Eric Schmidt to become technical advisor to Alphabet
abc.xyz
abc.xyz
A little-noticed WSJ piece from October would support that idea:
> [Google] Employees donated $1.6 million to her campaign, about 80% more than the amount given by workers at any other corporation, and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt helped set up companies to analyze political data for the campaign. Mr. Schmidt even wore a badge labeled “STAFF” at Mrs. Clinton’s election-night bash.
> His support of the losing side didn’t go unnoticed among the victors. As President-elect Donald Trump was preparing for a meeting with tech executives at Trump Tower not long before his inauguration, he asked strategist Stephen Bannon whether Mr. Schmidt was “the guy that tried to help Hillary win the election,” according to someone who heard the conversation.
> “Yes,” said Mr. Bannon. “Yes, he is.”
> Google, one of the most powerful players in Washington in recent years, is now facing the consequences of its lost political clout—and is moving mountains to regain it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-dominance-in-washington...
I'm sure Google has plenty of clout in DC. They have 600+ lobbyists and a huge budget.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/30/google-si...
A law that targeted corporate executives would have no chance of surviving the legal precedent of those two cases. It wouldn't do much to solve the problem of dollars having more influence these days than one-person-one-vote in the U.S., but hey, don't let me stop you.
Easy reading about those cases: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/04/22/14611/mccutcheon-...
As with so many regulations, it mostly benefits the people who have enough resources to work around them:
With strict limits per person, you need a huge established machine that can reach out to many individuals to get your donations rolling. Without limits, you just need to convince one eccentric billionaire. While the latter is still hard, it's still much easier done than the former.
Could someone provide some context around this topic of executive/non-executive chairpersons?
Edit: The above quote is taken from the original link which this HN post pointed to - https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/eric-schmidt-is-stepping-dow...
Yes, both meanings...
An executive chairman is something of a weird beast; they are both chairman of the board and an executive employee involved in managing the firm (as an employee, they usually report to the CEO, but the CEO is accountable to the board, which the chairman, well, chairs.) The exact division of duties between an executive chairman and the CEO is different in every firm using the arrangement, I would expect.
A non-executive chairman is just the head of the board and not involved in day-to-day executive management of the firm, only oversight of management.
Am I even allowed to say all these without getting sued or banned?
Alphabet's Schmidt to Step Down From Executive Chairman Role
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Alphabet-Google-Eric-...
More interesting is who they decide to appoint.
Odds are they appoint somebody politically well-connected, and that person then gets to use the "chairman of the board at alphabet" title to lobby various governments in Google's favour, rather than they appoint somebody who is going to do any serious oversight of alphabet's executives.
(Perhaps the departure was predicated on Obama agreeing in advance)
He would also be generally pragmatic, likable, and qualified.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_app...
If you polled him right now across worldwide audience about his stature, it would probably be north of 70%.
Obama as their chairman would be a huge win for Google, but I feel like he probably has better things to do. As a former president, being tied to Google would only hinder him in lobbying goverments for whatever he chooses to lobby for.
IR release: https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2017/1221.html
Not that the Daily Mail is a credible source, but there is a little smoke.
As far as I can tell, there is no reason to think that his close collaborators at Google didn’t know about and discovered something unsavoury recently. More to the point, there is no reason to think his behaviour (although offensive to some) was ever non-consensual.
It’s entirely understandable that, after more than a decade at the helm of the most incredible companies of all time, he’s stepping down to simply retire.
Given the times, the question bears being asked -- although as far as we can tell, No.
> Empirically speaking, sexual liberation was practiced by women on a wide scale in the sixties and it did not work: that is, it did not free women. Its purpose—it turned out—was to free men to use women without bourgeois constraints, and in that it was successful.
The hippies became Reaganites and women were allowed to participate in the economy to some extent, but that freedom also came with the expectation of sexual availability. You see it even now: suggest that maybe we should prohibit relationships between coworkers, and men flip out. The idea that we might categorically close off some spheres of life to sexual advances, so that women can work in peace and build their careers, induces apoplexy.
I was just listening to NPR this morning where the woman speaking was saying that we need to more strongly define expectations for office behavior, but that women as well as men are against the idea of banning office relationships.
Coworkers abstaining has more to do with risk (greater on the men’s side). Elites have always tried controlling sexual freedom and exploration because it threatens their control over literally creating future elite generations.
The sexual revolution absolutely improved women’s prospects from the Eisenhower era. Instead of forced to religious-coupling or pushed into traditional female roles, instead women were able to more freely choose their mate.
As to the sexual revolution, read Dworkin’s take on it. Her point that it is a distinctly a man-centric view of sexual freedom is prescient. It’s not just about being free to have sex whenever/with whoever you want, but also freedom to live aspects of your life without dealing with sexual advances. It’s about the freedom to go to work and have coworkers look at you as someone who can help advance their careers, or someone who they can mentor, not a potential date.
Keep an eye our on the news tomorrow around 4pm EST. You'll see plenty of companies dropping bad news right before the holidays. By the time everyone gets back to work, they've forgotten!
[1] Source: Google CEO and serial womanizer Eric Schmidt spends $15 million on private, no doorman Manhattan penthouse and then has it totally soundproofed => http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2377785/Google-CEO-s...
[2] “THE CHAPPELLE SHOW” DRAMATIZES SEXUAL CONSENT WITH THE LOVE CONTRACT => https://vimeo.com/183089808
Larry and Sergey have special voting shares so its their company. In this case how much does the board really matter. Sergey and Larry can do what they want.
For example, they can threaten to dump their stock or not buy in anymore. Because of small daily volumes relative to market cap even small dumping can have huge price swings in stock. For public companies, their stock is literally a currency. They use it for acquisitions, hiring and so on. These investors can reject motions in board voting and usually always want to tighten screws for short term gains.
Now you should have more understanding on why Google was forced to hire people like Ruth Porat as CFOs and why she can cut down on so many projects for "more business focus" and increase "shareholder value". Owning majority voting shares are not that useful as they were hyped up to be.
http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2017/12/google-mozilla-and-debt...
I now have email threads with jrockway and ChuckMcM on this.