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Playing Ballmer Bingo, Could Microsoft's Next CEO Come From Google?
There are whispers bouncing around Silicon Valley that a Google executive might be selected as Microsoft’s next CEO. The concept isn’t out of the question, especially following Marissa Mayer’s move to Yahoo. That transition has gone, by most accounts, well.
To become the next CEO of Microsoft, a number of traits are required: Experience leading teams at scale; experience working with and inside large technology companies; technical competence; and an X factor that we’ll simply dub “swagger” to annoy the pedants.
Thus, if we are to listen to the clucking about a Google exec hopping over to Redmond, we can vet their top staff with the above credentials and speculate about their chances, if any, of taking over the top spot at Microsoft. The list is short, because Microsoft is a company that did not have $20 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year, but $20 billion in net profit. It’s an enormous and complex operation, and not one to be trusted with someone who could be viewed as an experiment.
My colleague Frederic Lardinois, who covers Google, and myself — I cover Microsoft — have combed through the possibilities for your enjoyment.
Frederic: The Googler’s name most often rumored with regard to Microsoft is Vic Gundotra. He has led Google’s social networking efforts around Google+ for the last few years. But he’s a controversial figure inside of Google and how successful his work has really been remains up for discussion. The fact that Gundotra is a former Microsoftie obviously increases his chances.
During his long tenure there, he eventually became the company’s general manager for platform evangelism, which has always been a high-profile role during the years of his tenure at the company (though nobody seems to be putting Microsoft’s current chief evangelist Steven Guggenheimer on the short list to become the next CEO). Gundotra does not, however, have any CEO experience and while he has led a large team at Google and runs a service that touches many of the company’s products, I’m having a hard time seeing him at the helm of Microsoft.
Alex: Be nice to Guggs. He’s good people. But you have a point that his role at Microsoft, while important, does not seem to be on the ramp to the top chair. Vic runs Google+. That’s an important role inside of Google, but it doesn’t seem to be something on the same plane of scale as Microsoft. I don’t see this happening.
Frederic: Another Googler being bandied about is Andy Rubin. After Larry Page’s last mini-reorg, which put Sundar Pichai in charge of both ChromeOS and Android, things have gotten pretty quiet around the previously ubiquitous Rubin and it’s not even clear what he’s doing today.
This definitely feels a bit like the story we know about Marissa Mayer and her last few months at Google before she became Yahoo’s new CEO. Rubin’s background in both software and devices could make him a decent fit from the product side. He was one of the co-founders and CEO of both Danger and Android, after all (though he left Danger in 2003, five years before it was acquired by Microsoft). Like Gundotra, however, he doesn’t have the experience of running a massive company like Microsoft, which — assuming the board isn’t feeling very adventurous — would quickly disqualify him from the job. But his “devices and services” background could make him a better fit than Gundotra.
Alex: Rubin is an interesting option, mostly because he has CEO experience, the status required to pick up a job like boss of Microsoft, and could be bored. A lethal combination, naturally. That said, disappearing inside of Google X might not mean anything other than Rubin’s work on a project that Google isn’t ready to speak about. Still, losing Android wasn’t a simply lateral move for Rubin.
Frederic: Looking at the rest of the Google team, a couple of other names stand out, including Sundar Pichai, who feels a bit like the CEO in training and therefore unlikely to leave, or Urs Hölzle, who runs Google’s massive technical infrastructure but doesn’t feel like a good bet for a CEO position right now. None of them, however, look like ideal candidates to fill Ballmer’s gigantic, if contentious, shoes.
Alex: What’s interesting in this is that Google’s bench isn’t as deep as you might expect. Frederic says this could be due to the simple fact that its founders are still on board, and its executive chairman was once the CEO. Yes. This does limit the pool.
Other Thoughts
Other names perhaps make more sense. Externally, Cisco’s Padmasree Warrior, Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogles, former VMWare CEO Paul Maritz, current Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano are options. However, it is hard to find a clear fit.
