AllThingsD » Sergey Brin

Viral Video: "Jaws" Guy Bites Mark Zuckerberg and "Eric" Brin at Webbys

Kara Swisher — Tue, 22 May 2012 07:14:40 +0000

If you love a celebrity getting all self-righteous on the world, especially the tech world, then here’s a big plate of Richard Dreyfuss for you.

He tsk-tsks all over the stage in this video of highlights from the 16th Annual Webby Awards, which took place last night in New York.

That includes calling out Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s “Eric” Brin — which I am assuming is a mutant mash-up of Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin — for some sort of clickety-click-clack Internet crimes against humanity.

Thankfully, there is a very lovely tribute to Apple legend Steve Jobs at the end that includes President Barack Obama.

Enjoy:

At 28, Few Tech Titans Could Hold a Candle to Zuck

Mike Isaac — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:55:25 +0000

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.

Sergey Brin: I Didn't Actually Conflate Government Censorship With Apple and Facebook

Liz Gannes — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:35:04 +0000

Google co-founder Sergey Brin wrote on his Google+ account today to clarify his recent comments about threats to the open Internet by “very powerful forces,” including government censorship, Apple and Facebook.

The takeaway from the write-up of an interview Brin did with the Guardian was that Brin was conveniently lumping his competition in with very real threats to Internet freedom, while ignoring Google’s own lack of openness in various competitive categories.

Personally, I thought he sounded wistful and out of touch, though I sympathize with Brin that it’s unfortunate that no transcript or longer excerpt of the interview has been released.

Here are the three key sentences from Brin’s defense of himself today:

“The primary threat by far to Internet freedom is government filtering of political dissent.”
“I certainly do not think [the problem of “digital ecosystems that are not as open as the web itself”] is on a par with government-based censorship.”
“While openness is a core value at Google, there are a number of areas where we can improve too.”

Meanwhile, back at the Guardian, the outlet is running a companion interview today with Tim Berners-Lee (this time there are some audio clips, but again not the full interview). Like Brin, Berners-Lee worries about government surveillance and protectionism, but he also delves into a more nuanced problem of openness: Giving companies access to personal data for the purpose of personalization, while respecting user privacy and data portability.

Now that’s a modern, 2012-era discussion on openness.

Google Bangs on the Openness Drum Again

Liz Gannes — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:39:40 +0000

Every so often, a Google executive whips out what the company thinks is its trump card: Openness.

Some examples: Android open sourcing in 2011, Facebook contact importing in 2010, a grand manifesto on “The Meaning of Open” in 2009.

The latest is Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who told the Guardian that “very powerful forces” — including oppressive and territorial governments, the entertainment industry, and Facebook and Apple — “have lined up against the open Internet on all sides and around the world.”

Conflating Internet censorship and Google’s biggest competitors is a bit lazy, and it makes Brin seem wistful and out of touch. Has he looked around his own company lately and seen things like Search Plus Your World and Google Play? “Open” probably isn’t the best word to describe them.

Brin can argue that the current environment wouldn’t have fostered the creation of Google, but we’ve come a long way on the Internet since the late ’90s. If the definition of “open” is “that which can be indexed and monetized by Google,” maybe we need a new word.

(Image courtesy of Google)

How Much Does Wall Street Hate Google's Stock-Split Plan?

Arik Hesseldahl — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 15:53:06 +0000

How much does the Wall Street establishment dislike Google’s proposed share split plan announced Thursday alongside its first quarter earnings report? Apparently, a lot.

The plan essentially calls for Google stock to split two for one, and all shareholders will receive a share in a new class of stock that will have no voting power. The net effect will over time preserve the roughly two-thirds majority that CEO and co-founder Larry Page, co-founder Sergey Brin and Executive Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt have over Google’s proxy voting structure.

Shareholders expressed their opinion with their wallets, sending the price of Google shares down by more than four percent on a day when the broader NASDAQ exchange was down by only one percent. The drop reduced Google’s market capitalization by nearly $8.6 billion, which is not a trivial amount, even for a company with a market cap north of $200 billion.

At least one shareholder advisory firm, Philadelphia-based Egan-Jones, has come out strongly in opposition to the plan. “We strongly oppose governance structures, such as currently exists at Google and as proposed, in which the holders of one class of common stock have voting rights with fewer votes per share,” the firm said.

Also on the record in opposition? CalSTRS, the $145 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which owns $400 million worth of Google shares, told Reuters that it’s not happy about the proposal and intends to let Google know about it.

You can expect more fireworks from the likes of Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass-Lewis after Google files its preliminary proxy statement, which will contain a lot more detail about the plan, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which it said it will do sometime this week.

