Sorry Mark, But It’s Really “The Year of the Suck”

According to Time, Mark Zuckerberg is the Person of the Year.  Why not?  Facebook looks like it going to take over the earth.  The guy’s not even out of his twenties and there has been a Golden Globe nominated major motion picture made about him. It seems like everything Facebook touches right now succeeds. 

But I think that Time missed the boat, because I don’t think that this should be the Year of the Zuck, but because I think this should be the Year of the Suck.  As in Executives that are clearly making bad choices that are costing employees their jobs and still raking in the cash like it’s 1999.

And we have a nice group of them, starting off with the former head of HP, Mark Hurd, who made HP employees pine for the halcyon days of Carly Fiorina.  That takes talent.  Firing him over fudging his expense reports in connection with some shady hanky-panky with a former marketing contractor seemed cheap in some respects, but don’t cry for Marky Mark.  After all, HP’s board then gave him a severance package of forty to fifty million to make sure he wouldn’t sue them.  Then he turned around and was hired by Larry Ellison.  A classic example of failing upward.

Next on the list is Steve Ballmer.  Starts off the year touting tablets at CES.  What’s he doing this upcoming January?  Touting tablets at CES.  How many tablets have been released running Windows this past year?  Right.  It brings to mind the line about how  insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.   While Apple has taken the money and run, Steve cancelled development on Courier,  the one tablet concept that was different enough to have taken on the other Steve’s  iPad and won.  In the mean time, Microsoft released the Kin, a “smartphone” that was neither all that smart nor much of a phone.  Someone had the good sense to kill it about a month later.  Windows Phone 7 was then released, to a great yawning of the general public.  Not because it wasn’t good – it really is.  The fact is that somewhere along the line, Ballmer and company decided that bold was something that someone else did.  Which is one probable reason why Ray Ozzie finally said “forget this” and left. Right now Microsoft needs boldness.  But instead, Baldo gives it safe bureaucracy.  But hey, why should he care?  He’s getting paid a king’s ransom.

And where would the year be without Carol Bartz?  Laying off five percent of your staff a week before Christmas only epitomizes the tin ear that she has brought to Yahoo.  This only drives home the question “Why did Microsoft think it was a good deal to buy Yahoo in the first place?”  I mean, Jerry Yang was pretty bad, but Carol “the Swear Engine” Bartz seems to be bound and determined to make sure the next group that wants to lay down some coin for Yahoo will be getting it at fire sale prices.  As has been pointed out, Yahoo is sitting on what could easily be their salvation – Flickr – and yet Yahoo is acting as if it is a red headed step-child.  All this, and she’s getting paid 47.2 million this year.  Nice work, if you can get it.

And that’s only three.  When you throw in bank CEO’s that drove the world economy into a ditch, yet still feel they are deserving of muti-million dollar bonuses, “just because”, you really start to wonder.  Kudos to Mark and all the other corporate leaders that are successful in these times; it takes a lot.  But given these times, the spotlight should really have fallen on those who have made it that much worse.  And when I say “Having the spotlight fall on them”, I mean that.  Literally. 

At HP, The Other Shoe Finally Drops

HP CEO, Mark Hurd, suddenly resigned this past week over a couple of cases of “CEOs gone Wild”.  First, was a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a B-Movie actress, and second were allegations of fraudulent expense accounting.  Oracle chief Larry Ellison came out and said the ousting of Hurd was a stupid move.  And in some ways, Ellison was correct.  After all, Hurd had helmed HP quite handily, as the New York Times can attest:

Its 2009 revenue was $115 billion, up from $80 billion when he took over. Four years ago, H.P. even leapt past mighty I.B.M. in revenue, making it the country’s biggest technology company. Its average annual 18 percent profit increases were remarkable given the company’s mammoth size. And the stock price more than doubled on Mr. Hurd’s watch.

Which makes you wonder if these causes were more along the lines of leaving to “spend more time with the family”.   Apparently the real reasons for the ousting were more than just sex and money.

The first shot of reality was fired by Henry Blodget after Hurd stepped down.  In a column titled ‘Actually, Mark Hurd "Was A Thug"’, Blodget publicized a take on the matter from Chuck House, the director of Stanford University’s Industry Affiliate research program on media and technology:

This guy was a thug, nicknamed Mark Turd by ex-HPites who worked directly for him — stories that have circulated in the Valley for three years. He raped HP employees (figuratively, without violating the sexual conduct code at HP) by eliminating the sixty-five year concept of profit sharing, preferring to move to obscene bonuses for himself and his five top minions — a mere $113 million payout for them in a year he chopped everyone else’s pay by 5% plus profit-sharing. These were raises for some of the five people by as much as 400% — a tidy uptick.

