Posted by: Rob Hof on January 15
When I talked the other day with Bill Coleman, CEO of Cassatt and a former colleague of new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz at Sun Microsystems, he said he was initially surprised she would take on such a demanding job. After all, she stepped back from being CEO of Autodesk to be executive chairman, seeming to head toward relative retirement. "I thought, why does Carol need that at this time of her life?" But he thinks she was ready to get back to full-time work. "I think she misses that energy."
I'm sure he's right. But there's another reason, too: money. According to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing, she will be paid a base salary of $1 million plus up to a $3 million annual bonus, plus an annual equity grant worth $8 million in 2009, plus a $10 million equity grant this year to make up for forfeiting Autodesk grants and medical coverage. Nice.
Even more important, potentially, is that she will get options for 5 million shares at the outset. If Yahoo's stock rises significantly at all from its current nadir--which is of course the whole point of hiring her, ultimately--she's in a position to make out very well. Eric Savitz at Barron's does some nice math on that: It could add up to more than $40 million if Yahoo's stock rises from $12 (a little more than today's close) to $18 a share.
Not least, the employment agreement is for an initial four years. No short-timer here, as I figured.
Details after the jump:
Continue reading "Another Reason Carol Bartz Joined Yahoo: $$$"
Posted by: Rob Hof on January 15
Yahoo's stock fell more than 6% today as investors digested reports on what new CEO Carol Bartz told employees during an all-hands meeting yesterday. Some reports indicated she said her "gut" told her not to sell off the search business. That prompted some analysts and investors to assume a deal with Microsoft, which Yahoo rejected twice last year, was more unlikely than they had assumed now that a new CEO is in place to take a fresh look.
But from a couple of people I've talked to, the nuance was slightly different. According to one person who was there, what she said was that her gut feeling was, Why would you sell? In other words, while she seemed somewhat skeptical, this reading of her comments indicates she could be convinced--if, after talking to people who favor a deal and those who don't, which she said she plans to do, it looked like a deal of some would be good. She also said she saw reasons to do a deal and reasons not to do a deal.
This is understandably politic, if nothing else, since you don't want to send remaining search and search ad talent fleeing for the exits again, which happened last year when a deal seemed more likely. And you certainly don't want to give up any bargaining position to Microsoft, the only real prospect to make a deal.
So it seems to me that investors overreacted--big surprise, since this is, after all, Yahoo, whose actions have confounded most people's expectations over the past year.
What seems clear is that at the least, no deal is going to happen immediately. Which is exactly what Bartz signaled during a brief phone conference Tuesday after her appointment when she declared, "Let's give this company some friggin' breathing room." But clearly investors aren't inclined to give her all that much.
Employees, however, may be another matter. One person at the all-hands meeting reports that "employees were really pumped" by her evident energy. While this person is a Yahoo partisan, I don't doubt it. She managed the same trick at Autodesk, and many employees are yearning for more decisive leadership.
Posted by: Rob Hof on January 14
Even Google gets the blues. In what might be seen as its first "real" layoffs, Google is cutting about 100 recruiting jobs, though some of those people may find other jobs.
This actually isn't its first layoff, since it cut some people after its DoubleClick acquisition last March, but that was people not originally hired by Google. And it cut some thousands of contractors and temporary workers in recent weeks.
Since Google has explicitly said it's reducing hiring, it makes sense that it wouldn't need as many recruiters. And it says it's still hiring more slowly in other areas, though Google also said today that it's closing offices in Austin, Trondheim, Norway, and Lulea, Sweden and may not be able to save all 70 engineering jobs there.
Google says those closings are not part of cost-cutting, and that appears to be true; in an interview I did with Eric Schmidt last March, he was already mentioning that one of Google's biggest challenges was the difficulty of communications among many small, farflung offices around the world. But clearly the slowing economy offers a good excuse to make a move.
That's not all. In quick succession today, Google also announced cuts in a number of projects--probably wise, notes Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, since nearly all of which had failed to take off. Google has not announced separate layoffs as a result of these moves, so presumably folks on the projects are getting redeployed elsewhere.
On the chopping block are Dodgeball, a mobile social networking service, and Mashup Editor, a way to create new Web applications using various pieces of Google services that was in a private test. It's also shuttering the Twitterlike microblogging service Jaiku, Google Catalog Search, and Google Notebook. And it's no longer going to allow uploads to Google Video, in favor of the much more popular YouTube and video on its Picasa Web Albums.
None of these cutbacks is particularly surprising, given that Google's got a lot of other irons in the fire and clearly wants to avoid spending on products that aren't going anywhere. Indeed, it's a sign that the company, which hired a new chief financial officer last year, is taking decisive steps to cut costs in the face of an economy that's screeching to a halt.
Analysts have been bringing down fourth-quarter and 2009 revenue and profit estimates for Google thanks to signs that the economy is hitting online advertising harder. So far, those estimate cuts are mild because it appears that Google's search ads, which are more measurable than other kinds of ads, have been holding up better.
Still, all these moves are a sign that in this deep recession, even one of the world's most successful companies is mortal. It seems likely that even if Google fares better than most, as appears likely, it won't be completely spared from the worst economic troubles in many years.
Posted by: Douglas MacMillan on January 14
It’s tempting to compartmentalize social networking sites by the demographic groups most closely associated with them: MySpace is a party for teenagers, Facebook is for a hangout for college students, and LinkedIn is a conference for working professionals. But a steady influx of adult Internet users to all of these sites is altering their makeup at a surprising rate, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The research group found that some 35% of online adults now have at least one profile on a social networking site, more than quadruple the amount that did in February 2005, when the figure was 8%. Compared with teenagers – who flocked to these sites early on but then slowed down in adoption – the number of grown-ups jumping on the social media bandwagon has roughly doubled every 18 months over the past four years.
Continue reading "More Adults Joining Social Networks, Pew Says"
Posted by: Rob Hof on January 14
Just a week after revealing that he has a medical issue related to his 2004 pancreatic cancer surgery that had taken a toll on his weight, Apple CEO Steve Jobs today said he's taking a medical leave until the end of June. In an email to Apple employees today, Jobs said in the past week he had been informed that his health-related issues are "more complex than I originally thought" and that curiosity over his health was becoming too much of a distraction for his family and for Apple.
Here's the full email:
Team,
I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.
In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.
I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple's day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.
I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.
Steve
The news is already spooking investors. Apple's stock futures fell, and after-hours trading in Apple was halted.
Worries about Jobs' health had been swirling especially since his appearance at an Apple iPhone launch last June, when I and others noticed he looked particularly gaunt. But concerns deepened a few weeks ago after Jobs said he would not make his customary keynote address at the annual Macworld conference in San Francisco, which was held last week. He then announced that he was suffering from "hormonal imbalances" that were affecting his weight, but he indicated that relatively straightforward dietary changes over the coming months were expected to resolve the problem.
The concern over Jobs is not just because of his legendary status in tech but because he's seen, rightly or wrongly, as the one indispensable leader at Apple. He's seen as the chief driver of all of Apple's major products, from Macintosh computers, iPod music players, and iPhones.
More to come...
(Photo courtesy AP)