In the end, however, even shareholders as large as CalSTRS will have little they can do but vote against the proposal at Google’s next shareholder meeting. The proxy authority Page, Brin and Schmidt already have ensures that the measure will pass. Part of the deal of investing in Google when it first came public in 2004, was putting a lot of faith in management, as the company reminded shareholders this week.

That includes those moments when it puts money and time into seemingly weird things like self-driving cars and computerized eyewear. Those things may not make sense to outsiders, Page argued during a conference call with analysts, but there’s a method to the madness, and as a shareholder you’re kind of expected to roll with it.

Clearly, many with skin in the game aren’t so sure. Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones, spoke up for that camp in an appearance on Bloomberg TV Friday. I’ve embedded the clip below.

Google Q1 Earnings: "Velocity, Execution and Focus"

Liz Gannes — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:00:16 +0000

Google today gave investors a bunch of material to work with: first quarter earnings close to expectations, an effective stock split, and normally reticent CEO Larry Page’s second public letter (this time co-authored with co-founder Sergey Brin) in a week.

Here’s how Page and his deputies explained it on their quarterly earnings call:

Page said his three main priorities as CEO are velocity, execution and focusing on the future with big bets. Major launches this quarter included Chrome for Android and Google Play.

Responding to criticism of Google+ usage numbers, Page called this “confusion over metrics” and acknowledged that Google+ actually has two parts. One, it is a “social spine” for all of Google; and two, it is a “social destination.” The social spine has 170 million users, and the social destination is “growing very fast … with very healthy growth,” Page said, with all the clarity in the world.

As for Google creating a new class of shares and awarding equivalent stakes to existing investors, Page read out the letter he’d already posted. “We don’t have an unusually big acquisition planned, in case you were wondering,” he said.

Chief Legal Officer David Drummond assured his listeners that despite the effective stock split, all existing Google stockholders will essentially be treated equally and everyone will retain same voting interests, including Page, Brin and Eric Schmidt, who will agree to a “transfer restriction agreement.”

Onto the quarter at hand. CFO Patrick Pichette repeated those three big goals, with a slight twist: “velocity, focus and optimism.” As for perceived dips in numbers, “The most important thing to understand is that our business is healthy,” he said.

It was up to Nikesh Arora to cover the various business units (Susan Wojcicki, who usually helps out, is on spring break with her kids). He talked up YouTube’s progress to become a “key buy” for advertisers, and bragged about new Google Apps customers like Roche and the State of Colorado, accelerated growth in Asia, an underwater Google Hangout from the Great Barrier Reef and Google Street View in Russia.

Onto the analyst questions:

Headcount growth seemed slower (Google now has 33,000 employees) — why? Pichette said this is just “short term variability.”
Page said it would be reasonable to expect coming Google+ integrations in products like Wallet, Offers and Maps.
Success of YouTube advertising shows growth of brand advertising online, said Arora. Page expects that mobile cost per click will improve over time because of local transactions and communication.
Most resources are still going to core businesses, said Page — still following a 70-20-10 split among core businesses and near-term and long-term bets. Android took six years to get to where it is today, much of that before the public saw anything, he noted.
Pichette declined to break out U.S. and international cash balances.
Arora wouldn’t break out traffic acquisition costs for mobile, but said it’s not any different of an arrangement than on the desktop, with OEMs and carriers sharing revenue from Google Play and search, etc.
Page said social does improve search. He gave yet another shout-out to that Ben Smith guy, who is now highlighted when Larry searches for his name because he’s Larry’s friend.
As for tablets, Page talked up their media capability. “We definitely believe there’s going to be a lot of success at the lower end of the market as well,” he said.
Pichette talked again about how lumpy growth and spending is good, and investors shouldn’t be worried.
How do you account for the value of Android, an analyst asked. Page asked him to think longer-term. “We don’t get very many new operating systems. Only a few in my lifetime, and they’re very important.” He continued that Android is in its early stages, but it’s about the pace of innovation and improvements in user experience, and money will be a part of it, too.
Page didn’t want to say tablets will eventually be more important than any other device, as an analyst asks him to do.
Advertisers are interested in ROI — they don’t care about platforms, said Pichette. Google is working toward “dynamically allocating” advertising across its products in order to maximize ROI.

Despite more than a couple repeat questions in there, I don’t think I heard a single analyst ask about the new class of stock. Either they don’t really care, or they were surprised by the announcement and hadn’t prepared for it.

Google Unveils Project Glass: Wearable Augmented-Reality Glasses

Liz Gannes — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:26:44 +0000

Google today went public with its plans to offer augmented-reality glasses, which it’s calling “Project Glass.”

Unveiling the project should make it easier for Google to test the weird-looking glasses in public. As currently designed, they have a horizontal frame that rests on a wearer’s nose, with a wider strip of computer and a little clear display on the right side. So they’re not really “glasses” in the traditional sense at all.

From a video Google put out of how the prototype works, an augmented-reality-glasses wearer can control music, get directions, take pictures, give voice commands and conduct video chats. The glasses don’t cover the whole eye, so it seems like the wearer does something like look up to engage with the display.

Project Glass is part of the Google[x] special projects division that also includes self-driving cars. The glasses team is led by Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and Sebastian Thrun.

The New York Times first reported the project in February. At the time, it said the glasses were expected to go on sale later this year. However, Google said today that it’s unlikely the glasses will hit the market this year.

DARPA's Regina Dugan Will Join Google

Liz Gannes — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:48:18 +0000

Regina Dugan, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is leaving to take a role at Google. We’d been working on this story independently and have confirmed it with Google; Wired has it up as well.

Dugan reigned over all sorts of fantastical creations at DARPA, including testing hypersonic vehicles. She was a huge hit at our D9 conference last year, and recently delighted the audience at TED with a presentation of an array of projects, including a remote-controlled flying hummingbird.

Dugan had an unusually entrepreneurial philosophy for someone in the government, for instance telling our own Walt Mossberg at D, “Failure isn’t the problem, it’s the fear of failure.”

A spokeswoman for Google said that Dugan would have a “senior position” at Google but wouldn’t confirm her role. A DARPA spokesperson told Wired that Dugan felt she couldn’t turn down a chance to join such an innovative company.

Here’s the official Google comment: “Regina is a technical pioneer who brought the future of technology to the military during her time at DARPA. She will be a real asset to Google and we are thrilled she is joining the team.”

Google has recently — mostly in secret — combined some of its moonshot projects into a division called Google X, which is run by co-founder Sergey Brin. It is working on things like wearable computing devices and autonomous cars. Seems like a natural fit for Dugan, though of course Google wouldn’t confirm it.

[ See post to watch video ]

End of an Era: Google's Very First Employee, Craig Silverstein -- Technically, No. 3 -- Leaving

Kara Swisher — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:01:58 +0000

Google’s very first employee, Craig Silverstein, is leaving the company to join the high-profile online learning phenom, Khan Academy.

News of the departure first appeared yesterday in a line in a newsletter on education-tech entrepreneurship EdSurge, and the search giant confirmed the departure to me.

[UPDATE: Here's a statement from a Google spokesperson -- and not CEO Larry Page (classy and appreciative of others as ever!, Larry!) -- on Silverstein's leaving: "Craig's been with Google since the early days. He was instrumental in the development of search and made numerous contributions to Google over the years. We wish him all the best at the Khan Academy and know that he will do great things to help them promote education around the world."]

Silverstein, who was actually Google’s No. 3 employee — that would be after its pair of founders, Page and Sergey Brin — has had a variety of technology jobs at the company over the years since it was founded in 1998.

But his first — helping them build the famed and lucrative search engine itself — was perhaps his most important. An experienced techie, Silverstein worked with Brin and Page on Google, from their dorm rooms as Ph.D. students at Stanford University, to their garage days, to the giant and diversified behemoth it is today, with tens of thousands of employees.

Currently, he has been working on a variety of projects, including mentoring engineers.

Having spent some time with him over the years, I can tell you that he’s a lovely and adorkable guy, whose infectious enthusiasm and joy of tech has always embodied what I always refer to as “Good Google” (as opposed to, well, you know).

Silverstein will simply be a developer at Khan Academy’s Mountain View, Calif., offices, but I have emails for more details in to all parties.

Speaking of party — IMHO, Larry and Sergey should throw him a really nice one. Really nice — it’s well-deserved.

Here is Silverstein’s cute goodbye email to staff that I obtained (natch!):

[I couldn't possibly remember everyone who I should be sending this mail to, so please feel free to spread the word to anyone I missed!]

It is with decidedly mixed feelings that I announce, after more than 13 years, that I’m leaving Google. My last day will be Feb 10. I’ll be joining the Khan Academy as a developer.

Some of you thought this day would never come (as one person once put it: “Will you die at Google?”), and it was an extremely difficult choice. I am as passionate about Google’s mission now as I’ve ever been, and as proud of the work we’re doing to achieve it. While a lot has changed at Google over the years, I think we’ve done a remarkable job of staying true to our core mission of making the world a better place by making information more accessible and useful. I am looking forward to pursuing that same mission, though in a slightly different way, at Khan.

I’m extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such smart, passionate, and interesting people — not just a few, either, but (almost :-) ) everyone I worked with. I’m grateful not just that I had so many co-workers I could respect, but even more that I had so many that I could count as friends. I will miss that most of all, and I hope you will continue to be in touch. I also accept lunch invitations!

When I write my massive 4-volume autobiography, “Craig Silverstein: the Man Behind the Legend,” I will devote an entire volume to my years at Google. I can’t emphasize enough how meaningful my time at Google has been, and how meaningful all of you have been to it. I mean it literally when I say: all the best,

craig

And here’s the video of a speech Silverstein gave at the University of North Carolina in 2008, about Google’s origins:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Wikipedia's Pledge Drive Ends -- So Do Those Jarring Testimonials!

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:35:22 +0000

The Wikimedia Foundation’s annual fundraising campaign concluded today after the nonprofit raised $20 million from one million donors worldwide.

The end of the pledge drive also means the end of those fundraising banners on every page that highlighted editors who contributed to the site.

Against the site’s normal black-and-white page design and absence of ads, the contributors’ color photos popped from the page and certainly fulfilled the goal of pulling readers up to the plea.

And while their absence won’t exactly be mourned by readers, it will deprive us of some entertaining juxtapositions, such as the one at right, with the visage of an earnest volunteer looking like an illustration accompanying the Wikipedia entry for a “Saturday Night Live” skit featuring Justin Timberlake called “Dick in a Box.”

Wikimedia said it will use the funds to buy hardware, develop new features on the site, expand mobile services, provide legal defense for the projects and support volunteers.

The site now employs 97 people and plans to spend $28.3 million this year on expenses.

The remainder of funds will trickle in throughout the year in the form of grants and other donations, such as ones from Google co-founder Sergey Brin and 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki’s Brin Wojcicki Foundation, which gave $500,000 as part of the campaign in November.

In a letter thanking donors, Wikimedia Executive Director Sue Gardner wrote: “We’re the #5 most-popular site in the world — we operate on a tiny fraction of the resources of any other top site. We will use your money carefully and well, I promise you.”

More Internet Heavy Hitters Speak Out in SOPA Saga

Lauren Goode — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:53:15 +0000

In an open letter to Congress this morning, a group of prominent Internet engineers has spoken out against the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which are under consideration in the House and Senate. The group argues that censorship of Internet infrastructure will cause network errors and security problems, and points to China and Iran as examples. The letter comes on the heels of yesterday’s opposition in an Open Letter to Washington from other tech heavyweights, including Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang, Reid Hoffman and Jack Dorsey.

Top 10 Reasons Google's Founders Want to Restore That Airship Hangar (Comic)

Nitrozac and Snaggy — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:04:39 +0000

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site.

Google's Top Brass Willing to Pay Up to Save NASA's Hangar One

Ina Fried — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:13:00 +0000

Google’s top three executives want to save Hangar One, NASA’s iconic Moffett Field airship house. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt are willing to pay the $33 million price tag in full, as long as they can park their eight private jets there once the revamp is done. NASA is said to be weighing the offer, according to the Mercury News.

Wikipedia Gets $500K from Brin and Wojcicki -- But What It Really Wants Is Small Donors

Liz Gannes — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:40:48 +0000

Google co-founder Sergey Brin and 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki’s Brin Wojcicki Foundation just gave $500,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation as part of its annual fundraising drive.

On Wednesday, the first day of this year’s campaign, Wikimedia pulled in $1.2 million, the most it’s ever raised in a day, from 61,000 individual donors, the most it’s ever had in a single day.

The foundation’s annual budget is $28.3 million, and it tries to raise most of that from small donors. Last year’s drive drew more than 500,000 donors, most of whom gave $25 to $30, said Wikimedia spokesman Jay Walsh.

Tech Leaders Make Forbes' Most Powerful People List

Tricia Duryee — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:21:36 +0000

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.

Zuckerberg Tops Fortune's 40 Under 40 List

Liz Gannes — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:00:34 +0000

This year Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ranks first on the Fortune 40 under 40 list, moving up a spot to displace 2010′s top pick, his mentor Marc Andreessen, who no longer qualifies.

Following Zuckerberg in the No. 2 spot is Google CEO Larry Page, who’s been broken out from his usual pairing with co-founder Sergey Brin. Brin’s down at No. 11 this year, followed by fellow Googler Marissa Mayer at No. 20.

Entirely absent from the 2011 list are Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, who shared the No. 3 spot in 2010. They’ve since left the company and are back undercover working on new start-up projects together at Obvious.

Other featured techies this year include Jack Dorsey of Square and Twitter (8), Spotify’s Daniel Ek (18), Groupon’s Andrew Mason (27), Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley (28), Dropbox’s Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowski (29), Facebook’s Carolyn Everson (35), Opower’s Dan Yates and Alex Laskey (36), and Instagram’s Kevin Systrom (39).

The 40 under 40 issue hits newsstands on Oct. 24.

Google+ Will Allow Pseudonyms, Support Google Apps Users, Launch Platform. When? Soon.

Liz Gannes — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:49:31 +0000

Google+ will soon accommodate pseudonyms, said Google+ head Vic Gundotra, acknowledging one of the loudest criticisms of the new social network. “It’s complicated to get this right,” Gundotra said, begging for a little time to figure out a way to use nicknames and handles without dramatically “changing the atmosphere” of Google’s new social network.

As for fixes to other big complaints about Google+? They’re all in the works, Gundotra said, asking for patience like his colleague Bradley Horowitz did last week.

Support for Google Apps users is coming “in a matter of days,” Gundotra said. When will tools for brands be available? “It’s a little bit longer than days,” he said in an interview today at the Web 2.0 Summit.

As for a developer platform? That’s on the way, perhaps at Google’s I/O developer event next spring. “We don’t want to do anything haphazard” to change the platform after developers come to depend on it, Gundotra said, in a thinly veiled dig at Facebook and Twitter.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin appeared onstage alongside Gundotra, where he said Google+ has been “instantly compelling” for him, with its Circles model a better fit for his preferred ways of sharing.

Brin said he was initially skeptical of Circles being “too complicated” and tried to argue against them in internal discussions, but now he loves them and personally uses dozens of them.

Gundotra was pointed in his critique of Facebook’s new frictionless open graph, which shares users’ activities automatically. “We do not believe in oversharing,” he said. “We have a different philosophy; we think curating matters.”

“From a philosophical standpoint, there is a reason why every thought in your head does not come out of your mouth,” he said.

What about that leaked memo, in which Google engineer Steve Yegge accidentally publicly complained that Google+ should have been a platform at launch before it was a product?

“I would be lying to you if I told you that wasn’t a bad day,” Gundotra said. But he said the memo was a rare representative glance at Google’s internal culture, which is brutally honest.

Brin, meanwhile, was dismissive of Yegge’s memo. “I didn’t make it past the first 1,000 pages myself,” he said.

As for the critique that Google+ must compete with Facebook’s overwhelming network effects, Gundotra argued that so many Internet users already use Google for other reasons, they will eventually find their way to Google+.

As for whether the 40 million-plus people who have signed up for Google+ are actually using it, Gundotra repeated a stat from last week that 3.4 billion photos have been uploaded to the service since it launched.

Now What? The Post-Jobs Era in Tech.

Kara Swisher — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 13:17:29 +0000

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 ]

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Tech and Media Titans Pay Tribute to Steve Jobs

Liz Gannes — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:08:24 +0000

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 iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@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 webReply RetweetFavorite

@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.”

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Portrait of the Billionaire as a Young Man

Voices — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 07:01:04 +0000

A new project I have just started is going to generate personalized movie ratings for users. The way it works is as follows. You rate the movies you have seen. Then the system finds other users with similar tastes to extrapolate how much you will like some other movies. It is currently written entirely in Python.

From a resume purportedly belonging to Sergey Brin, circa 1996

Zuckerberg Tops Vanity Fair's "New Establishment" List Again (And Look Who's No. 40)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 04:00:13 +0000

Vanity Fair magazine put out its high-profile “New Establishment” list of the top 50 people, who are “an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies, and entrepreneurs, who quite often sport hoodies, floppy hair, and backpacks.”

The hoodie part would be referring to Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who topped the list — which is in the just-released October issue — for the second year in a row.

The Vanity Fair list was packed with Silicon Valley luminaries.

The No. 2 spot went to the hopelessly conjoined twins at Google, CEO Larry Page and his co-founder Sergey Brin. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos was No. 3, followed by newly born CEO Tim Cook and top product guy Jonathan Ive of Apple at No. 4, with Twitter creator and Square founder Jack Dorsey at No. 5.

Interestingly, super-VCs Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz clocked in this year at No. 6.

The digitally fast-forward Lady Gaga was the top woman on the list at No. 9, in front of “Harry Potter” author J. K. Rowling at No. 16.

And, clocking in at No. 40? Why, me and my partner-in-crime at AllThingsD, Walt Mossberg. He is apparently a “kingmaker” of tech and I do “juicy exclusives.”

That actually is pretty accurate. More importantly, we were ranked higher than Justin Timberlake and Ashton Kutcher. In other words: Mission accomplished!

We also beat the Angry Birds dudes at No. 49, whom my two kids would nonetheless have voted tops over their mom any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

In addition, Vanity Fair broke off a list of 25 “Powers That Be,” which is made up of a lot of longtime “New Establishment” folks, as well as another list called the “Hall of Fame.”

“These are the people who have shaped the world we live in today — and continue to wield enormous influence,” said Vanity Fair, which translates into dustier moguls.

Topping the powers-that-be, of course, is Apple’s co-founder and Chairman Steve Jobs. And outgone Google CEO and now Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is now enshrined in the hall of fame.

As Walt and I head to a good table at the Minetta Tavern to meet the cool peeps for a celebratory drink, here is the official press releases from Vanity Fair:

FACEBOOK FOUNDER MARK ZUCKERBERG TOPS VANITY FAIR’S NEW ESTABLISHMENT LIST FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW

Sergey Brin and Larry Page Take No. 2 Spot, Lady Gaga Jumps to the Top 10 of Tech-Dominant List

NEW YORK, N.Y. — “The Age of Information gives way to a burgeoning Age of Technology,” announces Graydon Carter, remarking on the “seismic shift in interest and influence” that has occurred in the 17 years that Vanity Fair has been ranking America’s power players. The magazine’s 2011 New Establishment list identifies the top 50 of an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies, and entrepreneurs, who quite often sport hoodies, floppy hair, and backpacks.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the inescapable social-networking site Facebook, maintains his perch at the top of Vanity Fair’s 17th annual New Establishment List ranking for the second year in a row. With a possible I.P.O. on the horizon by 2012, which could value the company anywhere between $50 and $100 billion, Facebook has enough clout to worry even the unshakable Google. Zuckerberg is still the youngest person ever to top the list.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google, are in the No. 2 spot this year, closing in on Zuckerberg as they jump up one spot, from No. 3 in 2010. Eric Schmidt, who appeared on the list last year with the duo, has since been pushed out of the C.E.O’s office, replaced by Page. Despite reports of an anti-trust investigation, Google has been setting its sites on Facebook by concentrating on strategic initiatives, such as engineering social-networking features.

Rounding out the top five are Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, at No. 3, Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive, of Apple, at No. 4, and Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, at No. 5.

Lady Gaga makes an appearance for the second year in a row. Coming in at No. 9, she is the highest-ranking woman on the list, in front of J. K. Rowling at No. 16, Sheryl Sandberg, of Facebook, at No. 26, Angela Ahrendts with Christopher Bailey, of Burberry, at No. 30, Natalie Massenet at No. 32, and Kara Swisher with Walt Mossberg at No. 40. At 25 years old, Gaga is also the youngest person on the list — not a surprise for someone whose fans managed to crash Amazon’s servers in their desperation to download her third album.

Youthful energy is spread throughout this year’s list with 15 members under the age of 40, including Zuckerberg, Brin and Page, Dorsey, Lady Gaga, Andrew Mason, Sean Parker, Ryan Kavanaugh, Jeremy Stoppelman, Ashton Kutcher, Dennis Crowley, Daniel Ek, Mikael Hed and Niklas Hed, and Justin Timberlake.

There are 14 billionaires on the list: Zuckerberg, Brin and Page, Bezos, Mark Pincus, Michael Moritz, J. K. Rowling, Jim Breyer, Reid Hoffman, Herbert Allen III, Yuri Milner, Robin Li, Parker, and Peter Thiel.

Five member of the New Establishment are actively involved in space exploration, including Brin, Elon Musk, Bezos, Thiel, and Dennis Crowley. Eight of the New Establishment nominees can count themselves members of the ever growing Stanford Mafia; they include Brin, Page, Reed Hastings, Jim Breyer, Hoffman, Musk, Thiel, and John Hennessy.

The New Establishment, Vanity Fair’s annual ranking of the top leaders of our time, is made up of owners, creators, buyers, thinkers, and innovators — the movers and shakers in the worlds of technology, media, business, politics, entertainment, and fashion. These men and women are the taste-makers and trendsetters, opinion formers and agenda creators, not to mention empire builders. Entry into the ranks of Vanity Fair’s list is based on a number of factors: wealth, influence, and philanthropy, as well as such intangibles as vision and the x factor.

The October issue of Vanity Fair will be on newsstands in New York and L.A. on September 1, and nationally and on the iPad September 6.

THE VANITY FAIR NEW ESTABLISHMENT

1. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
2. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google
3. Jeff Bezos, Amazon
4. Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive, Apple
5. Jack Dorsey, Square, Twitter
6. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
7. Reed Hastings, Netflix
8. John Lasseter, Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios
9. Lady Gaga, singer
10. Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg L.P.
11. Dick Costolo, Twitter
12. Mark Pincus, Zynga
13. Jim Breyer, Accel Partners
14. Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and Graham King, Movies
15. Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital
16. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter
17. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park
18. Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners, LinkedIn
19. Herb Allen III, Allen & Co.
20. Judd Apatow, Apatow Productions
21. Jay-Z, Roc Nation
22. Todd Phillips, Green Hat Films
23. Yuri Milner, DST Global
24. J. J. Abrams, writer, director, producer
25. Robin Li, Baidu
26. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook
27. Andrew Mason, Groupon
28. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, television
29. Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson, Leverage
30. Angela Ahrendts and Christopher Bailey, Burberry
31. Elon Musk, Tesla Motors, Space X
32. Natalie Massenet, Net-a-Porter Group
33. Paul Graham, Y Combinator
34. Sean Parker, entrepreneur
35. Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, Flatiron Partners
36. Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, Clarium Capital Management
37. Peter Jackson, Wingnut Films
38. Ryan Kavanaugh, Relativity Media
39. Mike Allen, Politico
40. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, All Things D
41. John Hennessy, Stanford University
42. Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp
43. Ashton Kutcher, actor, investor
44. Tyler Perry, director, producer, writer, actor
45. Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
46. Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe
47. Daniel Ek, Spotify
48. Henry Blodget, Business Insider
49. Mikael Hed, Niklas Hed, and Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio
50. Justin Timberlake, singer, actor

STEVE JOBS HOLDS THE TOP SPOT ON VANITY FAIR’S LIST OF THE POWERS THAT BE

Embattled News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch in the Top 5

NEW YORK, N.Y. — This year Vanity Fair inaugurates a list of the Powers That Be. These are the people who have shaped the world we live in today — and continue to wield enormous influence. Many are longtime New Establishment members, and their destinies are intertwined with the members of this year’s New Establishment.

Steve Jobs, of Apple, holds the top spot on the list of the Powers That Be. Since Jobs took control of the company 14 years ago, the stock’s share price has risen more than 6,500 percent. At the height of the debt crisis in late July, Apple had more cash on hand than the U.S. government.

Bernard Arnault, of luxury-goods company LVMH, ranks in the No. 2 spot. As an overseer of countless enduring luxury brands, Arnault has left his mark on the industry. Last year he spent $2 billion to accumulate a 20 percent stake in family-controlled but publicly traded Hermès.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is No.3 on this year’s list while News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch comes in at No. 4. The tumultuous News of the World scandals this year have shaken the media baron, but also shown his staying power in the face of just about anything. Brian Roberts and Steve Burke, of Comcast, NBCUniversal, who recently acquired the U.S. media rights to the Olympic Games through 2020, are No. 5.

Jill Abramson is the highest-ranking woman out of six on the list, at No. 9. She is followed by Angelina Jolie with Brad Pitt at No. 11, Sue Naegle with Richard Plepler and Michael Lombardo at No. 15, Anne Sweeney with George Bodenheimer at No. 22, Bonnie Hammer at No. 24, and Arianna Huffington with Tim Armstrong at No. 25.

Because some power is permanent, Vanity Fair nominates a number of regulars to the Hall of Fame this year. Warren Buffett, of Berkshire Hathaway, joins Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, Tom Ford, actor Tom Hanks, and designer Karl Lagerfeld. Network impresario Oprah Winfrey, Jeffrey Katzenberg, of DreamWorks Animation, and talk-show host Charlie Rose all make the ranks as well.

The October issue of Vanity Fair will be on newsstands in New York and L.A. on September 1, and nationally and on the iPad September 6.

THE POWERS THAT BE

1. Steve Jobs, Apple
2. Bernard Arnault, LVMH
3. Michael Bloomberg, mayor, New York City
4. Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation
5. Brian Roberts and Steve Burke, Comcast, NBCUniversal
6. François-Henri Pinault, PPR
7. Bob Iger, Walt Disney Company
8. Jeffrey Bewkes, Time Warner
9. Jill Abramson, The New York Times
10. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft
11. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, movies, philanthropy
12. Diego Della Valle, Tod’s
13. Roman Abramovich, investments
14. Mickey Drexler, J. Crew
15. Richard Plepler, Sue Naegle, and Michael Lombardo, HBO
16. Larry Gagosian, Gagosian Gallery
17. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the Weinstein Company
18. Marc Jacobs, designer
19. Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live
20. David Zaslav, Discovery Communications
21. Jean Pigozzi, investments, art
22. George Bodenheimer and Anne Sweeney, Disney Media Networks
23. Vivi Nevo, NV Investments
24. Bonnie Hammer, NBCU Cable Entertainment and Cable Studios
25. Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington, AOL Huffington Post Media Group

