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Wow. Apparently I didn't realise such a post would get me downgraded... did i offend someone's sensibility? Was I rude??? Curious... Anyway, back to your point

by nanairo 16y ago

Wow. Apparently I didn't realise such a post would get me downgraded... did i offend someone's sensibility? Was I rude??? Curious... Anyway, back to your point. I agree on what you said. But the problem as I see it is that Google (the company) is not hurt by its CEO's gaffes. Facebook is a lot worse, and it's still going strong (and the boycott was a total failure). Google itself is going strong: it's becoming harder and harder to stop using it. So sure, if Google's business started to suffer because of Schmidt then I would agree. However at the moment it seems that the business has been helped by him not hindered. They may have traded ethics for revenue, but clearly not many shareholders were concerned on that, or the prices would have fallen. Those shareholders would be concerned if Google started to lose business, but that doesn't seem likely to happen at the moment.

grandalf 16y ago
(I didn't mod your comment down fyi). I think it was a legitimate question. I guess it depends on how much credit you give to Schmidt for Google's success. I find it hard to believe that he deserves much... but I could be wrong.
- nanairo 16y ago
  My impression is that Schmidt was the one behind the massive expansion of Google into everything. Both in its need to have a finger in every pie and it's sequence of acquisition it reminds a bit of MS and other such companies. I don' think Schmidt was behind much of the current success, just behind the direction Google has been sailing to. But I agree that if Schmidt deserved a lot less credit for it, then his position as CEO would be more at risk from these gaffes.
barrkel 16y ago
You cannot logically justify this statement: "Google (the company) is not hurt by its CEO's gaffes"; with this evidence: "Google itself is going strong: it's becoming harder and harder to stop using it." It's perfectly possible for Google to be doing worse than it could otherwise have been doing, yet still be doing quite well. As to your other point, the reason I downvoted it was because it was very short-sighted. Companies that are "controlled by a shark", as you put it, are not well liked, don't attract the best employees, and ultimately get replaced when something with higher values comes along. That kind of thinking is not in the company's enlightened self-interest, and is counter-productive in the medium to long term. And consequently, no, I wouldn't prefer to invest in such a company, because I would believe it wouldn't have much of a growing future ahead of it. At best, it would maximize profits (as best it can) from mature cash cows in static market; something like Unilever, or P&G. It would be a "safe" investment, and consequently not very rewarding. But in a fast-paced and changing market, it would be a very risky play and subject to dramatic change in less than a decade.
- nanairo 16y ago
  Well, if it was short-sighted you could have replied to it (as you did here) rather than downvoting it... Or maybe I understood the concept of karma wrong. shrug As for what you say I think on a theoretical level I agree with you. But in reality nowadays a lot of shareholders buy and sell for the short term. Just look at all the companies that have very high stocks as they approach the quarterly report, and once they reported an excellent quarter, their prices fall. And that's without considering all the high-frequency trading. As for being hurt by the gaffes or not, I agree with you that the evidence (as you put it) is not much. But then what evidence do _you_ have that these gaffes are hurting Google? I think (maybe cynically) that a lot of shareholders are very happy with how Google is doing, and they see a lot of profit in front of it: the finer details of "if the CEO had acted differently" maybe then the business would have been a bit different, seems a bit too abstract. Also, and this is a point I think it's worth making. When I said controlled by a shark many people seemed to have read that as simply meaning someone with no ethics. But that's not the case. I meant someone who gave up ethics to pursue new areas of expansion. So if you will it's a bet. The shareholder has to wonder how much the predatory behaviour of a company are helping it expand (and if it doesn't expand the shares don't go up), and how much its reputation is hurting it. During the 90s MS was a really big shark, but it's business was flourishing. Same with Facebook: you and I maybe dislike FB's privacy policy, and surely FB is getting a bit of a bad rep. but at the same time at the start FB didn't have a clear business proposition either. So yeah, maybe Brin and Page would have kept Google as a wonderful place to be, with great ethics, and a lot of geek appeal (and hence amazing employees). But then maybe that same Google would still be concentrating in improving their search algorithm, and maybe having a good mail system. They would not have pursued a FB killer, a Foursquare killer a Twitter killer, an iPhone killer, or any other killer. Then would that company's revenue really been higher than the real Google's? It's not so clear to me. So yeah, we can all agree that bad reputation can be bad. But putting ethics above profit may be bad too (even for the long-term profit). It's not clear to me what evidence you've shown that the latter would have made Google richer than the former.

