PolySpot Names David Fischer Head of Research and Development
April 24, 2011
We learned last week that Polyspot, a vendor of search and content processing systems, named David Fischer to the post of director of research and development. As the firm’s chief technical officer, he will be responsible for the definition and implementation of technology policy solutions. Prior to joining Polyspot, Mr. Fischer worked at Apple and Business Objects. He is a graduate of ENST.
According to the company’s official announcement:
PolySpot is at a crucial stage in its development and is working to bring fundamental charges to its platform in order to continue to be a player in the search market and access to information ahead of its time and its competitors.
For more information about PolySpot, navigate to www.polyspot.com.
Stephen E Arnold, April 24, 2011
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New CTO at InQuira
April 16, 2011
Updated: April 18, 2011, 7 10 pm Eastern
The story “InQuira Promotes Nav Chakravarti to Chief Technology Officer” tells us that InQuira is making changes within its organization. InQuira is a leading company of enterprise knowledge applications for multi-channeled customer support, social CRM, and sales enablement. Nav Chakravarti was the former vice president of solutions and his promotion to chief technology officer ushers in a new period of technology development for customers and sales.
With Chakravarti as the new CTO, InQuira hopes to helm the way for future innovations in multi-channel user support and as a Knowledge Management (KM) provider. Chakravarti has this to say about his new role,
I’ve had the privilege of engaging with our customers and partners to create, architect and deliver new applications that maximize business value based on our unique product capabilities. This perspective and experience will allow me to guide our product strategy so that we maintain our leadership position. I’m very excited about our future and am looking forward to increasing the depth and breadth of our solutions and product portfolio, and to ultimately broadening InQuira’s strategic market footprint.
InQuira is preparing for some hefty changes and hopefully an even brighter future for their company. There has been a flurry of changes in search and content processing companies in the last three months. Will the new captains of these software ships navigate the choppy waters of today’s business successfully? We hope so.
Whitney Grace, April 16, 2011
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Public Google and the Analysts
April 14, 2011
Short honk: I don’t want to start covering financial information. We have a new blog coming, sponsored for sure, and it will dig into financial angles for investors. Irreverent? Sure. Newsy? Nah, we are going to identify important stories and offer some comments about what was scintillating and what was more of a black hole.
However, we have to say that we read “Google’s First Quarter Earnings Miss Projections as Expenses Spike; Page Makes Brief Appearance.” Not much to say because this is a good search engine optimized headline.
What we want to do is point out that the new Google CEO has to beat analyst estimates, projections, pixie dust, whatever. What happens if the Google cannot pump up revenues and generate the profits as in days of yore? Good question. Let’s do a 1950s’ style Iowa Test. (Anyone remember those?)
Here’s the question. Select the best answer.
What happens if the CEO of a publicly traded company does not meet or beat analysts’ earnings estimates?
[a] Wall Street shrugs its shoulders and says, “Hey, no problemo. Thanks for the nifty coffee mug.”
[b] The investment outfits ignore the misstep and go home before the market closes.
[c] Major shareholders ignore legal challenges, the misunderstanding with the world’s largest market, and rising expenses because the magic ad machine is unbreakable.
[d] The CFAs want the company to change or socially-inclined MBAs and art history majors with CFA certification will become feisty.
Maybe none of the above?
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2011
Iron Mountain Management Shift
April 14, 2011
I pay some attention to Iron Mountain. My first exposure to the company came in a meeting focused on putting paper documents someplace “safe”. Iron Mountain seemed to have a safe place, an “iron” mountain I suppose. The company snagged Purple Yogi, now Stratify, and more recently Mimosa Systems. Both of these acquisitions relate to search and content processing. I don’t have much to say about these acquisitions. Search is more of an issue for an Iron Mountain customer, not the top brass. When I read “Iron Mountain CEO Steps Down, Will Be Replaced by Chairman,” I figured that someone is not happy.
The passage that caught my attention was:
New York hedge fund Elliott Management Corp. last month called for a review of Iron Mountain’s strategy, saying the company’s effort to expand its international and digital businesses hasn’t generated enough returns. Iron Mountain provides business storage and maintains documents including records, electronic files, medical data and e-mail.
Is there a fix? Sure. Will it come quickly enough in today’s financial market? Who knows. I think that the problems of paper, electronic data, and finding are a volatile mix. Obviously the chemistry is not quite right. Storage should be a search enabled application. Iron Mountain may want to consider a shift in the firm’s center of gravity. An eccentric orbit often becomes increasingly difficult to stabilize.
