Showing posts with label yahoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yahoo. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Google And Diversity: Fail Whale

The top tech company in the world is not doing it right.

Exposing Hidden Biases at Google to Improve Diversity
Founded by a pair of men, its executive team is overwhelmingly male, and its work force is dominated by men. Over all, seven out of 10 people who work at Google are male. ...... Men make up 83 percent of Google’s engineering employees and 79 percent of its managers. ..... of its 36 executives and highest-ranking managers, just three are women. .... the firm’s poor gender diversity.. the severe underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics among its work force. ...... the centerpiece of which is a series of workshops aimed at making Google’s culture more accepting of diversity. ..... to fight deep-set cultural biases and an insidious frat-house attitude that pervades the tech business. Tech luminaries make sexist comments so often that it has ceased to become news when they do. ....... Google’s disclosure prompted a wave of similar reports across the industry, with Facebook, Apple, Yahoo and several other tech giants issuing similarly dismal numbers about their work forces. ...... Google’s diversity training workshops, which began last year and which more than half of Google’s nearly 49,000 employees have already attended, are based on an emerging field of research in social psychology known as unconscious bias. ...... discrimination must be governed by unconscious cultural biases rather than overt sexism. ..... the more pernicious bias was most likely pervasive and hidden, a deep-set part of the culture rather than the work of a few loudmouth sexists. ...... research that shows diverse teams can be more creative than homogeneous ones ..... a dismal fact: Everyone is a little bit racist or sexist. If you think you’re immune, take the Implicit Association Test, which empirically measures people’s biases. ...... some of the most damaging bias is unconscious; people do the worst stuff without meaning to, or even recognizing that they’re being influenced by their preferences....... The effect of bias is powerful, and it isn’t softened by Silicon Valley’s supposedly meritocratic culture. ..... a computer simulation of how a systematic 1 percent bias against women in performance evaluation scores can trickle up through the ranks, leading to a severe underrepresentation of women in management. ..... we aren’t slaves to our hidden biases. The more we make ourselves aware of the role our unconscious plays on our decision-making, and the more we try to force others to confront their biases, the greater the chance we have to overcome our hidden preferences. ..... a less biased culture as a result of the training. Not long ago the company opened a new building, and someone spotted that all the conference rooms were named after male scientists; in the past, that might have gone unmentioned, but this time the names were changed. ....... the training was working. “Suddenly you go from being completely oblivious to going, ’Oh my god, it’s everywhere,’ ” he said.

Wednesday, May 07, 2014

The Alibaba IPO

AliBaba
AliBaba (Photo credit: Stewf)
I never doubted Marissa Mayer's fundamentals as a tech executive, I think she is a trailblazer, but cynics claim 100% of her "success" at Yahoo can be attributed to Yahoo's stake in the Chinese tech giant Alibaba. Alibaba sells actual things. This is a signal that investors in America and other developed markets need to eye other emerging markets. There is an Alibaba waiting to happen in India, in Nigeria, in Brazil. And just like one Craig's List has fragmented into dozens of new, massive companies, and one inbox has fragmented into dozens of massive companies, Facebook among them (since you shared pictures over email before Facebook came along), I think Alibaba itself is a signal the Chinese ecommerce market can be broken up into smaller, more well-defined pieces. Alibaba's number one thing is ecommerce. There is a lesson. That you need a local approach to ecommerce in unique markets like China, and homegrown companies are best served. Other than founding Yahoo, investing early in Alibaba might be Jerry Yang's major masterstroke in life.

The Chinese are coming!

