AllThingsD » Bill Gates http://allthingsd.com Sat, 26 May 2012 02:18:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://allthingsd.com/theme/images/logo-rss.jpg All Things Digital http://allthingsd.com/ 144 22 At 28, Few Tech Titans Could Hold a Candle to Zuck http://allthingsd.com/20120514/at-28-few-tech-titans-could-hold-a-candle-to-zuck/ http://allthingsd.com/20120514/at-28-few-tech-titans-could-hold-a-candle-to-zuck/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 22:55:25 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=207748 It’s a big week for Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook, his baby of the past eight years, is expected to go public on Friday morning. He’s just coming off a cross-country road show speaking to investment banks hungry to scoop up shares of Facebook stock.

And on top of it all, it’s May 14 — Mark’s 28th birthday.

Aside from the intense scrutiny of the company by the tech and financial press leading up to the IPO, Zuckerberg is doing all right. Especially when stacked up against some of the biggest names in tech that came before him.

Consider Steve Jobs. He was zooming along just fine in his twenties. Until, that is, in his 28th year he recruited the man who would eventually become his — and Apple’s — undoing (temporarily, of course). That man was John Sculley, then CEO President of Pepsi-Cola, who traded the position to be the CEO of Apple Computer after intense courting from Jobs. Of course, Sculley would eventually play a part in Jobs’s ouster from Apple; Sculley would also oversee the company in what proved to be the darkest years in its 36-year history. Jobs was also in the process of launching the Lisa when he was 28, one of the biggest commercial computer hardware failures the company has ever released. In other words, 28 wasn’t the greatest year of Jobs’s career.

Amazon luminary Jeff Bezos’s best years were yet to come. At 28, he was still at his hedge fund gig, where he first saw the opportunity in the fast-growing Internet use around the country. Two years later, he would go off on his own to start Amazon.

Bill Gates, on one hand, had founded Microsoft in 1976 — then known as “Micro-Soft,” begun in a small Albuquerque office in partnership with Paul Allen — at the ripe age of 20. It’s the same age Zuck was when he officially founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. At 28, Gates was certainly upwardly mobile — the year before his 28th saw him begin to license MS-DOS — though his best years were yet to come: In two years, Gates would launch the first retail version of the Windows operating system.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still three years off from Google’s IPO when they turned 28 (Page in March of 2001, Brin in August). It was that year in which the two — who had run Google since they co-founded it in 1998 — decided to turn the reins over to Eric Schmidt, a learned executive well versed in leading technology companies. Unlike Zuckerberg, who retains full control over Facebook with his majority of voting rights, Page and Brin let a seasoned Valley veteran guide Google through its early days.

In all, it seems Zuck is doing just fine. Still two years off from the big 30, he’s number 35 on Forbes’ Billionaires List with an estimated net worth of $17.5 billion. Better still, he’s got a longtime live-in girlfriend and an adorable floor mop of a dog, “Beast.”

Happy birthday, Mr. Zuckerberg. And enjoy a quiet moment of reflection while you can; Friday isn’t too far off.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120514/at-28-few-tech-titans-could-hold-a-candle-to-zuck/feed/ 6 Yahoo's Board Will "Review" Resume Discrepancy of CEO http://allthingsd.com/20120503/yahoos-board-will-review-resume-discrepancy-of-ceo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120503/yahoos-board-will-review-resume-discrepancy-of-ceo/#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 02:28:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=203599

Yahoo just released a statement that its board will “review” today’s revelation that the bio of its CEO Scott Thompson contained an error related to his educational achievements and will make “appropriate disclosure” about what happened.

On both the Web site and in the regulatory filings of the Silicon Valley Internet giant, Thompson is described as having a degree in both computer science and accounting from Stonehill College.

He does not have a degree in computer science from the Boston-based school, but does have a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration (Accounting).

Yahoo said in full in its statement:

“In connection with the statement the company made earlier today about Scott Thompson, the Yahoo! board will be reviewing this matter, and upon completion of its review, will make an appropriate disclosure to shareholders.”

Earlier today, Yahoo first blamed the issue on an “inadvertent error” — but provided no further details — which sources said did not sit well with the board.

“Many members of the board are deeply concerned,” said one person with knowledge of its thinking. “This is a problem on a lot of levels, especially related to the trust of shareholders.”

Indeed, especially since the news came to light via activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point, who is agitating for board seats via a proxy fight.

Loeb’s efforts to impugn Thompson appear to have caused some level of damage, at least in terms of perception about the level of vetting that was done when the former president of eBay’s PayPal unit was hired earlier this year.

In fact, the error has been around for a half-dozen years, which begs the question of why Thompson never noticed it.

While his bio on filings made by eBay to the Securities and Exchange Commission were accurate, the one on the online commerce site’s Web site incorrectly said he had a computer science degree.

It is not known who introduced the error there.

But the inaccuracy moved inexplicably to both Yahoo’s corporate Web site and also its SEC filings, and the company declined to provide any details earlier today as to how that happened.

It’s not clear what happens next, or if there are any legal implications, beyond a needed correction by Yahoo with the SEC — which already took the entire line about Thompson’s education off his Web bio today.

As I wrote earlier today:

Thompson himself is probably not at risk unless it can be definitely proved he was the one who misrepresented having the degree in the first place. He can simply say he had no idea who added it to the eBay Web site and that he did not notice it there on the Yahoo Web site and SEC filings.

While that makes him look careless, how big a deal it becomes with shareholders, as well as Yahoo employees, is also an unknown. While a computer science degree is not a requirement for a CEO of a tech company — both Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates dropped out of college and did pretty well in computer science anyway — tech resume padding, even inadvertent, is not a characteristic that is going endear Thompson to anyone.

The controversy could not have come at a worse time — Thompson was actually in meetings all day yesterday and today with senior staff, following recent layoffs of 2,000 and a massive restructuring, to discuss plans for moving the long-troubled company forward.

And besides the proxy fight, he is also dealing with selling off Yahoo’s Asian assets, renegotiating a new search deal with Microsoft, and also trying to figure out what parts of Yahoo to keep and what parts to jettison to improve its prospects.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120503/yahoos-board-will-review-resume-discrepancy-of-ceo/feed/ 0 How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO's Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo's Not Saying. http://allthingsd.com/20120503/how-did-phantom-cs-degree-get-on-ceos-bio-in-sec-filings-yahoos-not-saying/ http://allthingsd.com/20120503/how-did-phantom-cs-degree-get-on-ceos-bio-in-sec-filings-yahoos-not-saying/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 23:08:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=203523

Back in early 2008 when Scott Thompson got the job as president of eBay’s PayPal, the regulatory filing accurately listed his educational pedigree:

“Mr. Thompson holds a B.S. degree in Accounting from Stonehill College.”

The eBay filings over the next several years — until he left the online commerce giant for a much bigger job as CEO of Yahoo in January of this year — remained consistent.

But, curiously, Thompson’s bio on eBay’s Web site added an additional degree to his curriculum vitae for more than a half-dozen years, different from its Securities and Exchange Commission documents:

“Scott received a bachelor’s in accounting and computer science from Stonehill College.”

As it turned out, according to the Boston-area school, he had not gotten a computer science degree at all and graduated with the Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration (Accounting).

