ability to advance society, which is why we have pushed so hard to improve the capabilities of self-driving cars beyond where they are today,” Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, who spearheaded the project (and also runs Stanford’s AI Labs, and co-invented Street View), writes today.
That’s great. But Google is still a public company in the business of making money for its shareholders. So one can’t help but wonder what, if any, money-making prospects there are here?
“The Google researchers said the company did not yet have a clear plan to create a business from the experiments,” according to the NYT. Further, they quote Thrun as saying that this project is an example of Google’s “willingness to gamble on technology that may not pay off for years.”
We know Google has a history of idealism — co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, in particular — but this project cannot come cheap. And the fact is that Google remains basically a one-trick-pony when it comes to making money. They are so reliant on search advertising revenues, that if something suddenly happened to the market, they’d be totally screwed. Android may prove to be their second trick, but it’s not there yet.
But there may be more to these automated cars than just an awesomely cool concept. At our TechCrunch Disrupt event a couple weeks ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a speech about “an augmented version of humanity.” He noted that the future is about getting computers to do the things we’re not good at. One of those things is driving cars, Schmidt slyly said at the time. “Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense,” he noted. “It’s a bug that cars were invented before computers.”
If your car can drive itself, a lot of commuters would be freed up to do other things in the car — such as surf the web. One of Google’s stated goals for this project is to “free up people’s time”. That matched with Schmidt’s vision of mobile devices being with us all the time every day, likely will translate into more usage of Google.
That may sound silly and not worth all the R&D an undertaking as huge as this will require, but don’t underestimate Google. This is a company who cares deeply about shaving fractions of a second off of each search query so that you can do more of them in your waking hours. Imagine if you suddenly had an hour or more a day in your car to do whatever you wanted because you no longer had to focus on driving? Yeah. Cha-ching.
Or imagine if your on-board maps where showing you Google ads. Or you were watching Google TV in your car since you didn’t have to drive. Or you were listening to Google Music with Google ads. It’s all the same. This automated driving technology would free you up to use more Google products — which in turn make them more money. Make no mistake, Google will enter your car in a big way. And automated driving would up their return in a big way.
And, of course, none of this speaks to what, if anything, Google would actually charge for such technology implementation. You would have to believe that if and when it’s available, this automated driving tech would be built-in to cars. Would car manufacturers pay Google for it and pass off some of the costs to customers? Or would this all be subsidized by the above ideas?
It’s way too early to get into that, I’m sure. And in 8 years, there will be things out there that we can’t even imagine right now. But it’s interesting to think about. The Google Car.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I have little doubt Google is being sincere in their broader hopes for such a technology. Here’s their key blurb on that:
According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half. We’re also confident that self-driving cars will transform car sharing, significantly reducing car usage, as well as help create the new “highway trains of tomorrow.” These highway trains should cut energy consumption while also increasing the number of people that can be transported on our major roads. In terms of time efficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that people spend on average 52 minutes each working day commuting. Imagine being able to spend that time more productively.
That first part is awesome. If we could halve the number of traffic deaths each year, it would be world-changing. And if energy consumption could be cut, it could re-shape economies and save our future. But again, don’t gloss over the last part. Freeing up those 52 minutes a day to be productive — that’s a lot of potential money for Google.
And that’s great too. If Google can spend the time and money working on such amazing technology they should be rewarded for it. There’s no rule that says you shouldn’t be able to make money by changing the world. And Google can’t be praised enough for trying.
More:
- Google Has A Secret Fleet Of Automated Toyota Priuses; 140,000 Miles Logged So Far.
- Google’s Self-Driving Car Spotted On The Highway Almost A Year Ago
[images: Dreamworks and TriStar Entertainment]
Nuclear submarine runs aground off Skye | Scotland | STV <b>News</b>
Royal Navy submarine HMS Astute stranded after accident near Skye Bridge.
BREAKING <b>NEWS</b>: No Jail For Lindsay Lohan - Judge Orders Her To <b>...</b>
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid16157557001/bctid645210306001 Lindsay Lohan caught a major break on Friday when Judge Elden Fox chose not to send her to jail and ordered her to stay in rehab at the Betty Ford Center.
Surprise: Fox <b>News</b> signs Juan Williams to new $2 million deal <b>...</b>
Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes handed Williams a new three-year contract Thursday morning, in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million, a considerable bump up from his previous salary, the Tribune Washington Bureau has learned. ...
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