Google Chief Has Unknown Ailment

 Story first reported from wsj.com

Google Inc. says Chief Executive Larry Page has "lost his voice," but it won't say much more about the matter. Some corporate governance experts think the Internet company should speak up.

The billionaire co-founder missed Google's annual meeting Thursday, and the company said he will miss two other important engagements over the next several weeks.

Google gave no further information about Mr. Page's problems, though it said he continues to lead the company. The lack of details surrounding the matter prompted some speculation on Wall Street about whether he may have a serious medical condition.

In an email to employees on Thursday, however, Mr. Page wrote that "there is nothing seriously wrong with me" and that he would "continue to run the company," according to a person familiar with the matter.

The 39-year-old Mr. Page took over as chief executive last year, his second stint running Google in its 14-year history. He was absent from the shareholder meeting at the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

At the meeting, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Mr. Page had "lost his voice" and "can't do any public speaking engagements for the time being," including the coming week's Google annual conference for software developers and at the second-quarter earnings conference call that is expected in mid-July. He added that "Larry will continue to run the company, he's running all the strategic business decisions and all that."

Mr. Schmidt, who wished Mr. Page a "quick recovery," also joked that co-founder Sergey Brin "has said that this problem will make Larry a better CEO because he's going to have to choose his words very carefully."

Few watchers of the Internet giant seemed in a joking mood, however. That is especially true in Silicon Valley, where the death of Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs is still fresh in people's minds.

Apple's disclosures about the health of Mr. Jobs, who died in October after a battle with pancreatic cancer, were criticized at times for providing few details about his condition.

"We have no specific reason to think there is anything more to Larry's condition, but we find it odd that the company would already rule him out of the 2Q call which is likely still a few weeks away," wrote JP Morgan stock analyst Doug Anmuth in a note to clients.

He added, "We think this could raise some questions among investors."

Mr. Anmuth also noted that Mr. Page, who regularly posts links and comments on his Google+ social network account, hasn't posted anything publicly since May 25.

Inside Google, some executives were told Mr. Page's issue isn't serious and that he's "OK," according to a person familiar with the matter.

Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Herman Leung says he's started to get calls from investors, asking if they should be worried about this. "Yeah, probably a little bit," he said. "Hopefully, Google will give us an update."

Mr. Page's voice generally sounds slightly strained, raspy or hoarse. A recording of a 20-minute speech last month in London showed Mr. Page noticeably pausing several times to swallow before continuing to speak, but it is unclear whether that was a symptom of his current problem.

Some leadership experts contend Google should divulge more about Mr. Page's voice problem. As the CEO of a public company, "he's not entitled to his privacy,'' said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a senior associate dean at Yale School of Management.

"We need to know if it [his voice] is imperiled," he said.

The Google board should inform shareholders about the cause and likely duration of Mr. Page's condition, according to Mr. Sonnenfeld, author of several leadership books. A degenerative health problem "could have a material adverse impact on the company,'' he added.

Securities laws require publicly held companies to disclose material information that could affect investors' decision to acquire or sell shares. Directors decide what's material, however, and many boards have trouble deciding how much to tell shareholders about a CEO's sudden illness because corporate leaders prefer privacy.

Seth Cohen, a laryngologist and associate professor at the Duke University Voice Care Center, said Mr. Page could have wide range of ailments including acute laryngitis, which is a viral infection that causes inflammation of the vocal cords and requires resting one's voice for at least week or two.

Another potential cause is muscle tension dysphonia, which occurs when the muscles around the larynx, or voice box, are too tight and causes a person to use excess tension while speaking. Voice therapy is often required for such an ailment, said Dr. Cohen, who hasn't treated Mr. Page.

Some people who naturally produce an unusual-sounding or hoarse voice may develop benign lesions that grow on the vocal cord, he said. "That could have progressed to the point where he's having difficulty speaking," he said.

Surgery is sometimes required to remove the growths, Dr. Cohen added, and recovery could take a month or longer.

Robert Robins, a retired Tulane University political science professor that studies disabled leaders, sees parallels between the dearth of disclosures regarding Mr. Page and Apple's Mr. Jobs.

The Google situation "seems to be following the same pattern," said Mr. Robins.

