I'll ignore the AI and "has Google lost its way?" threads, not that they're not interesting.
Rather, Sundar: he's the inevitable product when you hire a CEO based on his longevity and whether everyone likes him. In the military they distinguish between a "barracks general" and a "combat general." He's the former. He looks good when nothing bad is happening.
Seems like you could make an LLM generate product ideas and it would be about equally effective.
They didn’t realize they were at war until about 3 months ago. That’s why. It takes time.
Yahoo's: had an offer from Microsoft for ~$33B in 2004 or so, declined, and later hired Marissa Mayer. Eventually sold to Verizon for ~$4B.
HP's: hired Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurd, Léo Apotheker, and then Meg Whitman
Modern boards rarely act in any sort of timely manner.
The former Yahoo assets that Verizon didn't purchase -- Yahoo Japan, plus a large stake in Alibaba, and several other investments -- were liquidated for a ~$40B total return to shareholders over the course of several years. So combined that's a 33% increase over Microsoft's offer. Obviously not a great return over like 15 years, but far from "worst board decision of all time" level either.
Microsoft's 2004 board, on the other hand, I have to wonder what they were thinking...
Google being "aimless" is pure speculation.
How so? I don't see any examples of top talent being fired (barring the scuffles at Twitter, but that isn't FAANG). Most people on my LinkedIn feed being let go are new grads or middle management who ostensibly didn't perform to company expectations of perfromance.
Beautifully put.
I knew there was some reason why I'm so irresistibly drawn to books about warfare.
Patton in WW II was the quintessential wartime general. Even though it WAS a war, his style was too much for Eisenhower. Until the Battle of the Bulge.
I see this in startups. The people/leadership you need to go from 0->1 are often not the same people to go from 1->N.
To bring this back around to Google. People are talking about the CEO, but does Google have the rank and file ready to go to war?