An eBay spokesman I called today had no explanation for the discrepancy, except to note that its legal filings were correct and that it was an error due to the lack of cross-checking the Web bio, which was apparently posted by Thompson’s staff at the time.

Also without explanation — and perhaps more seriously — is that the false computer science degree claim somehow then made it into Yahoo’s SEC filings, as well as his Web site bio, when Thompson took the helm. (The inaccurate line about his schooling is in its latest filing and all others.)

Without providing further explanation of how it got there, Yahoo today called the mistake an “inadvertent error” and said it had no bearing on his ability to lead the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

But the long troubled company might be speaking too soon, given that the revelation was uncovered this morning by activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point. Loeb has called into question the vetting process that Yahoo’s directors did to hire Thompson, as part of a proxy fight he is waging to gain several board seats.

And, while such an allegation is normal for an increasingly nasty battle, Loeb has hit his mark with deadly accuracy this time, putting into question both Thompson’s credibility and Yahoo’s obvious botching in its vetting of him.

“If there is a good explanation for the apparent discrepancies regarding the academic records of Mr. Thompson and Ms. Hart, we are confident that it will be provided promptly,” wrote Loeb in a letter to Yahoo’s board today. “However, in the event that there is no good explanation, we expect the Board to take immediate action.”

The Ms. Hart that Loeb was referring to is Patti Hart, the board member who ran Yahoo’s process for hiring a new CEO after it fired Carol Bartz — who does have a CS degree — last year. (In his letter today, Loeb also correctly called into question how she portrayed her own college degree in a more impressive fashion than was accurate.)

The search for a new Yahoo CEO was conducted by headhunter Heidrick & Struggles, which did not have Thompson on its list of candidates, since it had placed him at eBay many years before.

In fact, according to numerous sources, without involvement by Heidrick, it was Thompson who cold-emailed key Yahoo board members, nominating himself for the CEO job. He was quickly brought in for interviews and, presumably, a thorough vetting.

Despite that and despite the fact that eBay’s SEC filings did not list a computer science degree, Hart or others seem to have totally missed the discrepancies and it was added to Thompson’s official Yahoo bio and legal filings.

It’s not clear what happens next or if there are any legal implications, beyond a needed correction by Yahoo with the SEC — which already took the entire line about Thompson’s education off his Web bio today.

Yahoo’s not talking either, with its spokesperson declining to provide any explanation for its lapse or who had maintained that Thompson had that degree when he did not.

It’s essentially a mistakes-were-made-let’s-move-on defense.

I think not, for my part, and a number of prominent Silicon Valley people I spoke to today agreed that these issues tend to spin out of control.

“This is going to get very messy, very quickly,” said one person in a common sentiment I heard.

Maybe, and it’s not clear if the company has to release any details of how this occurred or if its board needs to investigate the situation.

In addition, Thompson himself is probably not at risk unless it can be definitely proved he was the one who misrepresented having the degree in the first place. He can simply say he had no idea who added it to the eBay Web site and that he did not notice it there on on the Yahoo Web site and SEC filings.

While that makes him look careless, how big a deal it becomes with shareholders, as well as Yahoo employees, is also an unknown. While a computer science degree is not a requirement for a CEO of a tech company — both Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates dropped out of college and did pretty well in computer science anyway — tech resume padding, even inadvertent, is not a characteristic that is going endear Thompson to anyone.

Plus, it just handed Loeb a very potent weapon in his fight against Yahoo, the very day after the company said the hedge fund manager’s expertise was not “relevant” to gaining a board seat.

One thing’s for sure: Loeb is most certainly very good at vetting.

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120503/how-did-phantom-cs-degree-get-on-ceos-bio-in-sec-filings-yahoos-not-saying/feed/ 0 Activision CEO Hirshberg Says His Call of Duty Is to Take Creative Risks http://allthingsd.com/20120210/activisions-hirshberg-says-as-ceo-his-call-of-duty-is-to-take-creative-risks/ http://allthingsd.com/20120210/activisions-hirshberg-says-as-ceo-his-call-of-duty-is-to-take-creative-risks/#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:11:40 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=173600 Activision Publishing’s CEO Eric Hirshberg said as the maker of the most successful first-person shooter, Call of Duty, it was a risk bringing a children’s game to market.

But he said Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, which attempts to bring physical toys to life through videogames, has been worth it.

“It was scary,” he said. “But if you truly have a breakthrough idea, then you have to have the confidence to treat it as one because they don’t come around very often.”

To be sure, the game was a major deviation from the company’s war-based roots.

It melds physical toys with videogames by using a “portal,” which is plugged into the game console. Once a Skylanders toy is placed on the portal, the character transports into the game and comes to life on the screen.

In 2011, the game was the tenth-best seller after launching in October, and was the only title to make the list that wasn’t a sequel. Additionally, it was the only kids game.

Hirshberg appeared this morning as the keynote speaker at DICE, an annual videogame summit held in Las Vegas.

His speech, titled “The Eric Hirshberg Experiment,” addressed how he has a nontraditional background as a CEO, but that Activision Blizzard’s CEO Bobby Kotick saw the usefulness of his creative background. Rather than being a trained operations or finance manager, Hirshberg is a marketing type who is more likely found drawing and bringing a sketch pad to meetings.

“There are other creative CEOs, but they generally founded the companies, like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs,” he said. “But if creativity is at the core of your business, maybe it should be at the core of how they make decisions.”

Skylanders is just one case in point.

To make it the best experience possible, Hirshberg said they delayed the game’s launch by a year and spent the time getting the toys right, so they could compete side by side with characters developed by Pixar or Disney.

They also spent time making sure the game could work across platforms, so kids could play it at any of their friends’ houses regardless if they had a PC, Xbox, Sony PlayStation or Nintendo Wii.

As a result, every decision resulted in taking on more risk and spending more money.

Last night, Skylanders was voted as the most outstanding innovation in gaming as part of the 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, which are decided on by members of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.

“We knew a lot of things had to go right — the core to that was bringing the toys to life. We knew that was magical, and if we got it right, it would have huge potential,” Hirshberg said. “We had the whole package. We had a great game and a great story and then pushed with all of our might with a big marketing plan.”

Yesterday, Activision reported fourth-quarter results, reporting well above its internal guidance and Wall Street analyst expectations, driven by extremely strong sales of Call of Duty, but also strong sales of Skylanders as well as, plus stable subscriber figures of its online game, World of Warcraft.

Additionally, the NPD Group said yesterday that the Skylanders toys were a top-selling accessory in January. It said that the toys were the highest-ranking item last month, and that collectively, Skylanders accessories represented 22 percent of all accessory sales.

For sure, Hirshberg has early successes to point to, but the experiment is ongoing.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120210/activisions-hirshberg-says-as-ceo-his-call-of-duty-is-to-take-creative-risks/feed/ 0 Making Sure the Next Zuckerberg or Gates Stays Put at Harvard http://allthingsd.com/20120127/making-sure-the-next-zuckerberg-or-gates-stays-put-at-harvard/ http://allthingsd.com/20120127/making-sure-the-next-zuckerberg-or-gates-stays-put-at-harvard/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:40:11 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=168409

Earlier today, Harvard University and New Enterprise Associates announced the Experiment Fund, aimed at making sure that future Mark Zuckerbergs and Bill Gates can stay on campus and innovate without having to head West.

