Tag Archives: Eric Schmidt

Of Course Google Isn't Doing Tax Avoidance In Britain

By Tim Worstall, Contributor It comes to a pretty pass when the Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, has to go on the BBC and point out hwat everyone should already know about business taxation. Google is not tax avoiding in the UK (and most certainly not tax evading). This is the system that the politicians set up, this is how it is supposed to work. Heck, even HMRC (our equivalent of the IRS) says that this isn’t even vaguely dodgy, this is just how the system is supposed to work: Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has defended his company paying just £6m in UK corporation tax.

From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/04/22/of-course-google-isnt-doing-tax-avoidance-in-britain/

3 Companies Set to Dominate the World by 2020

By Steve Heller, The Motley Fool

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“For every one person online, there are two who are not. By the end of the decade, everyone on Earth will be connected.”
Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google

If you think the Internet is powerful now with just 2 billion users, think again. When the next 5 billion Internet users come online, it’s going to empower the world in an unimaginable way. Although Eric Schmidt‘s claim may be a bit exaggerated, there’s no denying that the world is becoming more connected with each passing year. The International Telecommunication Union estimates that 38% of the world’s population will use the Internet in 2013, which represents a 3% increase from 2012. Undoubtedly, the key enabler to such growth hinges on the proliferation of smartphones across the world.

For investors, there are three major areas to consider resulting from the rise of increased Internet users.

Search
Naturally, as more Internet users come online, more search queries will be conducted. Considering that Android commands a 70.1% smartphone market share, it puts Google in an excellent position to benefit from mobile search queries. However, mobile search may not be as profound for Google as once thought. The open-source nature of Android gives other businesses the opportunity to modify the Android experience so that it no longer benefits Google. Companies such as Baidu and Amazon.com have modified the Android shell, effectively undermining Google Search.

To help mitigate this threat, Google has established the Google Free Zone in emerging-market countries, allowing users to use Google Search, Gmail, and Google+ without the need for a data plan. It’s currently available in three countries but ultimately aims to captivate a base of one billion Internet users. In theory, this approach should drive mind share to Google’s brand, which over the long term could prove extremely valuable to Google’s business.

Commerce
Thanks to the rise of smartphones and tablets, John Donahoe, the CEO of eBay , believes another 2 billion Internet users will come online in the next three to five years. He also believes that the nature of commerce will change more in the coming three years than it has over the past 15. As a global commerce platform equipped with a thriving PayPal business, eBay expects that it will enable more than $300 billion of global commerce by 2015. For those keeping track at home, this represents an increase of $125 billion from 2012 levels. The smartphone has completely reshaped the world of commerce, and eBay is in excellent position to benefit from the fact that more users will begin shopping on the world’s marketplace.

Communication
Over 1 billion strong, Facebook is already a thriving platform for communication. Like Google, Facebook has taken a “Google Free Zone” approach to capture the mind share of users in areas of the world where Internet usage (and Facebook usage) remains low. The company has begun offering free or discounted access

From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/18/3-internet-companies-set-to-dominate-the-world-by/

Zuckerberg Announces Tech Group Fighting for Immigration Reform

By Chris Neiger, The Motley Fool

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly introduced a new organization he co-founded with other tech leaders, FWD.us, in a Washington Post Op-Ed yesterday, saying it will advocate on issues including immigration reform, education, and investments in scientific discoveries.

According to Zuckerberg’s article, immigration reform is the key issue the organization intends to take on. “We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants. And it’s a policy unfit for today’s world,” he wrote.

The Facebook CEO explained that his great-grandparents immigrated to the United States, entering through Ellis Island, and that he and his family wouldn’t be where they are, “without a welcoming immigration policy, a great education system and the world’s leading scientific community that created the Internet.”

Zuckerberg wrote about what he calls the “knowledge economy” in which “the most important resources are the talented people we educate and attract to our country. “A knowledge economy can scale further, create better jobs and provide a higher quality of living for everyone in our nation.”

In addition to Zuckerberg, the FWD.us organization is founded by leaders of America’s technology community including Reid Hoffman, Eric Schmidt, Marissa Mayer, Drew Houston, Ron Conway, Chamath Palihapitiya, Joe Green, Jim Breyer, Matt Cohler, John Doerr, Paul Graham, Mary Meeker, Max Levchin, Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi. It aims to work with both political parties in Congress, the administration, and state and local officials.

link

The article Zuckerberg Announces Tech Group Fighting for Immigration Reform originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Chris Neiger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Facebook. The Motley Fool owns shares of Facebook. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/11/zuckerberg-announces-tech-group-fighting-for-immig/

Investors, Pay Attention: You Are Paying for Underperformance at These Companies

By M. Joy, Hayes, The Motley Fool

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Last year, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison was awarded 7 million stock options, valued at $90.7 million, in the face of significant shareholder disapproval. Oracle’s board defended the decision by pointing out that the $90.7 million valuation isn’t necessarily an accurate measure of the compensation Ellison will receive.