The person that Microsoft needs would be intimately aware of how broad the larger tech companies have become — Apple, Google, and Microsoft compete on productivity software, mobile phones, music sales, video content deals and dozens of other things — and be able to manage that somewhat controlled chaos. Someone, say, who has run or is running a company like that.
Only those people already have jobs that they like.
So this leaves us with internal candidates mainly. Think Terry Myerson, Satya Nadella, and the like. The problem with those names is that they were recently ensconced in new roles. Moving them would require more internal changes at Microsoft in a time when it needs stability. Of course, the CEO change is turbulence itself.
Ballmer Bingo is fun, and worth playing because it reacquaints us with the heavyweights in tech that are either sitting on the sideline, or underutilized. Let the leaks begin.
Image credit: Microsoft Sweden
NYT Resorts To Bypassing DNS Servers Amid Potential Hacking, WSJ Drops Its Paywall To Capitalize
According to statements from a spokesperson, the New York Times may have been hacked, resulting in the loss of access for many customers. Specifically, it appears that the attack has resulted in the redirection of its domain name servers, which has caused the Times to resort to some interesting methods to deliver the news.
The hacking has been attributed to a group of hackers called the Syrian Electronic Army, as some DNS lookup results point to servers in control of the sites.
Amid the outage, the Wall Street Journal has temporarily dropped its paywall, allowing readers full access to its articles without a subscription. This is the second NYT outage this month, and the second time that the WSJ has moved to capitalize on the outage by removing its paywall. The top breaking news item on the WSJ homepage at the time of publish was the NYT outage.
While its name servers, which translate the plain language ‘Nytimes.com’ domain into a target IP address, are down, the Times has resorted to tweeting out the addresses to stories with the direct IP of its servers in place of its domain name. This allows access to the sites articles via shared links, and users can browse the Times via the http://170.149.168.130/ address on mobile and desktop devices.
If you still have access to the Times, it may be because changes to servers propagate across the ‘net slowly. Some users may continue to see the homepage for some time.
“The site is down for some, not all and we are working to fix the problem,” said NYT spokesperson Eileen Murphy. “Our initial assessment is that this situation today is most likely the result of a malicious external attack.”
Comcast Ventures' Adit Singh Heads To Foundation Capital To Focus On Enterprise Investments
After raising $282 million for its seventh fund, Foundation Capital is adding a new partner to its ranks–Adit Singh, a former investor and senior associate with Comcast Ventures, will be the firm as an investment partner.
We’re told that in his new role, Singh will focus on identifying and investing in startups specializing in enterprise IT infrastructure, systems, software and services. Enterprise and IT makes up a around 60 percent of Foundation’s investments, says Singh. In particular, he’s focused on digging deep on the next evolution of data center, including startups disrupting virtualized storage networks and the software defined data center.
During his time at Comcast Ventures, Singh specialized in companies in the cloud computing, data center, networking, management, security and virtualization sectors. He sourced, and helped manage investments in Nebula, Tely Labs and Maginatics. He was also an observer in Compass EOS, ConteXtream, Benu Networks and Immedia Semiconductor.
Singh also co-founded Bitsplay Systems, a networking appliance company that was optimized to stream video from data centers. Additionally, he was a former EIR at Foundation, a product manager at Enphase Energy and was a chip designer at Cisco Systems.
Foundation has been staffing up new talent for its investment team, most recently adding former Twitter product lead Anamitra Banerji as a partner. Part of this is likely because of the fact that two of the firm’s partners Paul Koontz and Rich Redelfs have chosen not to continue to make new investments on behalf of Foundation in its new fund (but Redelfs and Koontz are continuing to serve on a number of boards from past investments).
Assessing Zuckerberg's Idea That Facebook Could Help Citizens Re-Make Their Government
Mark Zuckerberg has a grand vision that Facebook will help citizens in developing countries decide their own governments. It’s a lofty and partially attainable goal. While Egypt probably won’t let citizens vote for their next president with a Like, it is theoretically possible to use Facebook to crowdsource expertise. Governments around the world are experimenting with radical online direct democracy, but it doesn’t always work out.