The irony of the pair of legendary entrepreneurs dropping out — decades apart — of the even more legendary university to start two of tech most significant companies, Facebook and Microsoft.

No longer, apparently.

The early-stage incubator, which will award funding to four to six start-ups in amounts from $250,000 to $500,000. It will focus on seed ventures in the Cambridge, Mass. area around Harvard, which includes many other schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Experiment Fund came from an idea born Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which involved NEA. Today, SEAS Dean Cherry Murray hosted an event that unveiled the initiative.

But, while faculty members will advise for the fund, Harvard has no financial stake.

In an interview NEA’s Patrick Chung said the intent was to enable talented students to “build a company here in Boston rather than have to go elsewhere.”

NEA will have full-time staffers working on the fund, investing in a wide range of companies. It has already backed a health app company, as well as a live Internet television offering.

“There has been an envy of the left coast, certainly,” said Chung. “Now, these talented engineers don’t have to leave when they reach the boundaries of the university where the ideas are formed.”

Added Chung: “They can walk right out of class and into a place that can make those start-ups real.”

In other words, let’s hope the third time’s a charm.

Here’s the map of exactly where the Experiment Fund is and official press release:

XFund press release

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120127/making-sure-the-next-zuckerberg-or-gates-stays-put-at-harvard/feed/ 0 Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote http://allthingsd.com/20120109/microsoft-phoning-in-its-last-keynote/ http://allthingsd.com/20120109/microsoft-phoning-in-its-last-keynote/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:30:25 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=161282 Well, maybe it is a good thing that Microsoft plans to make this Consumer Electronics Show keynote its last.

The company isn’t making much news during Steve Ballmer’s speech, which is due to start any minute now.

Arguably the biggest news is already out — the company’s phone announcements with Nokia and AT&T.

Ballmer is also expected to toss out some numbers showing how well it is doing with Xbox console and the Kinect add-on that allows one to play games without a controller.

Beyond that, Microsoft will show a demo of Windows 8, but there probably won’t be much new from what the company showed developers last fall at its Build conference. A beta version of the operating system is due next month; though, again, Microsoft had already said that.

But I can’t help but think that this need not have been Microsoft’s Vegas fate.

I’m not saying that Steve Ballmer could have been the next Rita Rudner or Wayne Newton. But, surely there is enough interesting stuff things on in Redmond to put on one good show a year.

They could pull some of the amazing stuff cooking in their labs, preview some games and show a bit of where Windows is headed.

But, alas, they haven’t done that for many years. Bill Gates used to do that. Sure, not everything he predicted was a hit (think stylus-based tablets, smart watches and Internet appliances). But at least there was something new.

That said, Microsoft is promising that this year’s show should at least be entertaining. If you want to follow along, check out AllThingsD’s innovative live blog, which combines the Ballmer-note with the ongoing BCS championship football game. Hopefully, at least one will keep you entertained. (Or at least that we do, even if the on-field heroics are less than memorable.)

MORE CES NEWS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120109/microsoft-phoning-in-its-last-keynote/feed/ 0 Sorry, Folks, Bill Gates Is Not Coming Back to Microsoft http://allthingsd.com/20111208/sorry-folks-bill-gates-is-not-coming-back-to-microsoft/ http://allthingsd.com/20111208/sorry-folks-bill-gates-is-not-coming-back-to-microsoft/#comments Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:05:17 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=152036 While it is fun to play “what if” games, the fact is that Bill Gates is not planning a return to Microsoft, the software giant he founded with Paul Allen decades ago.

Folks are getting worked up about a Fortune magazine piece that speculates on what a Bill Gates comeback might look like and suggests the billionaire is pondering such a move.

But there’s no truth to that, according to Larry Cohen, Gates’s chief of staff, who I just chatted with by phone.

In fact, Gates does part-time work for Microsoft and has ever since stepping away from his day job there. But his full-time gig is as a philanthropist overseeing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111208/sorry-folks-bill-gates-is-not-coming-back-to-microsoft/feed/ 0 Roadshow: CEO Pincus Not Selling Shares in Upcoming Zynga IPO http://allthingsd.com/20111129/roadshow-ceo-pincus-not-selling-shares-in-zynga-ipo/ http://allthingsd.com/20111129/roadshow-ceo-pincus-not-selling-shares-in-zynga-ipo/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 06:01:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=148424

According to sources close to the situation, neither CEO Mark Pincus nor one of its principal venture shareholders, Kleiner Perkins, will be selling any shares in its upcoming initial public offering.

While big investors often divest stock in IPOs, not all do. It is a carefully watched number by investors, who are always wary of insiders who unload a lot of shares in an offering.

But such activity by the fast-growing San Francisco online gaming company will be watched carefully since Pincus has recently been painted in a number of press reports as the greedy Mr. Potter of Silicon Valley.

Among the allegations is that he runs a poisonously tough culture that tracks its employees’ output and performance via elaborate data models that require extraordinary amounts of work, along with nefarious list-making of who’s naughty and who’s not.

That big-brother behavior has reportedly included taking away high-ranking jobs and the sweet stock options that go along with them from those execs found wanting.

While there is no doubt Pincus is a hard-charging personality, his defenders note that it’s due to a belief that life at Zynga is a meritocracy and that his practices are not any more heavy-handed than those at other firms.

Indeed, Pincus has a lot of competition in the tough-guy tech CEO category from longtime legends such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who set the gold standard for mean, as well as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and now Google CEO Larry Page.

Pincus does not even rate in this pantheon, which is more typical of tech companies than anyone would care to admit or, to be fair, care to care about. With big benefits, vast wealth and much latitude, many in tech don’t mind the grueling work schedules.

After all, it’s not exactly ditch-digging, now is it?

In any case, sources said the coverage has hit Zynga staff hard, as well as Pincus, who has not responded due to the IPO’s quiet period. That’s in contrast to Groupon, the daily-deals site whose own rough process was rife with highly negative stories about the company’s prospects.

While those media accounts were more aimed at the business itself and less personal, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason vociferously defended the company in a controversial letter that was then leaked and published (to me and by me!).

Pincus will doubtlessly have a lot to say to investors who ask about the company’s culture and its possible negative impact on attrition, as some stories have charged.

His decision not to sell, sources said, was inspired by Zynga investor and close friend Reid Hoffman, who has sold very little of the stock of LinkedIn, where he serves as chairman.

The action all begins next week, according to multiple reports, when Zynga takes its show on the road in preparation for an IPO that is expected to value the company at $15 to $20 billion and will take place before the new year.

It will debut under the ZNGA ticker on the Nasdaq market.

While some have been worried about Zynga’s future growth, its past performance has been a lot stronger than other Internet offerings. In the first nine months of the year, the company posted $828.9 million in revenue, double the amount from a year ago, with net income of $30.7 million.

Pincus’s holding onto shares will be seen as a plus, of course, although he has sold a large amount of stock in Zynga’s history.

According to its S-1 filing:

“From our inception in October 2007 to date, Mr. Pincus, our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Product Officer and the Chairman of our Board of Directors, has purchased an aggregate of 149,197,328 shares of our common stock. To date, Mr. Pincus has sold an aggregate of 43,629,310 shares of our common stock at prices ranging from $0.42 to $13.96.”