That, as they say, was just the beginning.  Today, Joe Nocera at the New York Times published what some are calling the real reasons behind Hurd’s demise.  The story takes what House claimed and expanded it, to include the cowardice of the HP board for not standing up over real  reasons and ginning up a sex scandal to cover their lack of action when they needed to act.  Venture Beat’s Dean Takahashi finally nails the real reason why Hurd had to go:

Rather, by cutting R&D from 9 percent of sales to 2 percent of sales, Hurd handicapped those employees. That was why, one observer quoted in the story said, HP didn’t have an answer ready as Apple launched both the iPhone and iPad. This argument — that Hurd didn’t do enough to make HP innovative as he sought short-term profits — rings true.

But in some ways, the board’s cowardice is based on HP’s apparent success.  After all, even though Hurd had given himself a pay increase on steroids, the fact was, under his direction, all of the outside indicators for HP were moving up, up, up.  Face it, Wall Street loved the man everyone else in the company loved to hate.  Fire him for that, and you effectively sink your stock price.  Never mind that the long term health of HP was being thrown into jeopardy-Wall Street only looks at the now.  If something happens to HP, well, there’s another company in the wings ready to buy them out.  Traders don’t care.  It’s the Wall Street way.  So to forestall a meltdown you whip up a sex scandal.  Classy. 

What is amazing is that now Carly Fiorina’s missteps are now being looked at in a more beneficial light.  When members are looking at that rancorous time and saying “You know, it really wasn’t that bad”, it really makes you wonder. 

WordPress Tags: Business, HP, Wall Street

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This Week on “Young Lawyers In Love”

In this week’s Episode of “Young Lawyers in Love”, Steve was convincing Viacom that even though the judge correctly summarily dismissed its billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube, that it should appeal.  What he neglected to tell them was that he needed the extensive billable hours of such a case to take care of a “personal problem”.

Marie was meeting with Larry Ellison, fresh off of sending a raucously nasty letter to a Fortune magazine writer.  Ellison (played by Larry Ellison himself) was ready to sue Google for copyright and patent infringement.   As Larry sits back with a glass of wine on his yacht, Marie asks him point blank when he will finally stop playing these cat and mouse games and take over the world.  “In good time, ” Larry responds with a throaty, evil laugh.

Meanwhile, Mark’s world was crashing around him.  Hit by a sexual harassment lawsuit, it comes to the Board of  Director’s attention that he had falsified expense account information.  He turns in his resignation just as the fifty million dollar severance check clears his bank account.

And finally in the comic relief department, Gregory gets to cross examine 4Chan founder Moot in the case of the Palin e-mail account hack, where the 4Chan founder is asked to describe such matters as “Rick-Rolling”, “newfags” , “lurkers” and “b-tards”.  Hilarity ensues.

In next week’s episode of “Young Lawyers In Love”, Constance turns to Steve and says,

“You owe a lot of money…to a lot of people…for a lot of airports…”

Your local news is next.

WordPress Tags: Google, YouTube, Viacom, Oracle, HP

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The More You Know (And Shooting Star…)

Oh, the things you learn on a given day!

AT&T is phasing out all-you-can-eat plans in favored of metered access. Which should you get?  Answer: The plan from another company.

According to the Business Insider, of course Apple is going to do search.  The only difference is that Steve will tell you what you need to search for.

HP CEO Mark Hurd just told investors at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch tech conference that his company "didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business.”  Of course they didn’t.  They bought it for the patents.  Phones come and go – patents are forevah.  I would have been upset if he had said that they bought Palm because the Pre is one bitchin’ phone, dude. 

Dell will be offering the Streak to US customers direct from its website — unlocked — starting next month for $500.  And they say delusion is dead.

It is unknown if Jay Yarrow had a stroke, drank too much the night before is is simply playing the world at the moment, but his write-up on Asus’ EeePad has to be either one of the shoddiest pieces of journalism I have ever seen, or else the best imitation of a 13 year old Apple fanboy review of a competitor’s product.  

“…your friends will laugh at you if you buy an asus eee pad.  And if you are a parent and you buy your son or daughter an Eee Pad, your kid will be sad.” 

Professional journalism right here folks.  Read it and weep.

And finally, come to find out, magazines want to charge more for an iPad susbscription.  “Readers won’t see it that way, but they’ll need to adjust their expectations”, said Andrew Degenholtz, president at ValueMags, a magazine-subscription marketer.  Well, if the level of quality is that of  Jay Yarrow, I’ll quote Samuel Goldwyn.

“Include me out”.

WordPress Tags: HP, AT&T, Dell, Asus, Applestan

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The Week That Was-Bummed Out Edition

Many things happened this week and not all of them were good.  For starters, Microsoft first confirmed, then canned Courier.  The only pad-based form that I really wanted is gone.  Granted, there were a lot of things that could go wrong as it moved from concept to actual product. But there was quite a bit of buzz behind it, so maybe there will be some lessons learned.  Perhaps something like it in the next five years or so.  It is still an avenue worth looking at.