The board is right to claim that the $90.7 million valuation of Ellison’s 2012 pay is misleading. In the end, Ellison’s 2012 pay will likely be significantly higher than the $90.7 reported in the company’s proxy — even if Oracle goes on to underperform.

Here’s why.

Options valuation
Oracle points out that the options granted to Ellison had no intrinsic value when they were granted, and would only gain intrinsic value if the stock appreciates. That much is true. The strike price of options granted to Oracle’s named executive officers was based on the closing price of Oracle’s common stock on the date the options were granted, so the $90.7 million valuation was entirely based on the time value of the options, which are good for 10 years.

Also, these options take four years to fully vest. Four years from now, Ellison’s 2012 options will have less time value, so he’ll only be able to bank his $90.7 million if Oracle’s stock price appreciates under his leadership.

What the proxy doesn’t tell you
Even if we buy Oracle’s claim that intrinsic value is a better indicator of the “true value and worth” of Ellison’s options, a few basic calculations show us that Ellison doesn’t have to help Oracle put up a very strong performance to get his $90.7 million payday.

How much does Oracle’s stock price have to appreciate over the 10-year life span of Ellison’s 2012 options for him to get that $90.7 million? Only about 3.4% a year!

Guess how much Ellison’s 2012 options will be worth 10 years from now if Oracle’s share price doubles, offering average increases of 7% per year. About $227 million! That’s a heck of a lot of money to pay for share appreciation soundly beaten by the nearly 10% average historical annual growth put up by large-cap stocks on the whole. Granted, this average includes gains made through dividends, but with a yield lower than 1%, Ellison isn’t doing much for shareholders in that arena, either.

Actually, the stock market‘s long-term return has been closer to 9.6%, based on data from 1928 from IFA.com, which includes dividends.

Geometric mean returns (1926 through 2008)

Asset Class

Average Annual Return

Large-cap stocks

9.6%

Long-term government bonds

5.7%

U.S. Treasury Bills

3.7%

An option to rip off shareholders
Ellison isn’t the only CEO with the potential to gain an outrageous pay package without putting up a performance to match it. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google , was granted a pay package worth more than $100 million in 2011. $38 million of that pay package comes from 181,840 options given an at-the-money a strike price of $612. As was the case with Ellison’s options, Schmidt’s options had a 10-year life …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Entrepreneurship and Overcoming Rejection, Failure and Depression

By Ken Sundheim, Contributor

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous…might be irrelevance.”  Eric Schmidt. CEO of Google Depression, rejection and failure are no longer anonymous. In 2013, business is getting more competitive and there is an inherently increasing need for business owners to put themselves “out there” from both a sales and marketing standpoint to stay in the game. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

America's 8th Best CEO Will Give You an Investing Edge

By Brian Stoffel, The Motley Fool

Petroliciouis BMW E28

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Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to dissect balance sheets, income, and cash flow statements. This is the first step in getting your feet wet in the investment world.

But it doesn’t stop there. If we were to base investing decisions solely on what we read in these statements, that would be akin to picking a significant other based solely on their Facebook  profile — to many, it just doesn’t make sense to avoid real-life interaction.

Investigating these “soft” aspects of a company is important for investors. And although we can’t capture all of the intangibles of a company in one article, Glassdoor.com — a website that collects employee sentiment for companies across the world — recently came out with a list that could help: the Top CEOs of 2013.

Over the past few days, I’ve covered CEOs 25 through 9. Today, I’m going to introduce you to the company with the 8th-highest-rated CEO, give you some background on the company, and at the end, I’ll offer up access to a special premium report that covers the biggest name in tech.

Google
You might be wondering how a company as big as Google — there are over 50,000 employees at the Big G — could have a CEO that so many admire and approve of (95%, to be exact). That’d be a fair question, but accomplishing something like this speaks volumes about what CEO Larry Page.

This is actually Page’s second stint as CEO, with the first occurring from 1998 to 2001. Page co-founded Google along with Sergey Brin, and the two have been helping run day-to-day operations throughout the life of the company.