by nanairo 16y ago

grandalf 16y ago

(I didn't mod your comment down fyi). I think it was a legitimate question. I guess it depends on how much credit you give to Schmidt for Google's success. I find it hard to believe that he deserves much... but I could be wrong.

nanairo 16y ago
My impression is that Schmidt was the one behind the massive expansion of Google into everything. Both in its need to have a finger in every pie and it's sequence of acquisition it reminds a bit of MS and other such companies. I don' think Schmidt was behind much of the current success, just behind the direction Google has been sailing to. But I agree that if Schmidt deserved a lot less credit for it, then his position as CEO would be more at risk from these gaffes.

barrkel 16y ago

You cannot logically justify this statement: "Google (the company) is not hurt by its CEO's gaffes"; with this evidence: "Google itself is going strong: it's becoming harder and harder to stop using it." It's perfectly possible for Google to be doing worse than it could otherwise have been doing, yet still be doing quite well. As to your other point, the reason I downvoted it was because it was very short-sighted. Companies that are "controlled by a shark", as you put it, are not well liked, don't attract the best employees, and ultimately get replaced when something with higher values comes along. That kind of thinking is not in the company's enlightened self-interest, and is counter-productive in the medium to long term. And consequently, no, I wouldn't prefer to invest in such a company, because I would believe it wouldn't have much of a growing future ahead of it. At best, it would maximize profits (as best it can) from mature cash cows in static market; something like Unilever, or P&G. It would be a "safe" investment, and consequently not very rewarding. But in a fast-paced and changing market, it would be a very risky play and subject to dramatic change in less than a decade.

nanairo 16y ago
Well, if it was short-sighted you could have replied to it (as you did here) rather than downvoting it... Or maybe I understood the concept of karma wrong. shrug As for what you say I think on a theoretical level I agree with you. But in reality nowadays a lot of shareholders buy and sell for the short term. Just look at all the companies that have very high stocks as they approach the quarterly report, and once they reported an excellent quarter, their prices fall. And that's without considering all the high-frequency trading. As for being hurt by the gaffes or not, I agree with you that the evidence (as you put it) is not much. But then what evidence do _you_ have that these gaffes are hurting Google? I think (maybe cynically) that a lot of shareholders are very happy with how Google is doing, and they see a lot of profit in front of it: the finer details of "if the CEO had acted differently" maybe then the business would have been a bit different, seems a bit too abstract. Also, and this is a point I think it's worth making. When I said controlled by a shark many people seemed to have read that as simply meaning someone with no ethics. But that's not the case. I meant someone who gave up ethics to pursue new areas of expansion. So if you will it's a bet. The shareholder has to wonder how much the predatory behaviour of a company are helping it expand (and if it doesn't expand the shares don't go up), and how much its reputation is hurting it. During the 90s MS was a really big shark, but it's business was flourishing. Same with Facebook: you and I maybe dislike FB's privacy policy, and surely FB is getting a bit of a bad rep. but at the same time at the start FB didn't have a clear business proposition either. So yeah, maybe Brin and Page would have kept Google as a wonderful place to be, with great ethics, and a lot of geek appeal (and hence amazing employees). But then maybe that same Google would still be concentrating in improving their search algorithm, and maybe having a good mail system. They would not have pursued a FB killer, a Foursquare killer a Twitter killer, an iPhone killer, or any other killer. Then would that company's revenue really been higher than the real Google's? It's not so clear to me. So yeah, we can all agree that bad reputation can be bad. But putting ethics above profit may be bad too (even for the long-term profit). It's not clear to me what evidence you've shown that the latter would have made Google richer than the former.