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I don't think that's fair at all. Meg failed to extend the eBay brand into non-English speaking countries, and didn't extend the platform in any meaningful way

I don't think that's fair at all. Meg failed to extend the eBay brand into non-English speaking countries, and didn't extend the platform in any meaningful ways. Sure, not everything Google's touched has turned to gold, but Google Apps, Gmail (a two year incubation before the 4/1 release), App Engine, and a bunch of other things have been moderately successful. There's no parallel at eBay to any of those things.

philwelch 18y ago
But, as the article says, their "moderate successes" have failed to be profitable. A startup can get away with not figuring out every monetization angle and focusing on developing cool stuff, as long as they're profitable overall. But once the startup hires a non-technical CEO and IPO's, the CEO's job is supposed to be monetization. Sure, some things can be out there to build public goodwill and brand image, but when you're a publicly-held for-profit, "cool technology" is no longer the benchmark for the CEO's success.