Pincus now holds 91.4 million of Class B shares, 16 percent of the total, as well as 20.5 million of Class C shares, 38 percent of that group. Kleiner holds 65.2 million shares, or 11.2 percent, of Class B shares.

Other big Zynga owners, who might or might not sell at the IPO, include Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Venture Capital and Avalon Ventures.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111129/roadshow-ceo-pincus-not-selling-shares-in-zynga-ipo/feed/ 0 A Few Digital Complaints http://allthingsd.com/20111107/a-few-digital-complaints/ http://allthingsd.com/20111107/a-few-digital-complaints/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:59:36 +0000 Voices http://allthingsd.com/?p=141613

Someone screwed up how computers work, and I blame it on Bill Gates. I had one typewriter in 50 years. But I’ve bought seven computers in six years. I suppose that’s why Bill Gates is rich and Underwood is out of business.

— Andy Rooney

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111107/a-few-digital-complaints/feed/ 0 Tech Leaders Make Forbes' Most Powerful People List http://allthingsd.com/20111105/tech-leaders-make-forbes-most-powerful-people-list/ http://allthingsd.com/20111105/tech-leaders-make-forbes-most-powerful-people-list/#comments Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:21:36 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=140901 Forbes has compiled a list of the 70 most powerful individuals, and along with some of the world’s leading politicians and religious leaders, tech leaders made a strong showing.

The top four most powerful people are politicians, including Barack Obama in the top spot. At No. 5 is Bill Gates, who ranks high for his philanthropic role as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Some of the other tech leaders and their rankings:

5. Bill Gates, co-chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

9. Mark Zuckerberg, founder, Facebook.

30. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders, Google.

40. Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.

42. Robin Li, CEO, Baidu.

44. Li Ka-shing, chairman, Hutchinson Wampoa.

58. Tim Cook, CEO, Apple.

60. Masayoshi Son, CEO, Softbank.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111105/tech-leaders-make-forbes-most-powerful-people-list/feed/ 0 Tech Goes Viral: Frozen Blackberry, Facebook Official, Leaping Chairman (Videos) http://allthingsd.com/20111016/tech-goes-viral-frozen-blackberry-facebook-official-leaping-chairman-videos/ http://allthingsd.com/20111016/tech-goes-viral-frozen-blackberry-facebook-official-leaping-chairman-videos/#comments Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:04:35 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=132685 Sometimes the world of tech finds its way into viral videos. By that measure, it was a good week!

This hilarious, punny sketch about a frozen BlackBerry — from “The One Ronnie” — got a lot of play in light of this week’s BlackBerry outages.

The first single from a new boy band called Heart2Heart is about making a relationship “Facebook Official.” Their dramatic guyliner is almost as ridiculous as lyrics like “Status update, what/Checking the pics of your butt/Did you see that link on your wall/Girl I don’t wanna play FarmVille, I just wanna play for real.”

A nearly 20-year-old clip that surfaced this week shows off Bill Gates’s impressive ability to leap over an office chair from an (almost) standing position. Too bad his day job distracted him from his true potential!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111016/tech-goes-viral-frozen-blackberry-facebook-official-leaping-chairman-videos/feed/ 0 Now What?  The Post-Jobs Era in Tech. http://allthingsd.com/20111006/now-what-the-post-jobs-era-in-tech/ http://allthingsd.com/20111006/now-what-the-post-jobs-era-in-tech/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 13:17:29 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=129320

As Steve Jobs famously said to rival Bill Gates of Microsoft in a joint interview with Walt Mossberg and me in 2007, “You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.” And perhaps what is most amazing about Jobs was his longevity.

Not in life, of course, which was cut tragically short at 56 years, with his last years focused a lot on the cancer that would ultimately defeat him.

Actually, by longevity, I mean how the iconic entrepreneur continued, until the very end, to have an enormous impact over all of technology and especially in Silicon Valley.

It is easy to see that Jobs has been the single consistent tech tastemaker and true-north icon — even in the frantically changing, what’s-new-is-best atmosphere that too often prevails in the industry.

The list of tech and media arenas he changed via innovative thinking and, more importantly, action, is long — from graphics to design to touchscreens to smartphones to tablets to animation to ease of use to apps to quality to, well, you get the idea.

The hits seemed nonstop: The Macintosh. The iPod. And iTunes. The MacBook. The iPhone. The iPad.

And it is no stretch to say that even the brightest lights in tech and media always watched what he did and were influenced by him, reacted to him, changed because he changed.

In many ways, it was because Jobs never seemed to waver.

Let’s be clear, this is not an easy thing to do, to keep sailing on your own course, often against the prevailing winds, and not be swayed.

Perhaps that is the thing that Jobs most exemplified — a stubborn unwillingness to adjust who he was, maintaining an integrity of purpose and vision when others could not.

It is certainly what has made him — and by extension, Apple — so special. Of course, it is not that he was not difficult, capricious and cutting at times. But even that he owned.

So who and what does tech look to now for that kind of inspiration?

Certainly, at this moment, there is no one leader to fill Jobs’s outsized shoes.

The founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Quirky, curious, arrogant, but so, so prosaic.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg? Still forming, so awkward and not yet the leader he might become.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon? Certainly creative and bold, but utterly lacking in the moxie and style of Steve.

I could go on and not get to anyone even slightly close — there’s no one with the kind of charisma that makes it impossible to look away.

It’s called inspiration, a quality so lacking in all parts of this world, making it hard to imagine any replacement for Jobs.

And, in a way, why should we try to find one?

As Jobs himself said in his memorable “Stay hungry. Stay foolish” speech at Stanford University, right after he recovered from his first bout with cancer:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No reason at all. So, as we all wish Jobs could have done, let’s live on.

And so will Steve Jobs. As AllThingsD Web guru Adam Tow said about the innovative Siri voice control feature in the latest iPhone 4 — introduced earlier this week without Jobs being there to present — perhaps Siri stands for: Steve is right inside.

Yes, indeed. Because his DNA lives in all of Apple. And, of course, in Silicon Valley and in tech, forever and always.

But we move on, too, so here is a video I did yesterday with WSJ.com on what impact Jobs’s death may have on Apple and whether the company will remain an innovator and market leader:


[ See post to watch video ]

RELATED POSTS:

Steve Jobs Full Coverage »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111006/now-what-the-post-jobs-era-in-tech/feed/ 0 Tech and Media Titans Pay Tribute to Steve Jobs http://allthingsd.com/20111005/tech-titans-pay-tribute-to-steve-jobs/ http://allthingsd.com/20111005/tech-titans-pay-tribute-to-steve-jobs/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:08:24 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=129246 Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’s death today at the age of 56 has given many of his peers reason for pause. Here are their tributes.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin paid tribute to Jobs’s “passion for excellence,” while co-founder and CEO Larry Page said he appreciated Jobs’s advice past and present.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said in an emailed statement:

Today is very sad for all of us. Steve defined a generation of style and technology that’s unlikely to be matched again. Steve was so charismatically brilliant that he inspired people to do the impossible, and he will be remembered as the greatest computer innovator in history.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thanked Jobs for being “a mentor and a friend.”

