Ken Auletta on Larry Page's Challenges as Google CEO

New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, as qualified as anyone to give an intelligent take on what's going on with the Google management change (Google it, if you don't know):


"It was always assumed that one day Page would be C.E.O. Now that he is about to be, he will have to change. He is a very private man, who often in meetings looks down at his hand-held Android device, who is not a comfortable public speaker, who hates to have a regimented schedule, who thinks it is an inefficient use of his time to invest too much of it in meetings with journalists or analysts or governments. As C.E.O., the private man will have to become more public. And he will have to rid himself of a proclivity most engineers have: they are really bad at things they can’t measure. Like fears about Google’s size, and privacy and copyright and how to deal with governments that are weak at measurement but rife with paranoia."

Ken's take has consistently been that the Google guys' Achilles heal is their inability to deal with the softer, more emotional sides of the business. His analysis here might be right. Page may, as Schmidt said, be ready to lead. Perhaps that really  is a factor in Schmidt's moving to his new role as Page assumed the helm.. And I'm not sure if one can put such an important management change on one factor, such as the Google moves in China. But Ken's take is worth looking at.


News Desk: Why Is Eric Schmidt Stepping Down at Google? : The New Yorker:

Moonves: CBS Bought 'Wallstrip' for More than Talent

Auletta (right) questions Moonves at the "W" hotel in Manhattan.

CBS chief Les Moonves this morning at a breakfast hosted by Syracuse U's Newhouse School said he paid a lot to buy video blog Wallstrip because he wants programming to syndicate and send all over the Internet. And while he likes the talent of the folks who do the Wall Street parody site, "no" he didn't buy it just for the talent – which is how some have framed the deal.

Wallstrip's Howard Lindzon had earlier made the point that if CBS really just wanted the "face" of Wallstrip, Lindsay
Campbell, they would've signed just her.

Moonves said during the event, interviewed on stage by The New Yorker's Ken Auletta at a media power-filled room* that CBS had made 25 purchases in the past 60 days, four of them "content." He said he understands about half of what CBS' digital chief Quincy Smith tells him, but fortunately Smith "understands everything he says."

*Larry Kramer, Chris Napolitano, Ken's brother Richard – who does PR For the Mets – Newshouse dean David Rubin, former AP chief Lou Boccardi, Jack Myers -- whom I write for, Craig Sender of Trylon, Nat Ives of Ad Age, Esther Dyson, and many others I should mention. The event will be on C-SPAN, Ken Auletta said.