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2011
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Google and Its new Management Method: Reorganization
April 8, 2011
The Los Angeles Times’s article “Exclusive: Google CEO Larry Page Completes Major Reorganization of Internet Search Giant” documents a milestone in big company management tactics. The headline sums up the deliverable from a busy first week or so on the job for Larry Page, the founder with operational control of Google. Here’s the passage that may be recycled in a number of Business 101 essays in the months and years ahead:
The executives will be able to act more autonomously and won’t have to turn to Google’s powerful operating committee on every decision. “The idea is to empower people, let them take risks and give them more authority over decisions,” said one person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to maintain his relationship with Google. Page has been thinking about how to reorganize the company to cut bureaucracy and politicking while speeding up innovation. He may have found his answer in the success of the company’s Android mobile software unit and its video-sharing site YouTube, each of which have thrived as largely autonomous entities.
Questions which crossed my mind include:
- How does one define “success” for YouTube and Android. These two “products” have been fountains of legal and technical activity. Examples range from the shoot out with Viacom which is still flopping around the US legal maze and the possible “we’re open source but we are really into not be so much open that fragmentation occurs” approach to Android.
- What happens to customers of certain Google products and services who cannot find anyone to answer certain questions. Example: “Why has my traffic disappeared?” or “Where did the Adsense revenues go in the last three months?” My favorite is: “Whom do I call about a technical problem with my $300,000 Google Search Appliance?”
- Autonomous decision making is a great thing; however, giant publicly traded companies have many different pressures on them. Example: “What will be done to either re-enter the China market, arguably the fastest growing economy in the world when one compares it to Detroit or Gary, Indiana?” Another example: “When will revenues of a significant nature flow from a social information service?” (I keep thinking of Orkut, its early entrance in a market, and its somewhat interesting impact in Brazil, upon attorneys, and on certain government entities. “Impact” is not direct revenue flowing to Google as I understand the Orkut service.)
Microsoft was once described to me as “10,000 sail boats moving roughly in the same direction.” Is Google emulating Microsoft’s management methods? I see some similarities. A big difference is speed. Moving org boxes in less than five days is quite impressive. Now we can watch performance indicators to see how the method works. MBA candidates, on your mark, get set….
Stephen E Arnold, April 8, 2011
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Google and Its New Management Method: Facebook
April 7, 2011
I found “Page Ties Google Bonuses to Social Strategy” an excellent write up. Business publications may want to pay a bit more attention to publications like MaximumPC. Anyway: The article said:
Google employees the world over now have reason to hope that the nerdy engineers running Google understand the social web more than stereotypes would lead us to think. Newly minted CEO Larry page just sent out a memo to all staff to let them know that 25% of all bonuses will be based on the success or failure of Google social strategy in 2011.
Okay, get paid to stay and now get a bonus for doing the social thing. Interesting. Why? Well, Facebook is moving forward:
- 500 million plus users
- A walled garden approach to members, ads, and those who want to reach the Facebookers
- Buzz
- An open platform that is pretty much a slap at Google’s new definition of Android which uses the word “open” to mean “not so fast, muchachas.”
- Users who stick within Facebook for hours at a stretch.
I could go on, but that is not necessary. What we have is a new type of management method. Reward those who may be inherently unhappy at a social function to be social. Okay. Makes sense but as a nerd, I am going back to the office tonight. I am not going to a neighborhood function. Forget the incentive. I like working alone with my gizmos.
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2011
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Google and Its New Management Method: Employee Attrition
April 6, 2011
Years ago the interesting White House advisor made a remark about how to get employees’ hearts and minds to align. The method did not use money. Money, according to silly management chestnuts, does not by itself work. I read Google Said To Have High Level Mole At Twitter, Makes Massive Counteroffers To Retain Employees with interest. I thought, “Ah, the new management approach at Google is to pay employees to stay at work, to be loyal.” What does a 66 year old in Harrod’s Creek know? Not much.
Here’s the passage in the write up, which I liked, that caught my attention:
There’s lots to say about the statement Google is making with these counteroffers. “Don’t mess with us,” comes to mind. As well as “If you’re a Google employee and you aren’t out interviewing at Facebook, Twitter or Zynga you are a moron.” Regardless, the fact that large fortunes are being handed out to mid level technical managers is somewhat of a red flag in general. That kind of money is usually reserved for founders of companies that make it to IPO. Actually, most IPO founders make substantially less than that. What’s more fascinating is this. In at least one of the cases Google is said to have made a counteroffer before the employee even told Google they were considering an offer from Twitter.
The question is, “Why are employees leaving?” Money does not solve such challenges as those outlined by that silly old goose Peter Drucker. Don’t believe me? No problem. Throwing money at a problem is a symptom found in various government agencies, and we know how well that works.
