Saturday, January 29, 2011

Million Book Read: Adam, Eliot and Ellery

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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

World Today Week of 1/24/11

Apple:
There have been a couple of major announcements about CEOs of major technology companies lately. One was that Steve Jobs is taking another medical leave, and the other is that Larry Page, the founder of Google, will now be taking Eric Schmidt's position as CEO of Google.

First up is Steve Jobs. As you probably know, Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple. Jobs has taken time off from Apple to focus on his health a few times before: in 2004, it was announced to Apple employees that Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (a less aggressive type than the normal type of this cancer). Then, in 2006 and again in 2008, many noticed that Steve Jobs looked extremely thin. Apple responded to this in 2008 saying that he had a "common bug" that he was taking antibiotics for. In 2009, Jobs announced that he had been suffering from a "hormone imbalance" for a few months, but Jobs told Apple's employees that his "health-related issues" were more complicated than he thought, causing him to take a 6-month leave of absence to let him focus on his health.

On Monday, January 17th (MLK Day), Jobs announced that he would be taking another leave of absence to focus on his health. If you're interested, click here to read Steve Jobs' e-mail to his company announcing his leave. Tim Cook, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Apple, will be running Apple's "day-to-day operations," states the letter, but Jobs will still be involved in making "major strategic decisions for the company." Cook also took over when Jobs took his medical leave in 2009. It is suspected that Tim Cook will be the next CEO of Apple (once Steve Jobs retires).

Since this announcement, there has been a lot of concern about things like Apple's stocks falling (which they did). There has also been some concern about Jobs possibly not returning, but a leading doctor in the type of cancer that Jobs has said that if Jobs' cancerous tumor has come back, he could still live for "many years."

This issue is important for many reasons. First, Apple is a very big company in stock market terms, so if Apple's stocks continue to go down, that could affect the stock market (not that I'm a stock market expert or anything). Also, from a technology standpoint, it is rumored that Apple will be coming out with the iPad 2 soon, so Jobs' leave, in my opinion, could affect the date of the iPad 2 coming out.

Google:
Also in the technology news, the CEO of google has surprisingly stepped down. Eric Schmidt was brought into the company over a decade ago because the Google Board needed a CEO with more maturity than the very young co founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This was announced 4 days after Apple's Steve Jobs took health departure.

The news was anounced formally in Google's quarterly report. Schmidt was believed to have stepped down, but some still wonder if he was "forced" to let go of control. Schmidt wasn't having a very good year, with multiple controversial interviews, and other "bad choices".

Larry Page will be the new Google CEO. He was the co-founder of the google search engine, and before Schmidt stepped down he was the head of Products and a president of the company. He has no prior experience with heading a company, and some wonder how he will do.

Schmidt will remain an advisor to Page and still have a position in the company, as the executive chairman.
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