Gauging Google's Gaffes 140
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at some of the recent faux pas of Google and what implications they might have. The articles's conclusion: They should hire a chief marketing officer to avoid such gaffes. From the article: 'Recent missteps that have whipsawed or irked investors include the inadvertent release of sales projections and an agreement to censor its own search results in China. Then on Mar. 8, Google used a vaguely worded blog on its site to disclose a settlement of as much as $90 million in a case concerning click fraud. That came days after the company said the case was without merit and told investors the impact of click fraud on advertisers is immaterial.'"
Google's Hiring (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Google's Philosophy: a love and hate relationsh (Score:5, Informative)
Over the years, the company has proven its worth time and time again with technology advancements cool new features
really, like what? web-based email? instant messaging? web-based maps? a search engine? i hate to tell you this, but all of this was done 5-10 years before google existed. granted, google has (mostly) made advancements in these areas, but please, let's not pretend these ideas are "new".
everything google does is available elsewhere, and in a form such that the quality of our lives would not significantly change if google dried up and died.
Re:Conspiracy (Score:5, Informative)
Not at all. investors, like any other large group of people, have lots of diverse goals. In practice though you can't satisfy all of these goals. Most are mutually exclusive to some extent. So it comes down to the least common denominator - max profits - like you said. It is the nature of corporate law that is the problem here, not the investors.
Re:Good Google (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Panty Bind (Score:3, Informative)
Read the parent post again.
there are tons of folks and organzations that invest other folks money that are also "investors" and they are being just as irked and feel like Google is not operating is a straight forward manner.
I would be too. $90 million dollar settlement is at least noteworthy and should be professionally communicated to the shareholders. Comments like "Guess if I'm talking about revenue or market capitalization" from one of the CEOs is just being arrogant.
I'm not sure where the IPO document Google said that they would act in an irresponsible way to people who hold their shares.
Re:Conspiracy (Score:1, Informative)
In the second quarter of 2005, Google began granting performance-based restricted stock units to all employees upon their hire. These vest on an annual basis over the next four years. Employees will be very aware of whether they are making money from their stock-based compensation.
The history of the tech industry is full of examples of people going to work for companies at less than stellar wages. Many do it because of the lure of stock options. Many do it because they think it will be fun to work for a growing company.
There are many ways to provide a rewarding environment for employees. If you take away competitive salaries and profitable stock options, then you will need to work very hard to make up for it in other areas. Sometimes you'll be successful, and sometimes you won't. Over time, it is difficult to maintain the allure and retain employees. There will always be some new start-up that promises to be just as exciting as Google in its heyday - it may even be started by a couple of ex-Google employees who vested early, and looked back to their alma mater for staffing.