Google CEO Larry Page, a Difficult Premiere Role

When Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page announced that he would take over as chief executive earlier this year, he promised that he would shake up the Internet search giant to speed up decision making. Instead, much of the shaking up has happened to the new CEO.

Challenges have piled up for Mr. Page since he assumed his post in April. They include a broad U.S. antitrust probe of the company's practices; the settlement of a long-running criminal investigation into Google's advertising business; and shifting industry forces that led him to make a deal to buy mobile-device maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. Since he took on his new role, the company's stock price has declined 9.1%, compared with a drop of 8.42% for Nasdaq stocks as a whole.

Last week, federal prosecutors who had investigated Google's practice of allowing ads from illegal online pharmacies on its Web search engine between 2003 and 2009 singled out Mr. Page. They said he had personal knowledge of the alleged crime and failed to prevent it. The federal prosecutors made their comments after Google paid $500 million last week to avoid criminal charges.

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Larry Page

A Google spokesman declined to comment on what Mr. Page did or didn't know of the ad practices. He added that "the investigation was not related to current advertising practices and that the company was moving on." The company declined to make Mr. Page, 38 years old, available for comment.

Other setbacks have included a failure to reach a deal with music labels that would let Google's new Internet music service sell songs and albums; a public disclosure by the company in June that China-based "bad actors" spied on Gmail accounts, and the failure to win a July auction for Nortel Networks Corp.'s technology patents, which Google said pushed it to make its purchase of Motorola.

But according to colleagues, Mr. Page has dealt with the eventful past few months by focusing on matters within his control, including positioning Google in new lines of business.

"Larry's very aware of all the things that are playing out internally and externally, and he cares about it," said Sundar Pichai, who leads Google's Chrome browser and operating system. "While he takes all that into his mind, the way he approaches work is with a strong focus around products and users."

Source:- http://online.wsj.com/

The Difference Between Microsoft And Apple

Microsoft showed off the upcoming improvements in the file explorer for Windows 8 on its blog this morning, and the post highlighted the main difference between Microsoft and Apple.

It's not just about complexity, which Apple hides and Microsoft defiantly does not. (As MG Siegler pointed out in this excellent graphic.)

More revealing is the fact that Microsoft collected data from hundreds of millions of users (anonymously) to figure out exactly how they use Windows Explorer today. Then, they analyzed this data in painstaking detail -- for instance:

The top 10 commands represent 81.8% of total usage. Additionally it shows us that people overwhelmingly use Explorer for core file management tasks - the top 7 commands (72.2% of usage) are all for managing/manipulating files.

And:

54.5% of commands are invoked using a right-click context menu, and another 32.2% are invoked using keyboard shortcuts (“Hotkey” above) while only 10.9% come from the Command bar, the most visible UI element in Explorer in Windows 7 and Vista.

They used this data to figure out where to start. The team is pretty proud because "The commands that make up 84% of what customers do in Explorer are now all available on this one tab."

Never mind that the rest of the tab is filled with icons that will be rarely, if ever, used.

Then, they asked customers what they wanted to see. "Customers have a lot of suggestions for how they’d like to see Explorer evolve."

This is exactly the opposite of Apple's approach.

From Steve Jobs:

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

There's also:

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

This approach has become so ingrained at Apple, they embedded the quote in one of the icons in OS X Lion.

And then there's this gem:

The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste.

So which approach is better?

The market will decide.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/