Google's conference for developers, called I/O, runs from June 27 to June 29. Its second-quarter earnings report and conference call haven't been scheduled; last year they occurred on the second Thursday of the month, an indication they could be held on July 19, or in nearly four weeks.

Mr. Page's expected absence from the two events seems "highly unusual," said Rick Devine, head of Devine Capital Partners LLC, a high-tech search boutique in Redwood City, Calif. "It's hard to imagine a CEO missing that much stuff and not have a serious problem."

Investors have taken the news in stride. Google shares gained $6.27 or 1.1% on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday to $571.48. The stock has gained 17% over the past year.

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Apple's Jobs Takes On Rivals Adobe, Google
The Wall Street Journal

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs, in a broad-ranging discussion, took more potshots at Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash software, vowed not to get into search despite Google Inc.'s move into Apple's turf, and called Apple passing Microsoft Corp.'s stock valuation "surreal."

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital technology conference on Tuesday, Mr. Jobs touched on issues that include suicides at Apple's largest contractor, challenges related to AT&T Inc.'s phone network and the origins of the iPad.

The war between Apple and Adobe has been escalating over the last few months. Mr. Jobs reiterated on Tuesday that it believed an emerging technology called HTML 5 was a better alternative to Adobe's Flash. "Sometimes you have to pick the things that look like the right horses to ride going forward," he said, adding that consumers pay Apple to make those choices.

Meanwhile, Mr. Jobs defended its Taiwanese contractor Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., also known as Foxconn, saying that it wasn't a "sweatshop" despite a spate of employee suicides that has put its working conditions under scrutiny. Still he said that the company was troubled over the situation and it was "over there trying to understand what's happening, and more importantly trying to understand how to help."

While Apple has been fighting a public relations battle with Adobe, its relationship with former ally Google has also gotten tense as the two companies increasingly compete in areas that include smartphones, mobile operating systems, Web browsers, video and music.

Mr. Jobs said the relationship changed when Google "decided to compete with us", particularly in the area of mobile phones. However, he said Apple had no plans to enter the search business and wasn't going to remove Google search from the iPad and iPhone. Internet search is "not something we know about" or "care deeply" about, he said.

Since launching the iPhone three years ago, Apple has faced complaints in the U.S. because of quality issues with partner AT&T. Mr. Jobs said he expects the operator's networks get a lot better, certainly by the end of the summer. However, he also acknowledged there "might be an advantage" in having more than one wireless carrier in the U.S. in a possible hint of a future partnership with other carriers.

He also credited AT&T—the iPhone's exclusive carrier—with helping Apple "change the rules of the game" in cellphones, with the hardware maker rather than the network making most key decisions about product and service features.

Mr. Jobs also stated what he said was a secret—work on a tablet began before Apple's cellphone, but didn't pass muster. "My God, I said, this would make a great phone...so we shelved the tablet and built the iPhone."

Asked about whether the iPad will be a savior for content creators, Mr. Jobs said: "I don't want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers…I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for."

Steve Jobs Made Phone Call Seeking Lost iPhone

Associated Press

 

Brian Hogan's world closed in fast almost as soon as he sold the next-generation iPhone he found in a Silicon Valley bar to a popular technology website for a stack of $100 bills, according to court documents released Friday.

By April 19, Hogan's roommate had tipped off investigators that he was at the center of the drama, Apple's top lawyers were meeting with police to press for criminal charges and Steve Jobs himself was personally demanding the iPhone's return.

The ordeal has set off ethic debates in journalism and law enforcement circles while Hogan and a website editor are now at the center of a criminal investigation that has been rife with speculation but devoid of many facts - until now.

On Friday, San Mateo Superior Court Judge Clifford Cretan ordered unsealed a 10-page sworn statement with details written by San Mateo Sheriff's Detective Matthew Broad to obtain a warrant to search the car and home of Jason Chen, a Gizmodo.com editor. Broad's statement was used to obtain a search warrant for Chen's home and car.

According to the statement, the saga began March 25, when Apple engineer Robert "Gray" Powell left the iPhone prototype in the bar area of Redwood City's Gourmet Haus Staud restaurant.

