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"In a meeting during early December with top shareholders, Chief Executive Larry Page said Google understands the need to balance long-term investments against

by praptak 11y ago

"In a meeting during early December with top shareholders, Chief Executive Larry Page said Google understands the need to balance long-term investments against the risk that a weak stock price will dent employee morale and hurt recruiting and employee retention." Yeah right. Nothing sends the morale soaring like the "necessary cuts".

theseatoms 11y ago
Those holding equity probably feel differently. The stock is up 3% today, to year-to-date highs.
- gress 11y ago
  For this day, they can feel good, but this is a signal that Page is facing the fact that the search advertising business may have hit the limits of growth or even be in jeopardy well before they've managed to develop another business. If they were confident about continued revenue growth they wouldn't be feverishly worrying about the stock price. They've shot themselves in the foot by reactively deflating other businesses they are afraid of to protect their cash cows rather than creating enough new value to replace it themselves.
  - trhway 11y ago
    >For this day, they can feel good, but this is a signal that Page is facing the fact that the search advertising business may have hit the limits of growth or just a big one coming - the correction ("bust") is coming around next year, and thus advertising business will not grow until we are out of the correction several years down the road. So may be what Larry does is just that old "butten down the hatches", like some other companies are starting to do to.
  - coliveira 11y ago
    Google has this rhetoric of creating new businesses, but the company is more than 15 years old and the best they did was to buy youtube. Android is a success story, but it exists only to protect advertisement revenue. Even Amazon has done better in diversifying on the technology space when they created AWS. I don't think Google has much investor credibility left in the sense of creating additional money generating businesses.
jjulius 11y ago
> The company is still aggressive about retaining employees, often offering more equity, he added. > Some employees cite other examples of increased frugality, albeit at a workplace that is luxurious compared with most others. Travel, supplies and events all require more justification or approvals than in the past, according to two people familiar with the changes. It doesn't look like they're interested in making drastic cuts just yet. The innumerable perks that Google offers its employees in the form of retreats, trips, food, play, etc. are what will be cut first. You can still keep morale up if you don't send your entire data center team to a cabin or Disneyworld twice a year, or if you don't send more people to a job site than you really need.
- wutbrodo 11y ago
  From what I understand, it's more of a "death by a thousand cuts" thing. Nobody really complains that the offsites aren't as incredible or anything, but little things like crowding in desks everywhere in open-office plans and lowering the quality of kitchenette foods.

by praptak 11y ago

theseatoms 11y ago

Those holding equity probably feel differently. The stock is up 3% today, to year-to-date highs.

gress 11y ago
For this day, they can feel good, but this is a signal that Page is facing the fact that the search advertising business may have hit the limits of growth or even be in jeopardy well before they've managed to develop another business. If they were confident about continued revenue growth they wouldn't be feverishly worrying about the stock price. They've shot themselves in the foot by reactively deflating other businesses they are afraid of to protect their cash cows rather than creating enough new value to replace it themselves.
- trhway 11y ago
  >For this day, they can feel good, but this is a signal that Page is facing the fact that the search advertising business may have hit the limits of growth or just a big one coming - the correction ("bust") is coming around next year, and thus advertising business will not grow until we are out of the correction several years down the road. So may be what Larry does is just that old "butten down the hatches", like some other companies are starting to do to.
- coliveira 11y ago
  Google has this rhetoric of creating new businesses, but the company is more than 15 years old and the best they did was to buy youtube. Android is a success story, but it exists only to protect advertisement revenue. Even Amazon has done better in diversifying on the technology space when they created AWS. I don't think Google has much investor credibility left in the sense of creating additional money generating businesses.

jjulius 11y ago

> The company is still aggressive about retaining employees, often offering more equity, he added. > Some employees cite other examples of increased frugality, albeit at a workplace that is luxurious compared with most others. Travel, supplies and events all require more justification or approvals than in the past, according to two people familiar with the changes. It doesn't look like they're interested in making drastic cuts just yet. The innumerable perks that Google offers its employees in the form of retreats, trips, food, play, etc. are what will be cut first. You can still keep morale up if you don't send your entire data center team to a cabin or Disneyworld twice a year, or if you don't send more people to a job site than you really need.

wutbrodo 11y ago
From what I understand, it's more of a "death by a thousand cuts" thing. Nobody really complains that the offsites aren't as incredible or anything, but little things like crowding in desks everywhere in open-office plans and lowering the quality of kitchenette foods.