Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Larry Page

WATCH: Larry Page Talks About Facebook Being Closed With Their Data

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:31:49 +0000

Google CEO Larry Page was interviewed by Charlie Rose of PBS last night to discuss various topics. One of the topics was regarding the Facebook IPO. Page wished Facebook well, but decided to focus more on Facebook being a closed environment.

When Rose asked Page about whether he is worried about Facebook’s competition in search, he said “I think that it’s something we take seriously — like people’s social media. I think it’s been unfortunate that Facebook has been pretty closed with their data. We’re in the business of searching data, we generally do not turn it down when it is offered to us. In general, I think we would like to see content on the Internet being more open.” He then talked about the issue that Google and Facebook had in regards to contacts. Check out the video below. The audio kicks in at around the 10 second mark:

Dennis Woodside Becomes CEO Of Motorola Mobility

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:35:45 +0000

Google CEO Larry Page has confirmed that Google has officially acquired Motorola Mobility. “Sanjay Jha, who was responsible for building the company and placing that big bet on Android, has stepped down as CEO. I would like to thank him for his efforts and am tremendously pleased that he will be working to ensure a smooth transition as long-time Googler Dennis Woodside takes over as CEO of Motorola Mobility,” said Page. Woodside expanded Google’s business across the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Woodside also helped Google’s revenue increase from $10.8 billion to $17.5 billion in under three years as the President of the Americas region.

Google’s Stock Split Will Cause The New Half To Not Have Any Shareholder Voting Power

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 23:13:30 +0000

When Google announced that they are splitting the company into two halves, it turns out that the newer half will not have any shareholder voting power. Google will be joining the likes of a liquor producer, home builder, and several other media conglomerates that are controlled by families. The current shareholders would have a new nonvoting share for every share they own. This will help Google CEO Larry Page, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt retain a lot of power.

The three would control over two-thirds of the voting power, which means that the three of them can make all of the company decisions. They would be able to hand on stock options to employees and make stock-based acquisitions without having to dilute their shareholder voting power too.

Other companies that have a nonvoting class of shares include Discovery Communications, Viacom, and Comcast. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts controls about one-third of the shareholder voting power while owning a small fraction of its shares. Cable maker Molex, Brown-Forman (known for making Jack Daniels whiskey and other liquors), and home-builder company Lennar have a similar structure.

“Investors need to come to this with their eyes open,” stated Stanford professor Joseph Grundfest. “It’s not a surprise to anyone that when you invest in Google you’re investing in Larry and Sergey. And any good investor also knows that if you’re investing in [soon-to-be public] Facebook you’re investing in [CEO] Mark Zuckerberg, and if you invested in Zynga you invested in [CEO] Mark Pincus,”

Larry Page: Happiness Is A Healthy Disregard For The Impossible

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 21:46:03 +0000

Google CEO Larry Page wrote a long memo today discussing the growth of Google+ and Android. I would say the best section of the memo is in the conclusion. Page reminisced about the time he spent at a summer leadership course at the University of Michigan. The slogan of the summer leadership course was “a healthy disregard for the impossible.” That idea has stuck with Page ever since, but he said that it has been easier to make progress on “mega-ambitious goals” instead of less risky projects. Only a few people are crazy enough to try. Google AdSense has paid out $30 billion to their partners and it was the result of “failed ‘more’ ambitious project to under the Web. The team failed at understanding the Web, mostly, I think, because they were distracted by their work making advertisements amazingly relevant.”

Larry Page Is “Driven By His Paranoia About Facebook”

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:08:21 +0000

Larry Page was made CEO of Google in January 2011. For the last three years Ken Auletta has been getting to know Larry Page as part of a book that he is writing called “Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.” Auletta was recently quoted as saying “Larry is driven by his paranoia about Facebook. Clearly, these are two companies at war with each other.” Page takes Google+ very seriously in that regard. In an interview with Bloomberg, Page said:

I have over 2 million followers now on Google Plus. A number of other people are even ahead of me. And that’s with real engagement. So I’m very happy with the growth of the core Google Plus network. It doesn’t mean tomorrow it’s going to be bigger than any other social network out there. That’s not realistic. But it’s growing faster, I think, than other services have and I’m very happy with that.

Since Facebook launched in 2004, they have been collecting information about the interests from their users, which is insightful data for generating contextual advertising. However Google couldn’t use most of that data to refine their search engine and other products, which is one of the main reasons why Google+ was created. Google Plus now has about 100 million users, which is far behind Facebook’s 845 million users.

