“Scarcity brings clarity,” says Marissa Mayer, the blonde cyborg who runs Google’s search engine
“Scarcity brings clarity,” says Marissa Mayer, the blonde cyborg who runs Google’s search engine, in a BusinessWeek interview. She makes fun of Dilbert-style managers — but in reality, she shows how she’s turned into one.
Mayer, a striking Midwestern blonde with a nerdy laugh, was employee No. 20 at Google, and she eagerly grabbed authority as she rose from engineer to director to vice president. (Google is stingy with titles, so an executive slot there is vastly harder to get than at, say, a bank, where even a branch manager can be a VP.)
But what, exactly, does she do? She works long hours, she tells interviewers. But it’s not clear what she spends her time on. Spreadsheets of cupcake recipes? Employees report that she’s famous for not preparing for meetings, making spur-of-the-moment decisions on products based on five-minute presentations.
And how does she make her decisions? Based on the “user experience,” which pretty much means whatever Mayer thinks is right. Oh, sure, she goes through mounds of data — but anyone who’s worked with spreadsheets knows there’s always a way to make the numbers say what you want them to say.
Read The Rest
Last weekend, around 60 entrepreneurs under age 35 flew to Cancun for a retreat informally dubbed Summit Series.
Last weekend, around 60 entrepreneurs under age 35 flew to Cancun for a retreat informally dubbed Summit Series. CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy was one of the press attendees who agreed not to name names. Nice try. The list of attendees identified below includes Dave Morin from Facebook, Joe Green who roomed with Mark Zuckerberg in college, and Sam Lessin who just got back from lip-dubbing Journey at Camp Cyprus. Tony Hsieh just laid off 8 percent of his Zappos staff. Ex-Googler Chris Sacca may or may not be rich, but I’m jealous of him anyway.
The Most Stupid Web Feature of 2008
It’s absolutely Google’s SearchWiki. It lets you to remove an entire site from your life. Wow Just Wow.
Current.com’s “Remember Me” doesn’t work.
Nowadays, i follow Al Gore’s current.com. It’s has a style and this style seperate it from the social news sites crowd. But there is an annoying problem currently on the site. The “remember me” option at login doesn’t work. And i’m really tired of typing my user name and password. This problem should urgently be solved. Because many users doesn’t like that.
Making Facebook Safe Against Spam
Last Friday, Facebook won an important victory for our users – and against spam and those who create it.
We’ve all experienced spam – those unwanted and, sometimes, inappropriate marketing messages. The bad guys behind those messages are always looking to find new ways to annoy people and Facebook’s users have been among those targeted. We don’t take this affront to our users lying down.
In a court in San Jose, after a legal proceeding lasting four months, federal Judge Jeremy Fogel awarded Facebook $873 million in damages against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital for sending sleazy messages to our users. The award is the largest judgment in history for an action brought under Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM).
Does Facebook expect to quickly collect $873 million and share the proceeds in some way with our users? Alas, no. It’s unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can). But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users.
Read The Rest at Facebook’s Official Blog
Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources.
Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources. Since August, hundreds of employees have been laid off and there are reports that about 500 of them were recruiters for Google.
By law, Google is required to report layoffs publicly and with the SEC however, Google has managed to get around the legal requirement. In fact, one of the ways Google was able to meet Wall Street’s Q3 earnings expectations was by trimming “operational” expenses.
Google reports to the SEC that it has 20,123 employees but in reality it has 30,000. Why the discrepancy? Google classifies 10,000 of the employees as temporary operational expenses or “workers”. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “There is no question that the number (of workers) is too high”.
The classification affords Google several advantages such as:
1) Hire full time employees without full time benefits. The classification enables Google to pay them above minimum wage, provide no health benefits, no insurance coverage, no stock options, and no offer of permanent employment.
Even Google is Focusing on Costs. You have to focuse too.
Google Inc., owner of the most popular Internet search engine, is adding fewer employees and focusing on controlling expenses amid the global economic slump, Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said.
“We have slowed our hiring, but we’re still hiring,” Schmidt said in an interview that will be aired on Bloomberg Television at 9 p.m. New York time. “We’re still doing the same kinds of exciting and crazy things that Google always does.”
Google is grappling with an economic slowdown that’s curbing growth in the online advertising market, while competition intensifies with Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. for customers’ budgets. Schmidt said that while the overall ad market may be shrinking, Google benefits from its ability to target specific users. The company’s business hasn’t changed significantly in the past two weeks, he said.
Facebook Needs a new CEO
Let me tell you what will happen in Tech Industry in 2009. I think, most of the bloggers, experts, developers, publishers, advertisers will start to say “seriosly”; Facebook needs a new CEO. Yeah, they’ll say that; World’s 5th most visited site has to earn more. When you compare Facebook’s earnings with PlentyOfFish.com, you get surprised. Plentyoffish has nearly 1 million registered users and earns more than 350.000 dollars a month. That’s really amazing. Facebook was not a very-well-monetized-web-site before indeed, but the new facebook design, killed and doubled unsuccess. Okay Mark Zuckerberg is a genious, he is a smart guy but if he keeps on being an over-self-confidence guy, it will directly hurt facebook. I think, facebook urgently needs a new layout, needs to use 3rd party advertisers instead of their own flyers, they need to use large size of ad banners, and they need a new CEO, maybe.
Google has released a new web site to help simply and centralize information about voting locations and voter registration.
aft news / With the upcoming U.S. elections only 12 days away, Google has released a new web site to help simply and centralize information about voting locations and voter registration. According to a blog post about the new U.S. Voter Info site, Google found it hard to believe that in 2008, this type of important information isn’t better organized on the web. Because organizing info is what Google is all about, they took it on themselves to step in where government has not and have created an incredibly useful site for all U.S. citizens.
The U.S. Voter Info site was developed in partnership with with several state and local election officials, the League of Women Voters, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and others involved in the Voting Information Project. In true Google form, the site appears to as just a simple interface that hides the complicated data processing going on in the back-end. All you have to do to use the new site is enter in your home address in the box provided and click “Search.”
Henry Blodget, the former stock analyst who kicks himself every day for still being a Yahoo shareholder, notes that Yahoo spent $37 million on advisory fees in the third quarter.
aft news / Henry Blodget, the former stock analyst who kicks himself every day for still being a Yahoo shareholder, notes that Yahoo spent $37 million on advisory fees in the third quarter. What did it get? A botched Microsoft buyout; a search deal with Google that’s getting a rough reception by antitrust cops in Washington, D.C.; and Carl Icahn on its board — a man Jerry Yang and company called a technological nincompoop on Yahoo’s own homepage. In other words, nothing — save for cutting its operating income by more than a third. That $37 million did, however, result in one concrete cost-saving initiative. Rest and Source
(Photo by AP)
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