

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: Good or Just Lucky? - physcab
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/227533/Google-CEO-Eric-Schmidt-Good-or-Just-Lucky?tickers=goog,^ixic

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vaksel
I think Eric Schmidt is pretty much the Meg Whitman of the current generation.
Both jumped into hot companies that were destined for greatness and got credit
for something that would have happened anyways

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sachinag
I don't think that's fair at all. Meg failed to extend the eBay brand into
non-English speaking countries, and didn't extend the platform in any
meaningful ways. Sure, not everything Google's touched has turned to gold, but
Google Apps, Gmail (a two year incubation before the 4/1 release), App Engine,
and a bunch of other things have been moderately successful. There's no
parallel at eBay to any of those things.

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philwelch
But, as the article says, their "moderate successes" have failed to be
profitable.

A startup can get away with not figuring out every monetization angle and
focusing on developing cool stuff, as long as they're profitable overall. But
once the startup hires a non-technical CEO and IPO's, the CEO's job is
supposed to be monetization. Sure, some things can be out there to build
public goodwill and brand image, but when you're a publicly-held for-profit,
"cool technology" is no longer the benchmark for the CEO's success.

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knightinblue
Is anybody else amused by the fact that Joe Weisenthal listed a disclosure
that he owns a few google shares but doesn't acknowledge the DIRECT conflict
of interest of slamming a google exec on YAHOO?

You know, since they're major competitors in everything from search to mail to
web products etc.

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mdasen
This article really hit on something I've been wondering about Google: will it
grow beyond Adwords? Search is an expanding business as it becomes more
important in our lives and it's nicely monetized through Adwords, but none of
Google's other ventures have seemed so great. In fact, many of their purchases
just seem like they're solving an excess money problem.

Blogger? Feedburner? Picasa? Dodgeball? Jaiku? Even the much talked about
YouTube has yet to show that it will ever justify its purchase price.

Google is wonderful, but it leaves me wondering whether everything they do
will have to be underwritten by Adwords on search. Can they build sustainable
revenue streams off other products?

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sgoraya
_Can they build sustainable revenue streams off other products?_

Do they have to? I think they will feel the pinch and need to create other,
sustainable, revenue streams when they begin to observe a loss in search and
advertising marketshare.

I for one, beleived that Google would be smarter than that. But as the article
points out, many of their other ventures and business units have not been
successful.

Maybe complacency in _some_ areas is a result of being so successful in
others.

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raghus
_Google is still basically a one-product company: Adwords. (AdSense is very
successful, but far less profitable)._

Are Adsense and Adwords not just two sides of the same coin? One could not
exist without the other.

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marketer
Not necessarily -- I think if Google only advertised on their search engine
they'd still be a multi-billion dollar company. I don't think anything has
higher CPM than Google's search.

Adsense, however, does make the platform more enticing to advertisers.

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raghus
Good point, thank you.

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dbul
The only way we'll know is after Dr. Schmidt's tenure as CEO of General
Motors.