Google Ann Arbor Office Now Has Over 300 Employees

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:57:03 +0000

Google has hit 300 employees at their Ann Arbor sales office said Mike Miller. The Ann Arbor office has just celebrated their five year anniversary. The Google Ann Arbor office is still focused on North American sales, but they have recently started providing services to YouTube and Google+.

“Our hope would be that we continue to grow, that our business overall continues to grow, that the office will continue along that path,” stated Miller.

Google is starting to expand functions of its Ann Arbor office beyond sales. Google opened their Ann Arbor office in September 2006 in a small second-office floor above a restaurant and bar called Vinology on Main Street. After that they expanded into a bigger office at the McKinley Towne Centre at the corner of Liberty and Division.

Google co-founder Larry Page is friends with U of M President Mary Sue Coleman, which played a major role in the company creating an office in Ann Arbor. Google was also attracted to young talent in Ann Arbor.

Google was originally planning to add 1,000 jobs over the first five years in their Ann Arbor offices, but the company personnel growth slowed during the middle of a global financial crisis.

To help Google offset their personnel costs, Google received approval from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s Michigan Economic Growth Authority (MEGA) board in 2006 to get a tax credit of up to $38.25 million over the next 20 years. Google will not be forced to pay back taxes because MEGA tax credits are distributed on an incremental basis per hired employee. The MEGA tax credit program stopped in 2011 as part of Governor Rick Snyder’s business tax reform legislation.

[AnnArbor.com]

Larry Page Tells Employees To Leave If They Don’t Like Search Plus Your World

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:32:58 +0000

Google has over 30,000 employees and several of them are the world’s best engineers. A good number of these engineers do not like the recent Search Plus Your World feature built into the results of the search engine. The core of Google’s corporate culture was “Don’t be evil,” but this new strategy seems to be a very aggressive move against Facebook.

“This is the path we’re headed down – a single unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything. If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else,” stated Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page at a staff event after the Search Plus Your World launch. This quote seems to be from a source with PandoDaily. Don’t let the baby-face of the Google CEO fool you, Page is a very ballsy guy.

Business Daily Names Larry Page “CEO Of The Year”

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:13:01 +0000

This past April, Larry Page replaced Eric Schmidt as the CEO of Google. He has been a doing a great job since he started by shutting down services that were not popular and oversaw the growth of the Google+ social network. On top of that Android is growing like a weed. These are reasons why Investor’s Business Daily has named Larry Page the “CEO of the Year.” Google’s revenues increased over the last two quarters by 32%. Business Daily said that Page took an “aggressive approach to inspiring one of the Internet’s top performers into something even better.” Below are some additional reasons why Business Daily decided to name Page as the “CEO of the Year”:

He reorganized the company’s management structure, redesigned the face of the company’s products and pushed forward with a multibillion dollar deal to acquire a cellphone manufacturing outfit. He also launched two other products aiming at Groupon, the leader of online coupons, and Facebook, the top social networking site.

Google Execs Page, Brin, and Schmidt Offered $33 Million To NASA For Hangar To Cover Their 8 Private Jets

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 02:11:09 +0000

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) executives Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmdit offered $33 million to refurbish NASA’s Hangar One. As a result, the three executives would essentially be leasing the space from NASA to park eight of their private jets in there. Page, Brin, and Schmidt made the offer through their H211 airplane operations company this past September. NASA has not accepted the offer as of yet.

“We understand the interest and historic nature of the facility” stated NASA spokesperson Bob Jacobs. “We have to weigh that against the reality of constrained resources and use.”

If NASA agrees, then NASA would replace the outer panels of Hangar One. The outer panels have been removed since it was discovered that they contained lead paint and asbestos. NASA would remain the owner of the building and they would have the right to rent out areas of Hangar One that was not being used. Google would be able to use two-thirds of Hangar One’s floor space to park their 8 jets.

Hangar One was built in the 1930′s. Hangar One covers 8 acres and the height of the building is 198 feet. The Hangar was intended to house military airships. The building is so tall that fog is known to form in the upper levels of the facility.

[Mercury News]

Google Reports $9.72 Billion In Revenues This Quarter

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:35:03 +0000

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has announced financial results for the quarter that ended in September 30, 2011. Google reported revenues of $9.72 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2011. This is an increase of 33% compared to the third quarter of 2010.

“We had a great quarter,” said Google CEO Larry Page. “Revenue was up 33% year on year and our quarterly revenue was just short of $10 billion. Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark. People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started!”