It said Gizmodo paid Hogan $5,000 for the device, cracked it open and posted images of it on April 20 despite a phone call from Jobs the day before demanding website editors return the gadget. Gizmodo promised Hogan an additional $3,500 bonus if Apple formally unveiled the device by July, according to Broad.

Now, Chen is under investigation for theft, receiving stolen property and damaging property, according to the affidavit. The affidavit also suggests Hogan and a third roommate, Thomas Warner, also may face criminal charges, and alleges the two panicked and attempted to hide evidence when they caught wind of the criminal investigation.

Nobody, including Chen, has been charged with any crime,

"The events have taken on a life of their own," said Jeff Bornstein, Hogan's attorney. "He thought it was dumb luck that he stumbled on to something valuable and he regrets not doing more to return it."

Bornstein said Hogan always intended to return the phone and didn't believe he was breaking the law in dealing with Gizmodo.

Bornstein also denied the affidavit's suggestion that Hogan was trying to get rid of evidence on April 21. That's when, shortly before midnight, Hogan's roommate Katherine Martinson called investigators and told them that Hogan and Warner were removing evidence from their apartment, the document said.

Investigators found Hogan at his father's Redwood City house and he directed them to nearby Sequoia Christian Church, where they recovered Hogan's computer and monitor.

Bornstein said that Hogan was in the process of moving out of the apartment and that Warner ended up with Hogan's computer, panicked and dropped them off at the church.

The investigation has prompted debate over whether he should be shielded from prosecution by California's so-called shield law, which protects journalists from having to turn over to police unpublished notes and the names of anonymous sources. But the shield law doesn't immunize journalists from breaking the law.

The investigators themselves have come under fire as well for apparently launching the investigation at Apple's behest. Detective Broad belongs to a special high technology task force called the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team, which is comprised of investigators from several jurisdictions and investigates crimes against technology companies.

According to Broad, task force investigators met with two high-ranking Apple executives and outside lawyer George Riley on April 20, the day Gizmodo published the images. Riley told the task force that Gizmodo's action were "immensely damaging to Apple," because consumers would hold off buying iPhones until the new version was released. Riley didn't estimate a dollar figure, but said losses were "huge," according to the affidavit.

Apple is a member of the technology crime task force's board, but the company said it didn't use its influence to pressure law enforcement to investigate.

"We reported what we believe was a crime, and the D.A. of San Mateo county is taking it from there," said Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton.

San Mateo County prosecutors had argued to keep the affidavit under seal to protect the identities of witnesses and the ongoing investigation. But The Associated Press and several other media companies convinced a San Mateo County superior court judge to make the document public, arguing disclosure was necessary to ensure that the raid of a journalist's home was proper.

What's Behind Apple's Clash with Flash?

NPR

 

People who surf the Web with any of Apple's mobile devices including the iPad or the iPhone sometimes encounter large chunks of empty space where a video or an interactive game should appear.

That's because Apple's mobile products don't support Adobe Systems' Flash, the technology that powers those parts of the Web.

Apple chief Steve Jobs isn't a fan of Flash — and he released a letter Thursday explaining exactly why. He's even got some of the Internet's most popular destinations — The New York Times, Facebook, even NPR — working to strip Flash away from websites on the iPad.

So why doesn't Jobs like Flash?

Jobs says Adobe — not Apple — has a closed system because its products are 100 percent proprietary and this conflicts with Apple's desire to use open standards for the Web.

"It's purely technical. It's not a very good program for mobile devices," Leander Kahney, author of the biography Inside Steve's Brain, tells host Guy Raz. "It's a CPU hog and it drains battery life very quickly, so he doesn't want it on it."

Flash is the dominant multimedia technology in use right now.

"It has amazing penetration. Three-quarters of all the video on the Net is encoded in flash," says Kahney, who is also editor of cultofmac.com. "Almost all of the games, all the casual games — especially the really popular games like FarmVille on Facebook — they're all encoded in Flash. Almost all of the technology world is embedded in Flash."

As recently as six months ago some technology experts thought Flash was would dominate Web multimedia. Now some are saying the technology is doomed.

This isn't the first time Apple has taken aim at a mainstream technology. In the late 1990s, the floppy drive disappeared after Apple introduced the first iMac with its CD drive. And iTunes and the iPod have slashed sales of CDs.

