If Jerry Yang does lose his job as the result of a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, the Stanford connection may prove its worth.
(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET News.com)
"Jerry is very talented and if he wants to work at Google we'd be very excited to have him, but I don't think that's going to happen," the BBC quoted Google co-founder (and fellow Stanford alum) Sergey Brin. He was responding to a question whether Google would ever consider employing Yang if Yahoo's chief executive lost his job.
Brin is huddling this week with the other two-thirds of Google's top leaders in Hertfordshire, England, for the company's European "Zeitgeist" meeting. Eric Schmidt later told reporters that he would meet with Brin and Larry Page to digest news of Microsoft's renewed interest in Yahoo and decide on Google's next move. (Maybe we'll hear something soon on a follow to Yahoo's apparently successful pilot of Google's search advertising technology.)
It's not entirely idle speculation. OK, there's a little of that going on. But if Yang wanted to make his next home at the Googleplex post-Yahoo, why wouldn't they want to make room? Of course, there's no way Yang would be able to join the ruling triumvirate (Three's a troika, but four's a mess). Still, I can envision one of those 30,000 foot big picture jobs where they get paid a lot for thinking deep thoughts. Give the guy the honorific title of "Chief Google" along with a swell tee shirt and turn him loose.
Strange but for some reason, no mention was made of Yahoo's other co-founder (and fellow Stanford alum) David Filo. Must have been an oversight.
I'm in Silicon Valley on Friday for the annual economic summit organized by Stanford University. Earlier in the morning, the government reported that the nonfarm payrolls registered the fastest rate of decline since 2003 and the markets predictably tanked. Good thing the Wall Street crowd didn't have a video link to the presentation by Havard professor (and ex-Harvard president and former Treasury Secretary) Lawrence Summers. Then they'd really bolt for the nearest bar.
Lawrence Summers at Stanford University.
(Credit: Charles Cooper)"I believe we are facing the most serious combination of macroeconomic and financial stresses that the U.S. has faced in a generation--and possibly, much longer than that," said Summers, adding that the country has "never been in more need of serious economic thinking than we are now."
The technology industry is on hand to listen. If Summers is right, the economy already is in recession--even though he complained about a "regrettable reluctance in Washington to recognize the 'R' word."
He spent a good part of his talk riffing about the dislocations in housing and credit markets, pointing out that while home prices in the U.S. are down 10 percent nationally, the decline may continue another 15 percent.
"The current estimates of mortgage losses are $400 billion," he said. "Those estimates are substantially optimistic."
That was just a warm-up to really depress the audience of heavy-hitters assembled here. He talked about a series of vicious cycles impacting credit and spending.
As a former cabinet member in the Clinton White House, Summers was careful not to season his words with too heavy a helping of politics. (He even said he admired Milton Friedman!). But as far as a fix, Summers said Congress and the president may need to follow up the recent financial stimulus with another.
"It's a grave mistake to believe in the self-equilibrating properties of economies in the face of large shocks," he said. "Markets balance fear and greed. And when fear takes over, the capacity for self-stabilization is not one that can be relied upon."
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