Here’s his status message:

Pixar’s John Lasseter and Ed Catmull said:

Steve Jobs was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend and the guiding light of the Pixar family. He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of making computer animated films; the one thing he always said was to simply ‘make it great.’ He is why Pixar turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity and love of life has made us all better people. He will forever be a part of Pixar’s DNA. Our hearts go out to his wife Laurene and their children during this incredibly difficult time.

Here’s Disney CEO Bob Iger’s statement:

Steve Jobs was a great friend as well as a trusted advisor. His legacy will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed, and the culture he defined. Steve was such an “original,” with a thoroughly creative, imaginative mind that defined an era. Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started. With his passing the world has lost a rare original, Disney has lost a member of our family, and I have lost a great friend. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Laurene and his children during this difficult time.

In a tweet, AOL co-founder Steve Case called Jobs “the most innovative entrepreneur of our generation.”


I feel honored to have known Steve Jobs. He was the most innovative entrepreneur of our generation. His legacy will live on for the ages.
October 5, 2011 5:36 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite
@SteveCase
Steve Case

Bill Gates said: “I will miss Steve immensely.”

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo tweeted that Jobs had gone beyond raising the bar.


Once in a rare while, somebody comes along who doesnt just raise the bar, they create an entirely new standard of measurement. #RIPSteveJobs
October 5, 2011 5:58 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@dickc
dick costolo

Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen said in an emailed statement, “Steve was the shining light of our industry — he showed us what was possible … He set the bar.”

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said:

The entire Time Warner family mourns the loss of Steve Jobs. The world is a better place because of Steve, and the stories our company tells have been made richer by the products he created. He was a dynamic and fearless competitor, collaborator, and friend. In a society that has seen incredible technological innovation during our lifetimes, Steve may be the one true icon whose legacy will be remembered for a thousand years.

RIAA CEO Cary Sherman said:

Like all music fans, we are saddened to hear of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was a larger-than-life personality — passionate about music and one of its biggest fans and advocates. He was a true visionary who forever transformed how fans access and enjoy music. With the introduction of the iTunes software and other platforms, Steve and Apple made it once again easy and accepted to pay for music. His legacy will live on, long past his all-too-short time on earth.

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg said:

Tonight, America lost a genius who will be remembered with Edison and Einstein, and whose ideas will shape the world for generations to come. Again and again over the last four decades, Steve Jobs saw the future and brought it to life long before most people could even see the horizon. And Steve’s passionate belief in the power of technology to transform the way we live brought us more than smart phones and iPads: it brought knowledge and power that is reshaping the face of civilization. In New York City’s government, everyone from street construction inspectors to NYPD detectives have harnessed Apple’s products to do their jobs more efficiently and intuitively. Tonight our City — a city that has always had such respect and admiration for creative genius — joins with people around the planet in remembering a great man and keeping Laurene and the rest of the Jobs family in our thoughts and prayers.

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said:

Steve was one of a kind. For many of us working in technology and entertainment, Steve was a new kind of hero that lead with big, bold moves and would not settle for less than perfection. He is the best role model for a leader that aspires to be great.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch:

Today, we lost one of the most influential thinkers, creators and entrepreneurs of all time. Steve Jobs was simply the greatest CEO of his generation. While I am deeply saddened by his passing, I’m reminded of the stunning impact he had in revolutionizing the way people consume media and entertainment. My heart goes out to his family and to everyone who had the opportunity to work beside him in bringing his many visions to life.

Warren Buffett said: “He was one of the most remarkable business managers and innovators in american business history.”

Former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz (full interview at the Wall Street Journal):

It’s the ultimate sadness … He was a very special person, and he didn’t get to where he was by having people like him all the time. He got to where he was because he had a vision and a purpose. It’s easy to try and please everyone, but he kept to his principles.

AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson:

We are saddened by the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was an iconic inventor, visionary, and entrepreneur, and we had the privilege to know him as partner and friend. All of us at AT&T offer our thoughts and prayers to Steve’s wife, family, and his Apple family.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

I want to express my deepest condolences at the passing of Steve Jobs, one of the founders of our industry and a true visionary. My heart goes out to his family, everyone at Apple and everyone who has been touched by his work.

Google has posted a Jobs memorial on its homepage:

Conde Nast President Bob Sauerberg:

Steve was a great visionary and innovator. He invented paid digital content and we are grateful for that. His products over the years have been key in the development of high quality Conde Nast content. Our companies have always be aligned on unique design and high quality. Conde Nast sends sincere sympathy to his family and our friends at Apple.

Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, co-chiefs of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, said:

“Steve Jobs was a great visionary and a respected competitor. We extend our deepest condolences to his family and to all of the employees of Apple.”

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman said:

“Steve Jobs was an iconic entrepreneur and businessman whose impact on technology was felt beyond Silicon Valley. He will be remembered for the innovation he brought to market and the inspiration he brought to the world.”

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said:

“Steve was a teacher to anyone paying attention, and today is a very sad day for everyone who cares about innovation and high standards.”

RELATED POSTS:

Steve Jobs Full Coverage »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111005/tech-titans-pay-tribute-to-steve-jobs/feed/ 0 Steve Jobs's Appearances at D, the Full Video Sessions http://allthingsd.com/20111005/steve-jobs-appearances-at-d-the-full-sessions/ http://allthingsd.com/20111005/steve-jobs-appearances-at-d-the-full-sessions/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:49:00 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://allthingsd.com/?p=129213 Steve Jobs was onstage for the first-ever D: All Things Digital conference in 2003, and a guest and interviewee four times since — five if you count the legendary two appearances he made onstage at D5 in 2007, one solo and one with longtime rival and friend Bill Gates.

Here are the complete sessions for his D appearances:

D1 in 2003


[ See post to watch video ]

D2 in 2004


[ See post to watch video ]

D3 in 2005


[ See post to watch video ]

D5 in 2007


[ See post to watch video ]

D5 in 2007 with Microsoft’s Bill Gates


[ See post to watch video ]

D8 in 2010


[ See post to watch video ]

RELATED POSTS:

Steve Jobs Full Coverage »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111005/steve-jobs-appearances-at-d-the-full-sessions/feed/ 8 Bill Gates: "I Will Miss Steve Immensely" http://allthingsd.com/20111005/bill-gates-i-will-miss-steve-immensely/ http://allthingsd.com/20111005/bill-gates-i-will-miss-steve-immensely/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:15:59 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=129214

Bill Gates, who during his long career at Microsoft was both a partner and rival to Steve Jobs, called working with Jobs “an insanely great honor” and said he would miss the Apple founder “immensely.”

Shortly after the announcement of Jobs’s death, Gates sent a statement to AllThingsD, offering his condolences to Jobs’s family and friends and praising Jobs’s impact.

The pair appeared together in a memorable joint interview at D5 in 2007, in which each praised the other’s accomplishments and reminisced together about their long careers.

Asked what the biggest misunderstanding about their relationship was, Jobs quipped that it was the fact that the two had kept their marriage secret for so long. Then things turned serious, with Jobs noting how the two men — once the youngest men in the room — were now the old men of technology.

“And, you know, I think of most things in life as either a Bob Dylan or a Beatles song, but there’s that one line in that one Beatles song: ‘You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead,’” Jobs said. “And that’s clearly true here.”