Alibaba Files to Go Public in US IPO of E-Commerce Giant
Founded by former English teacher Jack Ma, 49, in a Hangzhou apartment, Alibaba started with a few dozen items for sale. Alibaba’s market value is estimated at $168 billion, bigger than 95 percent of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index -- and the most valuable Internet company after Google Inc....... Alibaba now provides various marketplaces for buyers and sellers, as well as services that help them conduct their businesses. Taobao Marketplace, founded in 2003, enables millions of individuals and small businesses to sell products. Tmall.com operates as a virtual shopping mall, with retailers and brands offering products. Alibaba’s other businesses include Juhuasuan, a flash-sales model, and eTao, a shopping search engine.
Alibaba’s Massive U.S. IPO Could Top Facebook’s Debut
Last year, the Chinese e-commerce business that is part-owned by Yahoo handled $248 billion in transactions, more than Amazon and eBay combined. ..... If successful, Alibaba’s IPO could eventually value the company at substantially more than $150 billion ...... a windfall for Yahoo, which owns 24% of the e-commerce giant...... dominates the Chinese e-commerce market, powering four-fifths of all online commerce in that country ..... the company also operates a digital payments service and a cloud computing business..... Alibaba accounts for about 75% of Yahoo’s valuation ...... At $200 billion, Alibaba would be worth more than U.S. tech titans Facebook and Amazon, but it would still trail Apple and Google, the world’s two most valuable technology companies. ..... Last year, Alibaba handled $248 billion in online transactions ... more than Amazon and eBay combined. ....... Alibaba’s meteoric growth has been powered by economic and demographic trends in China, including the ongoing emergence of a large, tech-savvy middle class. In its IPO filing, Alibaba cited China’s population of 1.35 billion people, including 618 million Internet users. The company said there are 500 million mobile Internet users and 302 million Internet shoppers in China. ..... There is less of a retail culture in China, ie. ‘Let’s go shopping on Sunday,’ ..... “The bottom line is that Yahoo’s stock continues to be driven by Alibaba results”
Yahoo’s Alibaba Stake Is Valued at $26 Billion
its stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, another Asian asset where it has a stake estimated at $9 billion..... Together, those holdings are worth about $35 billion, just under Yahoo’s current market capitalization of $36.7 billion. ...... Yahoo paid $1 billion for a 40% stake in Alibaba in 2005 and in 2012 Alibaba agreed to repurchased more than $7 billion in shares. Yahoo now owns 22.6%, according to Alibaba, and is required to sell 208 million shares in the IPO, worth $10.4 billion based on the most recent fair value. ..... Alibaba paid Yahoo $561 million in 2012 to license its intellectual property
With Alibaba IPO filing, pressure mounts on Yahoo
Marissa Mayer has dramatically changed the story line at Yahoo during her nearly two years as CEO ..... But even as Mayer has moved Yahoo away from under the cloud of worry which dogged it for so long, she'll soon be under growing pressure to prove that the company's turnaround is for real and not simply the result of a brilliant investment decision almost a decade ago. ...... In 2005, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang led the company through an investment in the little-known Alibaba, ponying up $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in the company. Today, Alibaba is valued anywhere from $150-$250 billion. Yahoo currently owns a 22.6 percent stake in the company. After Alibaba's IPO, Yahoo could end up with $12 billion in cash on its balance sheet ........ the challenge Yahoo faces as it seeks to compete in all these areas is that the incumbents are some of the fiercest names in technology: Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and others. And without the security blanket of leaning on Alibaba's might during earnings reports, the pressure is on for Mayer to find something else to fill the void.
Alibaba's $1 billion IPO: The numbers to know
Known in the U.S. primarily for its association with Yahoo, Alibaba is an eBay-meets-Amazon and then some kind of business....... Most of Alibaba's revenue derives from online marketing and ads. Other revenue streams include membership and transaction fees, value-added services, and cloud services.
Meet Alibaba’s Jack Ma
Chinese Giant Alibaba Files for IPO, Perhaps the Largest in U.S. History
How Alibaba could change American business
Alibaba Sees SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son Staying on Board Post-IPO
10 Surprising Things You Can Buy Using Alibaba
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Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Nadella's Compensation, Mayer's Compensation


Inside Satya Nadella’s CEO Comp Package From Microsoft
Nadella will pick up a $1.2 million yearly cash salary ... Nadella is also eligible for a cash bonus of up to 300 percent of his salary each year, or $3.6 million. The new chief is also set to pick up a target stock bonus of $13.2 million in fiscal 2015..... for fiscal 2015, Nadella should pick up a total of $18 million..... Nadella’s compensation includes three five-year periods in which Microsoft’s stock performance will be compared to the S&P 500′s performance over the period. .... So the new executive could warrant up to 2.7 million shares total at the end of the three five-year programs in aggregate. .... Nadella stands to land north of $100 million
New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella could earn $18 million next year
Nadella earned a total compensation package of $7.7 million in fiscal year 2013, when he served as president of the Server and Tools division at Microsoft. .... Nadella’s predecessor as CEO, Steve Ballmer, received $1.26 million in total compensation in fiscal year 2013
The new Microsoft: How Satya Nadella will transform the company
“He has a track record of making things happen in an organization where that’s hard to do.” .... “He also understands how to work within the Microsoft culture — and this is not a trivial thing.” .... Nadella has previously demonstrated the ability to navigate rough political waters — even while working with Gates and Ballmer .... He’s technically proficient and highly personable. He’s humble, but unafraid to lead by example. And he’s unwilling to accept the ordinary.
Satya Nadella's base salary 70% more than Ballmer's

Yahoo to Pay Mayer $100 Million Over Five Years
Marissa Mayer's first-year pay: $6 million
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's pay package could be worth $129 million
Marissa Mayer's Yahoo CEO compensation nearly $60 million
Adding Up Marissa Mayer’s Pay at Yahoo
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's salary revealed
Yahoo Paid CEO Marissa Mayer $36.6 Million in 2012


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Tuesday, October 08, 2013

1 TB: Yahoo Mail's Reentry With A Bang

August 2000 Issue of Yahoo! Internet Life
August 2000 Issue of Yahoo! Internet Life (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Of all things Yahoo Mail could have done, 1 TB in free storage tops the charts. It totally grabbed my attention. Already in recent weeks I have been mass labeling a bunch of mail in my Yahoo inbox as spam so as to declutter.

Getting only relevant mail and 1 TB of free storage surely gets me to give Yahoo Mail a second look. There is no way I am walking away from Gmail. But we all can use a good second email address. I know I need one. Heck, I could use three. Let Hotmail compete.

I could use a Yahoo version of Google Drive for free online storage.
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Friday, August 23, 2013

Ballmer's Successor

Image representing Vic Gundotra as depicted in...
Image by Google via CrunchBase
I think the next CEO can not be an outsider. For a company like Microsoft the next CEO necessarily has to come from inside, just my opinion. And the cloud and enterprise vice president Satya Nadella would be a decent choice. The next CEO has to be about the future, not the past.

Or Microsoft could pull a Yahoo, and bring in Vic Gundotra, a former Microsoft soldier. Gundotra just might bite, since Larry Page is just getting started and Vic might already have hit the glass ceiling at Google. Gundotra's Microsoft past and Google present is an amazing combination. And many would say Microsoft has also had the Yahoo problem: it is widely considered a has been company. The shine just is not there anymore.


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