Stephen E Arnold, April 6, 2011
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Google: Back to the Engineers
April 6, 2011
Can Google recapture the zip it had from 2002 to 2006? That’s a question of some interest to institutional investors and anyone without an engineering, technology, or computer science background at Google. With engineers ascendant under the stewardship of Larry Page, the art history and social studies types with MBAs may be shaking in their sneakers.
I read “Google’s Page Begins Major Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers in Charge.” Here in Harrod’s Creek, the fray is far away. We certainly don’t disagree with the Digital Daily’s write up. In fact, we found this one sentence as pregnant as a female Canadian goose overnighting on our pond:
Reimagined like this, Google would become an ambidextrous organization with more powerful unit line execs, mostly engineers, doing what needs to be done to succeed, less burdened by the need to vet every little effort through various managers of Google’s powerful operating committee.
Which of these four horse people of the Google-geddon is Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft? I see the hooded horseperson as Jeff Bezos. Your thoughts on the other three?
Is this an echo of Microsoft? It does not strike me as a return to the Google of yore. Three reasons:
- Google has more legal hassles than a Web search company deserves. These legal eagles may be as annoying as flies in Canberra in November, but the legal stakes are sufficiently high with notions of anti trust and monopoly floating around to distract even the most focused engineer. In the 2002 to 2006 period, the Google had few legal eagles messing up the day.
- Google is big. In fact, Google is sufficiently big that it has difficulty hiring the “A team” people that formed the foundation of Google 2011. The problem with adding C players to the A team is that one gets such stuff as Wave and Buzz and such non stuff as a response to Facebook or to Amazon. Big means slow and friction. Will Google fire lots of people to become agile? Nope. Will Google become agile? Nope, just more controlled or semi controlled chaos I opine.
- Google has some really serious competitors. In 1998, there was no competition in search. In 2002 to 2006, potential competitors were floundering. Now there are some formidable competitors with smart people. Facebook has a dose of Googlers which makes the Google Facebook duel particularly interesting. But one must add Apple to the line up of outfits who are doing well and without significant Google push back. What’s Google going to do? Ignore Amazon, Apple, and Facebook to name three tough customers? Now Google has to deal with a Microsoft largely indifferent to irony. Microsoft is pushing Google’s strong market position as an alleged monopoly. Chuckle.
Bottom line: great write up, interesting reorganization initiative, just too late to do much more than wave hands at some of these four horse people of the Google-geddon. Today’s competitors are different from the clumsy Hewlett Packard and its stewardship of AltaVista.com engineers and technology, the silly Yahoo, and the clueless portal pursuers. Today’s competitors are serious dudes and dudettes.
Stephen E Arnold, April 6, 2011
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Quote to Note: One Googler about the Top Googler
April 4, 2011
Quote to note: I don’t have much to add to this wonderful quote, allegedly by Dave Girouard, Google’s big dog in the enterprise sector. I will have one, tiny, possibly irrelevant question though. Like a bunny navigate to “Google’s Page Presages Bolder Era; Some Uneasy.” Time is of the essence because giant media – medical investigation companies can remove content quicker than I can say hip hop. Here’s the quote:
“I always say to my team, you can never outflank Larry,” Dave Girouard, head of Google’s enterprise business, told Reuters shortly after the announcement of the CEO change. “As much as you think you’re going to go in and blow him away with something cool, he’s going to say: ‘Well, why are you just doing it for three-quarters of the world?'”
Great insight and okay PR.
Now the question, “Is the other 25 percent the China market Google has blown off?”
Stephen E Arnold, April 4, 2011
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New Google CEO Page Searching for the Past
April 3, 2011
The chords to “Back in Time” by Huey Lewis and the News from Back to the Future played through my head while reading “Page Can’t Turn the Clock Back at Google.” Unlike the time-traveling hero Marty McFly, newly appointed Google CEO Larry Page can’t go back to the old days of Google. Page started Google with Sergey Brin when he was a graduate student at Stanford University.
When Page founded the company it was an exciting, new venture that comes with the glee of youth. Google, with its revolutionary ideas, was the antithesis of corporate conformity in its natal days, but now the “Google Way” is the new business model that everyone follows. Page wants to reinvigorate the company by capturing that “old magic” and creative energy, but the likelihood is zero to null. The write up asserted:
What’s more, a company as rich as Google can get a little lazy on the intellectual front. Why invent something when you can buy it? And the more companies you purchase, the more cultures and technologies you have to shoe-horn into the environment. Lacy believes Google has to bring innovation back in-house when possible.
Despite the Google’s expanded waistline, he’s encouraging managers to e-mail him (60 words or less) updates about projects. Page will try to reclaim the small business atmosphere in large, global company. He will never be able to go back in time, however.
Whitney Grace, April 2, 2011
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