From 2001 until 2011, the duo brought on Eric Schmidt as CEO, as he brought the type of corporate experience in technology necessary to help the company grow. Having learned from Schmidt’s leadership, Page took over again two years ago, and the company has continued its impressive streak of innovation.

From a strictly numbers standpoint, what Google has accomplished as a public company is mind-boggling: 44% revenue growth and 51% earnings growth per year!

GOOG Revenue TTM data by YCharts.

Against heavy competition, innovation rules
What’s even more impressive about Google’s story is that it wasn’t the first-mover in the Internet search business. Yahoo! got there first.

But before Google arrived on the scene, Yahoo! was simply producing search results based on its web directory. That meant that results were both incomplete and somewhat randomized. Google flipped this on its head by creating an iterative algorithm that could produce more complete and accurate results. Since then, the company has grown to capture 83% of the global search market, with Yahoo! coming in second, at 8%. 

More recently, the company has taken on other big names — most notably Apple and its iOS operating system for mobile devices. In an attempt to make Google the default search option of your smartphone, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

John Baer: Android on Chrome OS

There has been much speculation that Google was setting the wheels in motion which would result in the merger of Android and Chrome OS. Maybe one day, but not today according to Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

Not to say there are not benefits as there are, but Android is doing too well for this type of change. I believe the changes to Chrome OS will be more subtle.

The use case for this will be driven by Google Now; the information you want when you need it.

Image opening your Chromebook to the screen above. The left panel is titled “My Library” and contains recent content and is totally integrated with Google Drive and the web. If I was recently working on a word processing document the chances are good I may want open it again. If I was just reading an article from Discovery magazine the chances are good I may want to continue. You get the idea; a smart widget with predictive behavior.

On the right side of the screen is notifications. This includes weather, calendar, social, system, “Google Now” and email. This functionality is already under development. To keep all of this sane, it will be configurable.

In the final analysis is this Android on Chrome OS?

Not really; but it is what I hope to see at Google-IO 13!

The post Android on Chrome OS appeared first on j-Baer.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

Schmidt: Google to Keep Android and Chrome OS Distinct

By Tim Beyers, The Motley Fool

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At the company’s “Big Tent” event in India, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said that, despite recent management changes, users shouldn’t expect the Chrome and Android operating systems to merge.

“There’s more commonality for sure, but they’re certainly going to remain separate for a very, very long time, because they solve different problems,” Schmidt said in an onstage Q&A session. He also said users should think of Chrome as the fastest and most secure browser, while Android is more a development environment for Java-based apps.

Schmidt was responding to a questioner looking for hints at the future for both operating systems in the wake of Google choosing to shut down its popular Reader news delivery app.

The article Schmidt: Google to Keep Android and Chrome OS Distinct originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Tim Beyers is a member of the 
Motley Fool Rule Breakers
stock-picking team and the Motley Fool Supernova Odyssey I mission. He owned shares of Google at the time of publication. Check out Tim’s web home and portfolio holdings or connect with him on Google+Tumblr, or Twitter, where he goes by @milehighfool. You can also get his insights delivered directly to your RSS reader.The Motley Fool owns shares of Google. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Google. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

That Samsung Monster Story: Where is Google At Risk?

By Haydn Shaughnessy, Contributor

The news that Google harbors profound reservations about the growth of Samsung, as an Android platform user and smartphone leader, came a surprise, but in the world of smartphone economics all partners are potential rivals, as Google well knows from Eric Schmidt‘s time on the Apple board. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Dennis Rodman and Harlem Globetrotters members visit North Korea

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman brought his basketball skills and flamboyant style — neon-bleached hair, tattoos, nose studs and all — on Tuesday to the isolated Communist country with possibly the world’s drabbest dress code: North Korea.

Arriving in Pyongyang, the American athlete and showman known as “The Worm” became an unlikely ambassador for sports diplomacy at a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. Or maybe not so unlikely: Young leader Kim Jong Un is said to have been a fan of the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, when Rodman won three championships with the club.

Rodman is joining three members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team for a Vice Media production to air on HBO in early April, Vice founder Shane Smith told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview before the group’s departure from Beijing.

Smith said the Americans hope to engage in a little “basketball diplomacy” by running a basketball camp for children and playing pickup games with locals, and by competing alongside top athletes of North Korea — formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“Is sending the Harlem Globetrotters and Dennis Rodman to the DPRK strange? In a word, yes,” said Smith, who is host of the upcoming series. “But finding common ground on the basketball court is a beautiful thing.”

