Category: Google (GOOG)

Google (GOOG)

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Google Creates Alumni Relations Program Manager Position

It appears that Google is starting to prepare for the inevitable acceleration of pre-IPO employee departures and exodus as it has posted the role of Alumni Relations Program Manager. UPDATE: While I at first thought this was creating an employee alumni program from my quick read, it’s actually to create relationships with university alumni programs.

Many strategy consulting organizations with outstanding reputations have alumni relations programs including: McKinsey & Company, Booz Allen Hamilton, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), A.T. Kearney, Bain & Company, Katzenbach, ZS Associates, Marakon Associates, L.E.K. Consulting, The Parthenon Group, Oliver Wyman, Kurt Salmon Associates and Monitor. If it is n longer hyperlinked it mean the consulting firm changed the URL without a 301 redirect.

Some investment banking and institutional money managers have started to follow this trend of starting alumni relations groups that the consulting companies started such as: Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. I’d be delighted if BlackRock joined this elite financial services thought leader club creating alumni networks shortly as I’d love to reconnect with many of my former BlackRock, reconnect with them, form and fund entrepreneurial ventures with them. There is amazing value that can be created for everyone that puts a common social network experience in the center of the conversation.

In all of those companies there is a diversified portfolio of services and business development that can be created from these interactions that is good for the company. In Google’s case, I’m struggling to see what value can immediately be created beyond selling Adwords to alumni’s new companies and facilitating funding or acquiring start up companies via Google’s corporate development department.

One thing is clear, Google is planning for a future that includes more former Googlers who have moved onward!

UPDATE: One word changes ALOT of meaning. I neglected to notice the word university. Apologies.

Ironically this makes this role even more unique. As I’m unaware of any companies that partner directly with either of my university alumni programs in this manner. Makes you wonder if they have plans to offer a service offering to this sector.

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Biggest Threats Google Faces – Adding to Rand Fishkin’s Post

Rand put together a very thought provoking piece on the threats Google faces.

Since he asked for feedback on the article about other potential threats, I’ll say his list is a fine starting point, then I’ll add these:

The first one I’ll call 1b – A privacy breach event at Google (think search history in a court case or something similar) allows another player to gain share – Ask Eraser could easily benefit from such an event.

The other has to do with monetization. If someone were to come up with a superior monetization model that solves existing problems this could cause people to migrate both advertisers and users alike.

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Robert Peck – Bear Stearns: Mobile Spectrum Auction C Block Results Likely To Be Delayed

Robert Peck and his research team at Bear Stearns has been doing an amazing job of explaining, tracking arcane information and sending out brief snippets regarding the ongoing FCC mobile spectrum auction process. The volume of information they are tracking is both significant and lacks immediate transparency as the bidders are not immediately named.

This morning he pointed out that the D auction block is well it’s minimum and will likely be re-auctioned. What is significant about this is that the results of auction 73 can not be shared until all of the blocks are completed. Here is the exact text of what Robert Peck sent out this morning (emphasis added):

GOOG – 700MHz – How D Block Impacts Google…. Auction 73 completed its Round 35 bidding yesterday – results are posted on FCC website. We have previously alerted you to the fact that the PWB regional bids on all 12 regional licenses add up to $4.75B, higher than the $4.71B on the nationwide package which was entered in Round 17. Hence, the original bidder on the nationwide package is Google or another carrier, that bidder no longer has the obligation to purchase the spectrum. Industry advisers think Auction 73 could rap up as soon as the next two weeks.
However, we also want to point out that there are 5 blocks of spectrum in this auction and the 4th one (the D block) is currently set at $472M, below its $1.3B reserve. Many assume that this block will NOT meet the minimum reserve and will need to be put into Auction 76 to be re-auctioned. While this does not DIRECTLY impact Google or other block bidders (those blocks will be locked in at the end of the auction 73), it does INDIRECTLY impact Google in that no Auction 73 results can be disclosed until all 5 block are complete. This means that investors may be significantly delayed in learning who won the C block, as the only timeline deadline statute for the FCC statute in this auction is for all of the spectrum must be over and the money collected by June 30, 2008

Knowing Robert as I do, he probably wishes that they would have put this whole thing on Ebay. 🙂

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Some Outstanding Blog Posts…

Andrew Shotland has a nice post on Google Trends Works for SEO…I think hot trends might even be better in certain cases 🙂 , it’s certainly a thought provoking post that caught my attention and worth some experimentation – it might even prove successful at your next tea party!

Rich Skrenta is doing some interesting blogging lately. Be sure to check out his post Pagerank Wrecked the Web.

Bill Slawski, published an extensive Google patent from 2003, entitled Google Patent on Anchor Text and Different Crawling Rates.

Michael Gray wants Matt Cutts to talk.

And finally Shoemoney wants to know why Yahoo! is asking him to check credit card numbers for validity…

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Ad Age Interviews IAC’s Barry Diller

Last week, I wrote about the breakup of IAC by Barry Diller. At the time I stated:

He’s quite animated and interesting to listen to, I wish he did loosely structured calls like this more often.

Today Adage released an interview with Mr. Diller. In it he adds some sensibility to the Facebook valuation discussions, confirms that the Google sponsored listings deal is for five years and discusses how he’d like to buy AOL. I’d love to pick his brain on the future of Ask in a more detailed interview. It’s clear that he is shaking up a lot of things and it will be interesting to watch this breakup as it progresses for clues as to how the company will be run going forward.

Ad Age: You in the past have had a pretty good grasp on speculation. What do you think of the valuations being thrown around about a site like Facebook?

Mr. Diller: Those are not valuations based on anything fundamental; those are valuations based upon rather enormous hopes and dreams. Not that they won’t necessarily come true, but at this point, that’s what they are in terms of revenue and profits getting to the level that would sustain a very high asset value. … The physics would demand that this becomes more rational at some point, I think maybe sooner rather than later. But again, that’s a prediction based on nothing but hot air, to mix many different metaphors.

Ad Age: I can’t let you go without asking about Ask. Are you happy with how Ask.com is doing?

Mr. Diller: We feel great. We’ve been able to grow queries second only to Google. We’ve increased retention, frequency. All the metrics for Ask are very good. Now we have a new five-year arrangement with Google on the sponsored listings that’s going to be very, very remunerative to us. Ask is going to be able to continue to innovate.