For his part, Gates reflected on Jobs’s sense of the consumer and his willingness to take big risks, including Apple’s bold bet with the Mac.

I’m truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs’ death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.

Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives.

The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.

For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.

Here are some video highlights of the memorable stage appearance by the two men at the D5 conference:


[ See post to watch video ]

RELATED POSTS:

Steve Jobs Full Coverage »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111005/bill-gates-i-will-miss-steve-immensely/feed/ 0 Microsoft Teams With Former President Clinton on Education http://allthingsd.com/20110920/microsoft-teams-with-former-president-clinton-on-education/ http://allthingsd.com/20110920/microsoft-teams-with-former-president-clinton-on-education/#comments Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:39:12 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=122399 The software giant Microsoft today said it will commit to a three-year philanthropic effort to help one million U.S. students from low-income families get broadband access to the Internet. The aim is to help bridge the so-called “digital divide,” a blanket phrase that’s used to sum up the social and economic difficulties some people face when they don’t have the same easy access to the Internet that so many people almost take for granted.

Microsoft made the announcement at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, the philanthropic organization run by former President Bill Clinton. The meeting is getting underway today in New York.

The problem Microsoft is trying to solve is sometimes called “digital exclusion.” Think about how much you rely on day-to-day access to the Internet at home to do your job, and then imagine your life without it, or with only spotty access. There are lots of families with school-age children who are at a disadvantage because they don’t have access at home, or because their families can’t afford computers or the monthly fee for broadband.

Lacking that access has a lot of long-term economic repercussions, none of them good. Without access, kids don’t perform as well in school, because they don’t have the Internet to help them with homework. And while there are usually other socioeconomic forces to consider in these cases, having not done well in school, these children have a greater tendency to not finish high school; therefore they don’t go on to college, and later on have a harder time finding meaningful work.

There have been lots of attempts to count all these unconnected households. The FCC estimates that there are 100 million people in the U.S. without access to broadband. Some lack access because of where they live, while others simply can’t afford it. Within that number, there is thought to be some 9.5 million school-age kids who are effectively “digitally excluded.”

The irony, of course — at least to anyone who remembers how Bill Clinton’s Justice Department so vigorously pursued Microsoft through the courts during the 1990s — is how friendly Clinton and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates seem to have become in public. The photo is from Gates’s appearance with Clinton at last year’s CGI meeting.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110920/microsoft-teams-with-former-president-clinton-on-education/feed/ 0 Google Girds for a Grilling http://allthingsd.com/20110918/google-girds-for-a-grilling/ http://allthingsd.com/20110918/google-girds-for-a-grilling/#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2011 03:52:17 +0000 Thomas Catan and Amir Efrati http://allthingsd.com/?p=121856 Google Inc. is taking no chances as its executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, prepares to face a Senate hearing Wednesday on whether the company is abusing its dominance in Internet search.

Hoping to fend off any antitrust action, Google has hired at least 13 lobbying and communications firms since May, when the Federal Trade Commission ramped up its probe of the Internet giant. Firms led by figures from both parties—including former House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt and the son of Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar—are going to bat for the company.

Looming over this week’s proceedings will be rival Microsoft Corp., whose former chief executive, Bill Gates, faced his own congressional grilling on March 3, 1998.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110918/google-girds-for-a-grilling/feed/ 0 Larry Page Might Be Bill Gates+, But He Wants to Be Steve Jobs http://allthingsd.com/20110816/larry-page-might-be-bill-gates-but-he-wants-to-be-steve-jobs/ http://allthingsd.com/20110816/larry-page-might-be-bill-gates-but-he-wants-to-be-steve-jobs/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:12:09 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=110362

Let’s face it: Everyone in Silicon Valley — one way or another — fashions themselves as the next Steve Jobs.

And why not? Both the professional and even personal story of the legendary Apple CEO — which will be chronicled in November in a major book — are the stuff of tech legend and envy: Iconic, in charge, decisive, elegant, innovative, phoenix-like and visionary.

And, of course, more than just a little bit terrifying.

So why not Larry Page, too, and why not now?

One issue: By temperament and action — by which I mean genetically hyper-competitive and hammer-time aggressive — he’s been more like Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who has been the Yin to Jobs’ Yang in their deeply interconnected careers over the last decades.

As I wrote before Page took over again as Google’s CEO earlier this year:

After our first interview in 2001, my notes on the encounter had this one line underlined and in all caps:

    LARRY PAGE=BILL GATES.

It was not meant as an insult, but I can tell you I never wrote such a note about Page’s co-founder, the jokey and affable Sergey Brin.

Even then, Gates had a fearsome reputation as a manically competitive exec, a cutting manner to those not as smart as he clearly is and a reputation as a very tough and often eviscerating boss. (And all that was also my experience whenever I was interviewing him.)

While much wonkier, friendlier and more of a sensitive new-aged male, Page, it seemed to me, had the exact same obvious drive and aggression as Gates.

The latest incarnation of that has been Page’s move — bold for now and we’ll-see later — to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, which Google announced yesterday.

By all accounts, Page was the key driver of the deal inside Google, where he now reigns firmly.

Although neither Gates nor Jobs has used acquisitions much as a key weapon in their arsenals, the size and scope of the deal is pure Gates: A focused, overwhelming and competitor-scaring display of might that speaks of industry dominance and play-to-destroy aspirations, masking what is also very reactive.

If Page’s doubling down on mobile reminds you a bit of Gates’s “Internet Tidal Wave” memorandum in 1995, that’s because the move-now tone is the same.

And, also, in that it is more than just a little bit sneaky. Case in point: Google’s yammering on about the importance of Motorola’s patents in the deal. While the patent love is true and an important element, bolstering Google’s own weak portfolio, it’s also a bit of a feint by the search giant, which can simply never come out and say what it is actually up to.

Which is to be the dominant and overwhelming player in the mobile market that Google sees as critical to its future.

“The company obviously wants everyone to focus on the patents, but its ambitions are so much larger in mobile,” said one person close to the situation. “So it underplays as it overplays.”

Indeed, in the time I covered Google, it has always been my experience when the search giant insists stringently on one thing, Page and others are playing a more complex version of “Star Trek” three-dimensional chess.

As the New York Times’ DealBook noted correctly:

If there’s any question about Google’s motivation to own a handset maker rather than just a portfolio of patents, consider this: InterDigital, a licensing company that owns some 8,000 wireless patents and has another 10,000 patent applications being processed, has been up for auction. Many industry insiders were sure that if Google were serious about acquiring a portfolio of patents, InterDigital would be its target. The company’s market value is only about $3 billion and it doesn’t come with all the baggage of Motorola’s handset business.

That’s exactly right, because Page’s ambition is about Google playing a big part in the mobile market — which is humanity’s next critical platform in computing — for its interlocked ecosystem of Google products — from its flagship search to social networking via Google+ to Gmail to its latest Google Wallet initiative to Google Maps to Google Voice.

In other words, it’s a Google world and we all just live in it.

At the heart of it is a desire to make and completely control the object at the center of the virtuous circle: The mobile device, whether it be a smartphone, tablet or whatever doodad you might wear around your neck.