Rodman might seem an odd fit for an impoverished country where male fashion rarely ventures beyond military khaki and growing facial hair is forbidden. During his heyday in the 1990s, Rodman was a poster boy for excess. He called his 1996 autobiography “Bad as I Wanna Be” — and showed up wearing a wedding dress to promote it.

Shown a photo of a snarling Rodman, piercings dangling from his lower lip and two massive tattoos emblazoned on his chest, one North Korean in Pyongyang recoiled and said: “He looks like a monster!”

But Rodman is also a Hall of Fame basketball player and one of the best defenders and rebounders to ever play the game. During a storied, often controversial career, he won five NBA championships — a feat that quickly overshadowed his antics for at least one small North Korean group of basketball fans.

“When I discussed with Dennis the invite to go to North Korea and meet with Kim Jong (Un) and the Korean national basketball team as part of a documentary for HBO, he knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a fun shoot around playing basketball and would give him the chance to speak directly to Kim Jong (Un) that the only way to go is with peace not war,” said Darren Prince, Rodman’s agent.

Rodman’s trip is the second high-profile American visit this year to North Korea, a country that remains in a state of war with the U.S. It also comes two weeks after North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test in defiance of U.N. bans against atomic and missile activity.

Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, made a surprise four-day trip in January to Pyongyang, where he met with officials and …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

North Korea to allow foreigners to use mobile internet

North Korea will soon allow foreigners to tweet, Skype and surf the Internet from their cellphones, iPads and other mobile devices in its second relaxation of controls on communications in recent weeks. However, North Korean citizens will not have access to the mobile Internet service to be offered by provider Koryolink within the next week.

Koryolink, a joint venture between Korea Post & Telecommunications Corporation and Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding SAE, informed foreign residents in Pyongyang on Friday that it will launch a third generation, or 3G, mobile Internet service no later than March 1.

The announcement comes just weeks after North Korea began allowing foreigners to bring their own cellphones into the country to use with Koryolink SIM cards, reversing a longstanding rule requiring most visitors to relinquish their phones at customs and leaving many without easy means of communication with the outside world.

The two changes in policy mean foreigners in North Korea will have unprecedented connectivity while living, working or traveling in a country long regarded as one of the most isolated nations in the world.

However, wireless Internet will not yet be offered to North Koreans, who are governed by a separate set of telecommunication rules from foreigners. North Koreans will be allowed to access certain 3G services, including SMS and MMS messaging, video calls and subscriptions to the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper — but not the global Internet.

The lack of Internet access in North Korea has put the country at the bottom of Internet freedom surveys. Though North Korea is equipped for broadband Internet, only a small, approved segment of the population has access to the World Wide Web.

During a visit to Pyongyang early last month, Google’s executive chairman pressed the North Koreans to expand access to the Internet. Eric Schmidt noted that it would be “very easy” for North Korea to offer Internet on Koryolink’s fast-expanding 3G cellphone network.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth,” he wrote in a Jan. 20 blog post after returning to the United States. “It will make it harder for them to catch up economically. It is their choice now, and in my view, it’s time for them to start, or they will remain behind.”

Soon after Schmidt’s visit, Google unveiled maps of North Korea with more details based on contributions from foreigners using satellite images and publicly available information to map the country. Before, North Korea was left mostly blank in Google Maps but with the update, Pyongyang and major North Korean cities are shown with street names, parks, roads, train stops and monuments.

Cellphone use has multiplied in North Korea since Orascom built a 3G network more than four years ago. More than a million people are now using mobile phones in North Korea, where the network now covers most major cities, according to Orascom.

Chinese-made Huawei cellphones sold by Koryolink are not cheap, with the most basic model costing about …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

Google's Page, Brin, and Schmidt to testify in employee antritrust case

Google’s famed “triumvirate”—Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt—will give oral statements over the coming weeks as part of a private antitrust suit brought against Google and six other technology companies by former employees.

The civil suit, filed last year in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, and several other tech giants in the region conspired to enter into “no-poach” agreements to eliminate competition between them by restricting their hiring of each other’s employees.

Google CEO Larry Page and cofounder Sergey Brin are scheduled to give depositions on the charges on March 22 and March 19, respectively, a court document filed Feb. 15 said. Depositions are oral statements given under oath that are often taken to examine potential witnesses that could be used later in the trial.

Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt will also give his deposition on Wednesday at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld