viernes, 21 de enero de 2011

Google turns a new Page

Jan 21st 2011, 9:35 by The Economist online | SAN FRANCISCO

IT HAS been all change at the top of two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent tech giants this week. First Apple revealed that Steve Jobs, its boss, was stepping away from day-to-day management responsibilities at the company to focus on an unspecified health problem. Then on January 20th Google said that Eric Schmidt, the firm’s chief executive, would hand over that role in April to Larry Page, one of the firm’s two co-founders. Mr Schmidt will become executive chairman, focusing on areas such as acquisitions and government relations, while remaining an advisor to Mr Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s other co-founder, who is going to concentrate on certain strategic projects. (Messrs Schmidt, Page and Brin, from left to right, are pictured above with one of their experimental self-driving cars).
The change makes sense, though arguably it should have happened sooner. As Google has grown from a start-up into a global powerhouse with 24,000 employees, some of its original entrepreneurial spirit has been crushed by a burgeoning bureaucracy. Several prominent Xooglers, as former employees of the company are known, have complained that it has become difficult to get things done at the firm. And rivals such as Twitter and Facebook have exploited this growing sense of frustration by pinching talented executives from Google’s ranks.
The current set-up at the top of the firm is partly to blame for this state of affairs. Mr Schmidt, a former head of Novell and chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems, was initially appointed in 2001 to provide some experienced leadership at a company whose co-founders were inexperienced. And under his guidance, Google blossomed. But now Mr Page is clearly ready and eager to run the show again. (He had stepped down as CEO when Mr Schmidt arrived.) Moreover, the triumvirate has shown its limits. Mr Schmidt has been careful to consult Google’s co-founders on all important issues. That is why the unconventional arrangement has lasted so long. But this consensus-style approach to decision-making has become a bottleneck that the company can ill-afford at a time when it is facing several significant challenges.
One of these is the rise of Facebook, which is determined to displace Google as the most popular gateway to the internet. Another is the need to develop sizeable new sources of revenue to supplement those it derives from its search business. Google is also being scrutinised closely by the European Commission, America’s Department of Justice and several other bodies on anti-trust matters and could also be hurt by moves to tighten regulations that govern online privacy.
The planned changes in Google’s leadership should better equip it to handle all of these issues. Freed from what Mr Schmidt  jokingly referred to in a tweet as his “adult supervision”, Mr Page will have the authority to take swift decisions on product matters without the need for a three-way consultation. Meanwhile Mr Schmidt can concentrate on helping Google to negotiate the regulatory minefield it faces and on identifying more juicy acquisition targets for the company, which recently launched an unsuccessful $6 billion bid for Groupon, a firm that offers group discounts to online buyers.
Google certainly has no shortage of financial firepower. On the same day that it announced its senior management changes, the firm revealed it had $35 billion of cash in its coffers at the end of 2010. It also unveiled an impressive set of fourth-quarter results, with revenue hitting some $8.4 billion, a 26% increase over the same period in its previous fiscal year. It is now up to Mr Page to show that he has what it takes to keep the search giant firing on all cylinders.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2011/01/googles_management_shuffle&fsrc=nwl

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