In fact, as I also remember from Google’s earliest days, Page did sport a lot of such contraptions back then, such as a communicator of some sort he once joyfully showed off to me that allowed him to reach Brin quickly. Later, it was a kind of pollution sensor that took its place.

My recollection from that time was that Page adored such objects, visibly inspired by the idea of digital devices that delivered a myriad of helpful and smart services to users as they moved around the world.

You know, like an Apple iPhone, the ground-breaking technical achievement that Jobs rendered unto the world less than a decade ago, changing everything.

With Android and Page’s firm backing, Google quickly and smartly jumped partway into that market with its powerful and fast-growing mobile operating system.

Now, like Jobs, I have no doubt Page wants to own and control the whole value chain to solidify what Google started several years ago and which is its best hope to vault into the next era of computing.

It’s a leap that Gates and Microsoft largely failed at, not for lack of trying — something else Page has to have taken note of.

So, perhaps by making things — maybe even beautiful things like Jobs — Page will transform himself from a Gates into a Jobs.

Or, more likely, a little bit of both.

Until that reckoning, here is a terrific video of Spock playing 3D chess with Captain James T. Kirk — and, yes, he does look freakishly like Page here:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Related posts

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110816/larry-page-might-be-bill-gates-but-he-wants-to-be-steve-jobs/feed/ 0 G5 Idled? Check! Name Tags On? Check! Weeklong Mogul Fest in Sun Valley Will End With Zuckerberg-Gates Chit-Chat. http://allthingsd.com/20110705/g5-idled-check-name-tags-on-check-week-long-mogul-fest-in-sun-valley-will-end-with-zuckerberg-gates-chit-chat/ http://allthingsd.com/20110705/g5-idled-check-name-tags-on-check-week-long-mogul-fest-in-sun-valley-will-end-with-zuckerberg-gates-chit-chat/#comments Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:47:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=94712

In case you haven’t heard, the tech and media moguls have jetted their private planes to Sun Valley, Idaho, for the exclusive annual Allen & Company confab and are probably easing into the cocktail hour just about now.

Break out the Kistler Chardonnay and name tags!

(I secretly love that the 300 moguls all wear name tags, even though they are all so fabulously famous.)

Among the highlights for the weeklong confab beginning today will be an interview of Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg by Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, in which I assume they will fall all over themselves in a race of mutual admiration.

To be fair, it seems genuine and Sun Valley is not for unpleasantries anyway.

While Allen & Company — in its investment banker mode — likes to keep the schedule a state secret, it never is, so I am here to tell those planning their time in Sun Valley that the chit-chat will be Saturday.

Also sure to get a lot of ink, since all the owners and possible marks, um, potential buyers, will be there: Whither Hulu?

The premium online video service is famously for sale, and the moneybags at Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo (smaller bags!) are all taking a gander.

It will not be sold by week’s end, of course, although there will be all kinds of breathy media coverage as the powerful players shuttle to and fro from their gratis luxe condos in noisy hush-hushery.

Who will then come over to the bar to tell the gathered and increasingly drunken reporters — press is not invited in, but they’re there like kudzu all week — all about it.

Of course, there will be some cute anecdotes about the rich and famous — one year, it was News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch losing some item of his wife’s in said bar with everyone scurrying around to find it.

If Us Weekly were covering Sun Valley, that section would be called “Moguls Are Just Like Us!”

Actually, they’re not at all — mostly, they are meaner and more aggressive and greedier, although endlessly riveting.

That’s why the most awkward part of the event will be all the Sun Valley photos that appear without fail of these powermongers in shorts and fleece.

(Note to newcomers: Very few look good in shorts and fleece.)

Lastly, it would not be a modern Allen & Company Sun Valley gathering without continued fretting and fixating on the digital onslaught, even though there are scads of those invited techies competitively mountain biking the pretty mountains there.

This year’s focus will be the IPO gang from Zynga, Groupon and, of course, Facebook, whose insane market valuations are the envy of the media gang, who are mostly older and continually grumpy about it all.

But, the kids love this Internet thing and so the moguls will cope with the change, even as what happens in Sun Valley — power playing, but with a better view — never ever changes.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110705/g5-idled-check-name-tags-on-check-week-long-mogul-fest-in-sun-valley-will-end-with-zuckerberg-gates-chit-chat/feed/ 0 Microsoft Buys Skype http://allthingsd.com/20110510/microsoft-buys-skype/ http://allthingsd.com/20110510/microsoft-buys-skype/#comments Tue, 10 May 2011 12:34:29 +0000 Ben Horowitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=40842

“All these bitches and niggas still hatin’
I used to be ballin’, but now I’m Bill Gate-in’”
–Lil’ Wayne

Shortly after we started Andreessen Horowitz, we, along with our partners at Silver Lake Partners and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, bought Skype from eBay for slightly more than $2B. The investment generated a tremendous amount of controversy for us. Marc and I were known as angel investors, so investing $50M of our $300M fund in one deal surprised people. While consistent with our stage-agnostic strategy, it was a very big deal very early on in the fund. To make matters more exciting, other investors and writers broadly criticized the deal. Joe Nocera of the New York Times wrote:

“Many people on Wall Street–and a number of telecommunications experts I spoke to this week–were stunned by the price Skype sold for, and not just because we’re in the middle of a recession.”

That controversy ended this morning when Microsoft announced that it was buying Skype for $8.5B less than two years after we bought it from eBay.

Let’s look back at the original decision and see why it turned out well. At the time, people criticized us for two primary reasons:

1. Ebay might not have owned Skype’s underlying intellectual property. Skype’s founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, held an IP claim against Skype. Many speculated that the founders would use their claim to shut down Skype and leave investors with nothing. This made the company theoretically impossible to buy.

As Nocera wrote:

“And so, the mystery of the Skype deal: why were the winning bidders willing to pay so high a price for a company whose very existence could be threatened by this lawsuit? One possibility is that they have nerves of steel. The other is that they know something nobody else does.”

2. The shifting technology landscape would tilt the playing field away from Skype. While Skype won the original Internet telephony wars, they did so with a fat desktop client. From a technology standpoint, at the time, it was technically impossible to field a high-quality web client or mobile product, but that time wouldn’t last. Many observers believed–as the world inevitably transitioned to mobile and web–Skype would be left in the dust.

With a company as complex as Skype, investors draw different conclusions about the same facts. In this case we had the same data as everybody else, but we had a radically higher opinion of Skype’s founders and employees than the investors who passed on the deal. We believed that we could work with rather than against the founders. More importantly, we believed that Skype’s engineering team, led by the original Eastern European wizards who created the service, could compete and win against anybody.

We thought that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis wanted Skype to be a huge success and would do everything in their power to make that happen. As a result, we did not think the doomsday scenario that greatly concerned other investors–that the founders would attempt to shut down the company through the courts–was an actual possibility. Based on the founder’s motivations, we felt that we’d quickly settle the IP litigation. Both sides wanted to get on with the business of making Skype more competitive and could not afford to waste time bickering about IP ownership.

We couldn’t have been more right about that. After quickly settling the litigation, both founders immediately made major contributions to the business through their energy, insight, and intellectual prowess. And boy did we need them to do that, because we soon faced full frontal assaults from both Google and Apple.