Very briefly, Zuckerberg laid out his broad vision for e-government to Wired’s Steven Levy, while defending Internet.org, a new consortium to bring broadband to the developing world.
“People often talk about how big a change social media had been for our culture here in the U.S. But imagine how much bigger a change it will be when a developing country comes online for the first time ever. We use things like Facebook to share news and keep in touch with our friends, but in those countries, they’ll use this for deciding what kind of government they want to have. Getting access to health care information for the first time ever.”
When he references “deciding … government,” Zuckerberg could be talking about voting, sharing ideas, or crafting a constitution. We decided to assess the possibilities of them all.
Picking A Constitution/Government: Internet Failed So Far
For citizens in the exciting/terrifying position to construct a brand-new government, American-style democracy is one of many options. Britain, for instance, has a parliamentary system and has no constitution. In other cases, a government may want to heed political scientists’ advice and develop a “consensus democracy,” where more than two political parties are incentivized to work collaboratively with citizens, business, and different branches of government to craft laws.
At least once, choosing a new style of democracy has been attempted through the Internet. After the global financial meltdown wrecked Iceland’s economy, the happy citizens of the grass-covered country decided to redo their government and solicit suggestions from the public (950 Icelanders chosen by lottery and general calls for ideas through social networks). After much press about Iceland’s “crowdsourced” constitution, it crashed miserably after most of the elected leaders rejected it.
Crafting law, especially a constitution, is legally complex; unless there is a systematic way to translate haphazard citizen suggestions into legalese, the results are disastrous.
“Collaborative drafting, at large scale, at low costs, and that is inclusive, is something that we still don’t know how to do,” says Tiago Peixoto, a World Bank Consultant on participatory democracy (and one of our Most Innovative People In Democracy).
Peixoto, who helps the Brazilian government conduct some of the world’s only online policymaking, says he’s optimistic that Facebook could be helpful, but he wouldn’t use it to draft laws just yet.
While technically it is possible for social networks to craft a new government, we just don’t know how to do it very well, and, therefore, leaders are likely to reject the idea. In other words, don’t expect Egypt to decide their future through Facebook likes.
What Facebook Does Well: Get-Out-The-Vote And Public Opinion
Facebook does have an impressive impact on voter turnout. One large-scale randomized experiment found that Facebook quadruples the power of get-out-the-vote campaigns, boosting turnout a sizable 2.2 percent during a national election. Certainly once countries get more connected, Facebook will augment good ol’ fashion elections.
Moreover, as Facebook saturates an electorate, it becomes a gauge of public opinion. Last election, CNN analyzed the semantic data of status updates to figure out how the general population felt about certain ideas and candidates. Status updates are a much better source of info for issues that are difficult for survey respondents to recall, and can be analyzed in much higher volume than phone-based polls.
However, Peixoto cautions that Facebook could be an unrepresentative boondoggle. First, Facebook is all text-based, so the large numbers of illiterate people in developing nations would be entirely excluded. Second, Facebook tends to show people what they like. Facebook users are incredibly biased towards gay rights and helped to shift public opinion in the U.S.
But, in developing countries with a history of misogyny and racism, giving undue power to the most vocal critics could be a disaster. And it’s not even certain that marginalized individuals would be willing to speak in places where it’s dangerous for gays and women to be outspoken.
Aspirations
TechCrunch’s policy channel, CrunchGov, has a vested interest in e-government. We’re actively building tools to make it a reality. Last winter, we launched a crowdsourcing legislative platform, Project Madison, a tool built by Congressman Darrell Issa’s Open Government Foundation to make federal policymaking more transparent, inclusive and intelligent.
Theoretically, Facebook could be a huge help in driving more representative expertise. Peixoto says that on social networks “you can brainstorm and you can aggregate preferences.” So, with some research and a lot of chutzpah, Facebook could be one powerful tool in the tool belt of democracy.
Concludes Peixoto, “Facebook is in a privileged position to improve the way democracy online works.”
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