HALL OF FAME

Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music Group
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway
Ron Conway, angel investor
Philippe Dauman, Viacom
Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, IAC, DVF
John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Larry Ellison, Oracle Corporation
Tom Ford, designer/filmmaker
Ted Forstmann, IMG Worldwide
Tom Freston, Firefly3
Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, Imagine Entertainment
Tom Hanks, actor
Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation
Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures
Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel
Ralph Lauren, Polo Ralph Lauren
John Malone, Liberty Media
Ron Meyer, Universal Studios
Leslie Moonves, CBS
Ronald Perelman, MacAndrews and Forbes
Miuccia Prada, Prada
Charlie Rose, talk-show host
Eric Schmidt, Google
Terry Semel, investor
Oprah Winfrey, OWN

(Full disclosure: Readers who look closely at the list will notice that all things ATD senior editor Peter Kafka is listed as a contributor. This is true! Also true: Peter wrote biographical entries for several people on the list, but has zero input on its composition. He tells us he had no idea that we were being considered for inclusion, and we believe him. He also says that had he been asked for his opinion, he would have voted for us, his bosses, to be included. We also believe that.)

Exclusive: Max Levchin to Leave Google as Slide Is Shut Down

Liz Gannes — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:35:07 +0000

Slide, the social apps company that Google bought just over a year ago for about $200 million, will be dissolved, and its well-regarded leader Max Levchin will depart Google, sources close to the matter told AllThingsD.

Google confirmed the departure today.

“Max has decided to leave Slide and Google to pursue other opportunities, and we wish him the best,” said a Google spokesperson. “Most of the team from Slide will remain at Google to work on other opportunities.”

After being acquired, Slide had operated as an independent unit out of Google’s San Francisco office, maintaining existing apps like SuperPoke Pets and experimenting with new ones such as messaging app Disco and photo-sharing app Photovine, which was released only last week.

The apps, none of which were extremely popular, will be sunsetted over the next few months.

The news was announced to employees at an all-staff meeting in San Francisco this afternoon, sources said. A source said that some of the Slide team is expected to land at YouTube, which is also operated independently within Google. Slide has about 100 employees, with not too much attrition in the last year, said that source.

Although Slide as an independent start-up had not matched its lofty expectations and valuations — at as much as $500 million in a 2008 funding round — its acquisition brought Google some key assets: Social Web expertise at a time when it was dearly needed, and Levchin, who famously founded PayPal.

But that was last August. Since then, Google has entrusted its social efforts to two of its existing executives, Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, who led the team that created Google+. Levchin was left on the fringes with Slide as an autonomous subsidiary, reporting to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

In addition, at the time Slide was bought, Google CEO Larry Page had not yet reassumed leadership of the company he co-founded. In April, Page consolidated and streamlined Google’s product structure into seven distinct units. And even though the social team may have been the natural fit for Slide, the two were not integrated.

In addition to Levchin, Slide head of product Jared Fliesler also plans to leave Google, and has accepted a position with former Slide colleague Keith Rabois at payments start-up Square, sources said. (Rabois had joined Google only very briefly after Slide was bought, before jumping ship to work with Twitter co-founder and creator Jack Dorsey at Square.)

Levchin has also been an active angel investor, is chairman of the board of Yelp, and — congrats to him and his wife — is expecting his second child next month.

Larry Page Might Be Bill Gates+, But He Wants to Be Steve Jobs

Kara Swisher — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:12:09 +0000

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.

What Is The Eric Schmidt Google Era? (Video)

John Paczkowski — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 05:07:59 +0000

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt himself provided the answer to that question in the opening night session of D9. During a wide-ranging interview with co-hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Schmidt talked about handing adult supervision of the company to co-founder Larry Page, the “Gang Of Four” companies dominating tech today, Google’s social networking missteps and a decade spent growing the company from quirky start-up to industry leviathan.

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Windows Use at Google Evidently One of Those 20 Percent Things

John Paczkowski — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:27:18 +0000

If Google is phasing out internal use of Microsoft Windows, it’s taking its time with the transition. Asked during a Wednesday I/O Q&A what percentage of Google employees still use Windows machines at work, co-founder Sergey Brin hazarded a guess and it was quite a bit more than you might think.

“I’d guess maybe 20 percent,” he replied, noting that most use Windows 7. “I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with Windows. It has a lot of great security features.”

An interesting remark, given reports that Google has been actively moving employees off Windows as part of “a security effort.” That said, the company clearly has big hopes for its Chrome OS internally and feels the wider deployment of Chromebooks within the company will make things easier for everyone by eliminating the complexity of managing their computers.

“Chromebooks are a new model that doesn’t put the burden of managing the computer on yourself….I think that’s just a much easier way to compute. Ultimately, the most precious resource is the user’s time….I hope next year to be able to report that we have a very small percentage of our employees using anything other than Chromebooks.”

[Image credit: oneWeb20]

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