It's funny watching Google struggle to keep its classic search interface pristine. A bar had been gradually growing across the top as new products such as YouTube were added to the dynasty. Then a couple of days ago the slate was wiped in favor of a small discreet grid which took you to all those services. That obviously went over big so now text is creeping back in the form of links to the popular "Images" and the "G+" Facebook imitation. Which will be next to return? Our vote is for "Translate" even though it wasn't there originally.
Speaking of Google, the Wikipedians have some unkind words about Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's tenure at Novell:
Novell's decline and loss of market share accelerated under Eric Schmidt's leadership, with Novell experiencing industry-wide decline in sales and purchases of NetWare and a drop in share price of $40.00/share to $7.00/share under Eric Schmidt's leadership.
specifically
Analysts commented that the primary reason for Novell's demise was linked to its channel strategy and mismanagement of channel partners under Eric Schmidt's leadership. Under Ray Noorda's leadership, Novell provided upgrades to resellers and customers in the same packaging as a newly purchased copy of NetWare, but at one third the cost, which created a "gray market" that allowed NetWare resellers to sell upgrades as newly purchased NetWare versions at full price periodically which Novell intentionally did not track. Ray Noorda commented to several analysts he devised this strategy to allow front line resellers to "punch through" the distributors like Tech Data and Ingram and acquire NetWare versions at a discounted rate where Novell "looked the other way" then allowed them to sell these versions as newly purchased NetWare versions in order to pay the Novell Field Support Technicians Salaries who for the most part were employees who worked for the front line resellers as Novell CNE (Certified NetWare Engineers).
Noorda commented that this strategy was one he learned as an executive at General Electric when competing against imported home appliances, allow the resellers to "make more money off your product than someone else's". Eric Schmidt embarked on a disastrous strategy to remove the upgrades as whole box products without understanding Novell's channel dynamics, then directed Novell's general counsel to initiate litigation against a large number of Novell resellers who were routinely selling upgrades as newly purchased NetWare versions. Although this move bolstered Novell's revenue numbers for several quarters, Novell's channels subsequently collapsed with the majority of Novell's resellers dropping NetWare for fear of litigation.
Yet, in their article on Schmidt the Wikipedians tell us that
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin interviewed Schmidt. Impressed by him, they recruited Schmidt to run their company in 2001 under the guidance of venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz.
This is called failing upwards, right?