When giants attack

In a direct attack, Google offered a free competitor to Skype’s U.S. paid product and a heavily discounted competitor to Skype’s international product. Google then aggressively promoted these cheap products to their enormous Gmail user base by forcing every Gmail user to view Google’s Internet telephony advertisement before allowing them to access their email. What was the result of this effort? Skype new users and usage growth has accelerated since Google’s launch culminating in:

· 500,000 new registered users per day
· 170 million connected users
· 30 million users communicating on the Skype platform concurrently
· 209 billion voice and video minutes in 2010

On the mobile front, Apple built video calling right into the iPhone, making their product the default offering for iPhone users. How did that impact Skype’s usage on the iPhone? 50 million users have downloaded Skype’s iPhone product since the release of Apple’s Facetime.

In retrospect, it was easy for people to underestimate the quality of the Skype engineering team and the power of Skype’s network effect. When we bought the company from eBay, many thought that Skype, like so many acquired technology companies, had lost its technical talent. Through our research we found that Skype had a core group of engineers who were completely dedicated to the mission. They stayed through the eBay acquisition and were determined to make Skype the communications company of the future. Over the past decade, this team consistently introduced groundbreaking technologies ranging from highly resilient and scalable peer-to-peer networking to radically higher sound quality through dramatically superior codecs. In doing so, Skype out-innovated the competition in the most important areas. When combined with its powerful network effect–how valuable is a video calling service if there is nobody to call?–Skype became a formidable competitor.

Smart move, Microsoft

Today, I tip my hat to an old rival, Microsoft. By acquiring Skype, Microsoft becomes a much stronger player in mobile and the clear market leader in Internet voice and video communications. More importantly, Microsoft gets a team, led by the exceptional Tony Bates, that can compete with anyone.

Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded Loudcloud, later renamed Opsware Inc., in 1999 and served as CEO of the company before it was acquired in 2007 by Hewlett-Packard. He was most recently vice president and general manager of Hewlett-Packard’s Business Technology Organization Unit.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110510/microsoft-buys-skype/feed/ 0 Paul Allen's Idea Man, The Musical http://allthingsd.com/20110420/paul-allens-idea-man-the-musical/ http://allthingsd.com/20110420/paul-allens-idea-man-the-musical/#comments Wed, 20 Apr 2011 23:20:37 +0000 Nitrozac and Snaggy http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=39166

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110420/paul-allens-idea-man-the-musical/feed/ 0 Video: Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen Defends Gates-Bashing on "60 Minutes" http://allthingsd.com/20110414/video-microsoft-co-founder-paul-allen-defends-gates-bashing-on-60-minutes/ http://allthingsd.com/20110414/video-microsoft-co-founder-paul-allen-defends-gates-bashing-on-60-minutes/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:56:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42661 BoomTown loves me some Lesley Stahl. The “60 Minutes” correspondent is back in the tech space, grilling Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen about allegations he makes in his new memoir, “Idea Man,” that his partner Bill Gates tried to shanghai him out of stock when he was suffering from a major illness.

I have to say, Gates is one tough customer. But–having interviewed both him and Allen many times over the years–I am going to say gently that perhaps Allen is overstating the incident to sell books and maybe his recollections are, um, cloudy with a chance of sour grapes.

Here’s a video excerpt of the CBS television show, airing this Sunday:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110414/video-microsoft-co-founder-paul-allen-defends-gates-bashing-on-60-minutes/feed/ 1 Microsoft Names Vet Chris Capossela as New Marketing Chief http://allthingsd.com/20110406/microsoft-names-vet-chris-caposella-as-new-marketing-chief/ http://allthingsd.com/20110406/microsoft-names-vet-chris-caposella-as-new-marketing-chief/#comments Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:29:07 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=4777 That was fast. Only six days after the awkwardly timed departure of longtime Microsoft marketing head Mich Mathews, Microsoft has named Chris Capossela as its new head of marketing.

His title will be senior vice president of the Consumer Channels and Central Marketing Group, and he will report to COO Kevin Turner.

Capossela is a 20-year Microsoft veteran who previously ran the Microsoft Office Division. He helmed the launches of Office 2007 and 2010 and related server products. He was also instrumental in ushering Office into the cloud with Office Web Apps and Office 365. Before that he held several other jobs within Microsoft, including a stint as speech assistant to Microsoft founder and former CEO Bill Gates.

Here is a video from last year in which Capossela is talking with, oddly enough, ATD’s own Ina Fried (who was at the time only weeks away from announcing she would join ATD, I should note) about Office 365.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110406/microsoft-names-vet-chris-caposella-as-new-marketing-chief/feed/ 0 Microsoft Co-Founder Hits Out at Gates http://allthingsd.com/20110330/microsoft-co-founder-hits-out-at-gates/ http://allthingsd.com/20110330/microsoft-co-founder-hits-out-at-gates/#comments Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:35:11 +0000 Nick Wingfield and Robert A. Guth http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=38338 Bill Gates schemed to take shares in Microsoft Corp. from his co-founder during the early days of the software company following his partner’s treatment for cancer, according to a new memoir by the billionaire co-founder, Paul Allen.

The allegation is part of a critical portrait in the book of Mr. Gates, with whom Mr. Allen formed a friendship in grade school that evolved into one of the iconic partnerships of American business. The book, “Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-founder of Microsoft,” is scheduled to go on sale on April 17. A draft of the memoir was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. An excerpt of the book appeared on Vanity Fair’s website early Wednesday.

The book gives a revisionist take on some details of Microsoft’s history and the relationship between Mr. Gates and his former partner, the two of whom have long been viewed as cordial if not close friends.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110330/microsoft-co-founder-hits-out-at-gates/feed/ 0 Ah, Zune We Hardly Bought Ye http://allthingsd.com/20110314/ah-zune-we-hardly-bought-ye/ http://allthingsd.com/20110314/ah-zune-we-hardly-bought-ye/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:46:14 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=58686 zune-trashcan.jpg

Chuck: Do we carry any Rush CDs?

Morgan: No, but not to worry buddy! I have every Rush track on my Zune.

Chuck: Wait, you have a Zune!?

Morgan: Pfft! No, I’ll go get my iPod.”

– Dialogue from a 2008 episode of NBC’s “Chuck” (see video below)

“For something we pulled together in six months, we are very pleased with the satisfaction we got. The satisfaction for the device was superhigh.” Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said that of the Zune in October 2007.

Gates may have been right about superhigh satisfaction, but if he was counting on superhigh adoption, boy was he ever wrong.

Four years of mediocre sales and lack of consumer interest followed, and now Microsoft is finally conceding defeat. Sources tell Bloomberg that Microsoft is ending Zune hardware development to focus solely on the Zune software found on the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7. The current iteration of the Zune will be its last.

Microsoft declined to confirm Bloomberg’s report, but the tone and focus of the comment the company issued did lend it some credence.

“We have nothing to announce about another Zune device–but most recently have introduced Zune HD to Canada via Zune Originals store and remain committed to supporting our devices in North America. We are thrilled by the consumer excitement for Zune across many new platforms, including Windows Phone 7. Our long-term strategy focuses on the strength of the entire Zune ecosystem across Microsoft platforms, and we remain committed to providing a great music and video experience with the Zune service.”

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