The only semi-bright spot was HP’s buying of Palm, which the Business Insider’s Blodget and Frommer concluded was a failure before the ink had dried.  The deal is interesting, as it puts HP right into the middle of the Smartphone/tablet wars.  They then cancelled a slate project that they had with Microsoft.  One can only think that they are going to place the Palm WebOS int he slate and go from there.  No Windows payments and all money goes to HP. Smart move.  There is only one thing: the slate format has been out there for a number of years.  It isn’t as if Apple suddenly came up with something brand new.   So why the uber-hype?  Oh yeah, Steve worked an i-Tunes deal with the paper press, and suddenly this is the second coming.  But it won’t have Flash.

Speaking of which, Steve and Flash are at it again.  Upon the release of the 3G iPad, Steve published a paper which I call “Ten Things I Hate About You”. To which Flash replied “Oh Yeah, well suck on it.”  I swear, the two remind me of a couple of high schoolers in desperate need of a time out.  Apparently this is a big deal to those who don’t realize that there are millions of devices out there that render Flash just fine, thank you.  But Flash is becoming more irrelevant every day.  The fact that Microsoft itself backed HTML 5 is not something the Flash backers want to hear.  Prediction: Flash will become like Geocities within three years.

The only truly entertaining side from the week came from Yahoo CEO and swear-word generator, Carol Bartz. In an interview with TechCrunch EU editor Mike Butcher, Bartz bounced around the idea that Google was a one trick pony and that Facebook really isn’t anything special.  She completely lost the point that both companies have grown faster than Yahoo!, which is exactly the point I would expect a CEO to sort of latch onto. 

The only thing really left was knowing that the FTC is keeping an eye on bloggers.  While nothing really happened between the FTC and Ann Taylor, it did give some insights as to what the FTC is looking for.  For the uninformed, the retailer had invited bloggers to preview the Loft division’s summer 2010 collection, offering a "special gift," and promising that those posting coverage from the event would be entered into a "mystery gift-card drawing," where they could win between $50 and $500.  The invite explained that bloggers must submit posts to the company within 24 hours in order to find out the value of their gift card. 

"This tells me that the FTC is looking, and that’s important to know," said Douglas Wood, an attorney and head of Reed Smith’s Media and Entertainment Industry Group. "They’re probably throwing a little fire-starter into it, sending some messages out. The message this time is somewhere between $50 and $500 requires a disclosure."

So for full disclosure, I am not affiliated with anyone or any group.  The only thing anyone gives me lately is grief.  Now, if you want to, let me know and I’ll be happy to disclose you on this blog.  Small gifts greater than $25 would be appreciated and so noted.  After all, if I’m going to be a media whore, I might as well disclose the price list. 

WordPress Tags: The Week That Was, Microsoft, Applestan, Flash, Palm, HP, Carol Bartz, FTC, media whores

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I Guess They Had A Coupon

So, Palm puts itself up for sale and the buyer is – HP (?).  Yes, dull, boring, stable, sitting on a pile of cash with nothing to buy HP plunked down $5.70 per share of Palm common stock, for a total value of about $1.2 billion.  Color me surprised.  I figured Lenovo would make the move.  But there are reasons why this happened.  The first is really a no brainer.  A leading technology company like HP with almost zero mobile phone presence and $13.5 billion in cash, picking up a company with a fully developed mobile operating system, a decent lineup of devices, and trove of mobile patents is a bargain. The second reason: Todd Bradley, Executive Vice President, Personal Systems Group played the role of CEO at Palm, so I’m sure that there are some things he knows the general public does not.

So what exactly does HP get for a billion and change?  A mobile operating system, pure and simple.  One that works and can be used on more than just phones. One that is currently out there and working.  HP was not ready to talk about possible time lines as to when a WebOS slate or WebOS Netbook would be available, but said it planned to increase the $190 million Palm was spending annually on research and development.  The move makes them less dependent on Microsoft and Google for an OS. HP has long been saying it will use software to differentiate its products. Now it actually can. Owning and controlling its own OS has many benefits, starting with being able to dictate who can make applications, when the product is updated, and ensuring that the hardware and software work together as seamlessly as possible. In short, they just bought what Apple has had all these years.  The fact they also picked up over fifteen hundred patents gives the steak the sizzle.  It also provides a better shield against possible lawsuits from Apple or Microsoft. 

What’s the downside?  Google, Apple, Microsoft RIM and Nokia. HP has decided to become a mobile platform vendor.  While the field is still pretty wide open, the fact is, HP has a long row to hoe.  Just ask the company HP just bought.  While the WebOS is certainly good, the fact is it doesn’t matter if you have the best operating system if no one want to buy your platform.  But with HP comes scale.  The ability, (in theory anyway), to put WebOS on a ton of devices…enough devices the solve Palm’s chicken & egg problem; if there are a lot of devices running WebOS, then developers will develop for it, which will make the platform more useful to users.  It can work.  After all, you don’t have 13.5 Billion laying around because you don’t know how things work.  Sometimes being safe and boring is an advantage.

How does this eventually go down?  Time will tell.  I am interested to see if they can pull this off. 

WordPress Tags: Business, HP, Palm, bargain basement

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