There's also been some controversy over the lack of Blu-ray drives on Apple computers. But Kahney says Apple's reasoning has been that consumers can already get a lot of high-definition content by streaming over the Internet.

Although Jobs is an intensely private person, Kahney thinks his intentions are good: "I think he is genuinely interested in crafting technology that is easy to use for consumers, and Flash wrecks that experience or has the potential to wreck that experience. And so, it's gone. He's just extremely ruthless about that."

Jobs Attacks Flash as Unfit for iPhone

The Wall Street Journal

Steve Jobs escalates fight with Adobe

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs escalated his fight with Adobe Systems Inc. over the software known as Flash, a battle that could shape the evolution of video and gaming on mobile devices.

Mr. Jobs—after months of criticism from Adobe and software developers for his company's decision to ban Flash from iPhones, iPods and iPads— Thursday took the unusual step of posting a lengthy essay on Apple's Web site criticizing Adobe's software as a flawed throwback to a time before smartphones caught the fancy of consumers.

"Flash was created during the PC era—for PCs and mice," Mr. Jobs wrote in an essay totaling more than 1,600 words. "The mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open Web standards—all areas where Flash falls short."

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen fired back in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, disputing Mr. Jobs's assertions about shortcomings in Flash. That is a "smoke screen," he argued, for Apple's plan to keep its own lock over software development for its mobile devices. "It's clear that it has nothing to do with technology," he said.

The tough rhetoric underscores the huge stakes in setting key technical standards for the mobile Internet, a process that could affect the fortunes of device makers, programmers, media companies and advertisers.

Apple, a PC pioneer whose influence in that market waned, has won new power in the mobile world because of the success of the iPhone and the App Store created to supply software for it.



Analysts and industry executives don't expect Mr. Jobs to readily share that power with other standard-setters such as Adobe. "They are trying to control their ecosystem," said Jeffrey Hammond, an analyst at Forrester Research, of Apple. "It's all about control."

Mr. Jobs, through a spokeswoman, declined a request for an interview to elaborate on his essay and the reason for releasing it now.

Media companies and advertisers have privately expressed frustration about Apple's stance toward Flash because their online video and other Web content incorporates Flash. Adobe, meanwhile, has said it will try to work closely with Google Inc. to popularize Flash on phones using Google's Android system.

Flash is the most popular video format on the Web, and is also used for animation and advertising. It has been slower to take hold in cellphones, but Adobe has recently introduced new versions aimed at mobile devices.

Instead of Flash, Apple is supporting Web sites that use an emerging standard called HTML 5, which is being developed by a consortium that it is a part of alongside Google. But some Web developers say HTML 5 isn't yet ready to be used for anything besides trials.

Apple's anti-Flash policy is not new, but attained greater prominence after the iPad was first publicly demonstrated in January. With a small device like the iPhone, people expected a truncated version of the Web, but with the iPad, people had expected to be able to watch video on the device's big Web browser, said Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, a research and consulting firm.

Another factor is a new version of Adobe's Creative Suite software, which includes tools for using Flash to build iPhone apps. Just before Adobe formally unveiled the software, Apple changed the terms of use for its App Store to forbid apps written with the new software.

Dave Wolf, vice president of strategy at Cynergy Systems Inc., a Washington, D.C., design firm, calls Apple's no-Flash policy "a pain." Mr. Wolf had planned to build apps for clients using the new Adobe software.

Developers are "caught in the middle," agreed David Clarke, founder of BGT Partners, a Web design firm in Miami.

The essay is a rare but not unprecedented move for Mr. Jobs. Three years ago he published a statement urging the music industry to let Apple sell music without anticopying software.

The debate has divided the media and technology industries. Adobe supporters created a Facebook page called "I'm with Adobe" that has nearly 11,000 members while others have sided with Apple.

Mr. Hammond of Forrester said many points raised by Mr. Jobs are just wrong. But other analysts disagreed. "I think Jobs summarized all the frustrations he's had," said Rick Doherty, an analyst with consulting firm Envisioneering Group. "I'd be really surprised if Adobe can challenge his arguments because they're predominantly true."

Mr. Jobs argues in his letter that Flash hasn't worked well on cellphones, shortens their battery life, adds security problems and doesn't support touch interfaces. He said Adobe's effort to use Flash to create apps for Apple's devices could cause problems if Adobe were slow to add support for Apple enhancements.

Adobe's Mr. Narayen said developers and consumers benefit from Adobe's multi-platform approach, which could ultimately make apps for iPhones work on other devices. "It doesn't benefit Apple and that's why you see this reaction," he said.

Apple’s Steve Jobs: Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’ Adobe Is Lazy
Wired

After a big public announcement of the sort Apple had this week for the iPad CEO Steve Jobs often takes time in the day or two afterwards to have a Town Hall at One Infinite Loop, making himself available for questions from employees bold enough to stand up and take one right between the eyes.

This time, the big topics included Google and Adobe — no surprises there. Google recently unveiled its own Android-powered handset, the Nexus One, whose release Jan. 5 prompted Jobs to perhaps over-react by announcing on the same day that the iTunes store had served up three billion apps and that “… we see no signs of the competition catching up any time soon.” Apple’s billionth iPhone app download was greeted with great fanfare, but the two billionth not so much, so it felt a tad like Jobs was feeling some heat.

And the absence of Adobe Flash support on the iPhone for three years and counting, and now on the iPad, is either celebrated by users as a poke in the eye of one of the web’s most dextrous tools, or the most over-rated and overused crutch for decent design.

Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled, according to a person who was there who could not be named because this person is not authorized by Apple to speak with the press.

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

The world, of course, includes Google, which last week in a somewhat more modest development bypassed Apple’s iPhone app blockade by unveiling an html5 version of Google Voice, which takes full advantage of mobile Safari on the iPhone. Wired.com found it to be an impressive variation of the app Apple has neither approved nor officially rejected.

And it is, of course, in keeping with Google’s stated view (Android app marketplace notwithstanding) that the future is really in web-based applications and not in mobile apps at all. Web-based applications of the sort html5 makes much more viable.

So, great work rallying the troops, Steve — but be careful what you wish for.

In a post on macrumors.com Arnold Kim adds some more details from the Town Hall, including tough talk from Jobs about a blistering pace of iPhone updates, the LaLa acquisition, the next iPhone and (ahem) another candid assessment, of Blu-Ray.)

Another member of the audience, who also requires anonymity because this person is also not authorized to speak to the media, disputes the “bullshit” quote and says Jobs actually said: “Don’t be evil is a load of crap,” as first reported by Daring Fireball. This source also asserts that Jobs had nice things to say about how Adobe, or at least how the company used to be, as John Gruber’s “little birdie” also told him first.)

Jobs vs. Gates: A thirty year war

Apple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft founder Bill Gates have been trading barbs for years. Here's a look back at one of history's biggest geek rivalries.

Jobs On Gates:

"Microsoft does not want us to succeed, and they are not going to help us." -Steve Jobs, in Computer System News (July 10, 1989)

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me," he says. "Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful . . . that's what matters to me." -Steve Jobs, comparing his innovation to Gates' in The Wall Street Journal (May 25, 1993)

"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste.... I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success - I have no problem with their success, they've earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products." Steve Jobs, appearing on the PBS program "Triumph of the Nerds" (June 1996)

''I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.'' -Steve Jobs in The New York Times (January 12, 1997)

"Our friends in Redmond, they spend over $5 billion in R&D, but these days they just try to copy Google and Apple. So I guess it's a good example of how money isn't everything." - Steve Jobs, speaking at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (August 7, 2006)

Gates On Jobs:

"Steve made it very difficult [for Apple employees] to be part of a team approach that a company of Apple's size really needs to have. I mix those skills somewhat better than Steve.'' - Bill Gates, in The Seattle Times (October 1, 1985)

"If Steve's [NeXT Computer] machine is successful, I will say it will confuse me." - Bill Gates, in Computer System News (November 27, 1989)

''You can always tell whether you're on a Mac or on a PC. Just stick your applications in there and see whether they'll run.'' - Bill Gates, in the San Jose Mercury News

"As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run. You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface - like the iPod today - and then lost its position." - Bill Gates, to Reuters (May 12, 2005)

"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine." - Bill Gates, in Newsweek (February 1, 2007)