Google had indicated that Page had lost his voice, and eventually, news came out that Page had sent an email to Google staff letting them know there was “nothing seriously wrong” with him, and that he would “continue to run the company.”

Page has made a number of public speaking appearances since then, but his voice has never really recovered. It’s something others have commented on, but Page hasn’t really addressed. Until Now.

Today, Page took to Google+ to explain the situation, which actually extends back fourteen years. It still sounds like there is nothing “seriously wrong” with him, meaning it doesn’t sound like he’s dying or anything, but it does sound like his voice may not recover. In his post, we also learn that he is funding some research related to the condition that he has. Here’s the post in its entirety:

Larry Page43 minutes ago

About 14 years ago, I got a bad cold, and my voice became hoarse.  At the time I didn’t think much about it.  But my voice never fully recovered.  So I went to a doctor and was diagnosed with left vocal cord paralysis.  This is a nerve problem that causes your left vocal cord to not move properly.  Despite extensive examination, the doctors never identified a cause — though there was speculation of virus-based damage from my cold.  It is quite common in cases like these that a definitive cause is not found.

While this condition never really affected me — other than having a slightly weaker voice than normal which some people think sounded a little funny — it naturally raised questions in my mind about my second vocal cord.  But I was told that sequential paralysis of one vocal cord following another is extremely rare.  

Fast forward to last summer, when the same pattern repeated itself — a cold followed by a hoarse voice. Once again things didn’t fully improve, so I went in for a check-up and was told that my second vocal cord now had limited movement as well. Again, after a thorough examination, the doctors weren’t able to identify a cause.  

Thankfully, after some initial recovery I’m fully able to do all I need to at home and at work, though my voice is softer than before. And giving long monologues is more tedious for me and probably the audience.  But overall over the last year there has been some improvement with people telling me they think I sound better.  Vocal cord nerve issues can also affect your breathing, so my ability to exercise at peak aerobic capacity is somewhat reduced.  That said, my friends still think I have way more stamina than them when we go kitesurfing!  And Sergey says I’m probably a better CEO because I choose my words more carefully.  So surprisingly, overall I am feeling very lucky.

Interestingly, while the nerves for your vocal cords take quite different routes through your body, they both pass your thyroid.  So in searching for a cause for both nerves that was an obvious place to look. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis in 2003.  This is a fairly common benign inflammatory condition of the thyroid which causes me no problems.  It is unclear if this is a factor in the vocal cord condition, or whether both conditions were triggered by a virus.

In this journey I have learned a lot more about voice issues.  Though my condition seems to be very rare, there are a significant number of people who develop issues with one vocal nerve.  In seeing different specialists, I met one doctor — Dr. Steven Zeitels from the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center — who is really excited about the potential to improve vocal cord nerve function.  So I’ve arranged to fund a significant research program through the Voice Health Institute, which he will lead.  Thanks a bunch to my amazing wife Lucy, for her companionship through this journey and for helping oversee this project and get it off the ground.  Also, thanks to the many people who have helped with advice and information many of whom I have not had a chance to thank yet.

Finally, we’ve put together a patient survey to gather information about other people with similar conditions.  As it’s fairly rare, there’s little data available today — and the team hopes that with more information they can make faster progress.  If you have similar symptoms you can fill it out here: voicehealth.org/ip

---

VHI – Vocal Cord Paralysis/Paresis Survey
VHI 374    40 Powered by socialditto

Business Insider put out this video of him talking about the device:

Heiferman says, “Google Glass? Well, I’m definitely going to punch someone in the face wearing a Google Glasses. I’ve never punched anyone in the face in my life. I’m generally a peaceful guy. If you’ve ever seen a three-year-old using an iPad, you’ll know why I smashed an iPad with a sledgehammer. It’s so damn compelling, and that has implications.”

He continues, “We’re going from ten to fifteen seconds to get my phone, you know, turn it on, open Facebook, and see something interesting…well now, with Google Glass, and the watch, we’ve gone from like ten to fifteen seconds to interestingness down to like three to five seconds to interestingness, and now once it’s on my wrist, and like you know, plastered on my eyeballs, that’s like down to one second to interestingness.”

“It basically means that you’re gonna be an asshole,” he says. “it’s easier and easier for you to ignore real people around you, and sometimes that’s totally fine, but on this relentless pursuit – the train is barreling down, and saying, distraction is just a fact of life. We have to consider what it means.”

He concludes, “And I’m not saying like, ‘Let’s sit back and ponder the nature of culture, and the future of society,’ in that way. I’m just saying, you gotta punch someone in the face wearing Google Glasses.”

Business Insider itself says he wants “to punch anyone wearing Google Glass in the face.” That would certainly be in line with his “assholes” comment. Still, whenever he says it in the interview, the wording sounds more like he wants to punch someone in the face while wearing Google Glass.

“Compelling…Interestingness…”

“I’m definitely going to punch someone in the face wearing a Google Glasses…I’m just saying, you gotta punch someone in the face wearing Google Glasses.”

Either way, he’s definitely going to punch someone in the face, and Google Glass will be involved.

Again, it’s unconfirmed, and could be a fake, but either way, it’s pretty funny.

The site has links for: Java Drawing Tool, The Web, GPA, The Vader Fader, Pong Game, Magnetic Poetry, Molecule Viewer, The Best…, About Me, Cow-a-Bungee, Monkey Theory and Base Converter. It links to the email address: Themarke51@aol.com.

The about page says:

Hi, my name is…Slim Shady. No, really, my name is Slim Shady. Just kidding, my name is Mark (for those of you that don’t know me) and I live in a small town near the massive city of New York. I am currently 15 years old and I just finished freshman year in high school. I have remodeled this website in an attempt that perhaps some search engine will recognize it. I am trying to promote my new AOL Program, The Vader Fader, which you can download elsewhere on this site. It is a decent fader. If you have any comments about this website, the java applets on it, or the Vader Fader which I am trying to promote, please contact me. My E-Mail address is at the bottom of this page.

Zuckerberg’s hometown (as listed on his real Facebook Timeline) is Dobbs Ferry, New York. Born in 1984, he would have indeed been fifteen when Eminem’s “My Name Is” came out in 1999.

Here’s his description of the Vader Fader:

This is a fader that I made when I was a little bored and somewhat inspired on a long weekend in between finals. I am not sure what versions of AOL it works with but it has worked for myself and for all of my friends who have AOL 4.0. I am not sure if it works with AOL 3.0 though. This fader is a small download and it features a great AOL-Style Interface with many options. Its options are mainly limited to fading but the program can manipulate AOL in such a way that it can fade Chat Text, Instant Messages, and E-Mails. I first saw a chat fader and I thought that it was cool. However, it is very rare that one can find a program that fades Instant Messages as well. It is veritably impossible to find a program that fades E-Mails. So take advantage of this fader and tell your friends to download it as well!

Of his “The Web” app, he says:

As of now, the web is pretty small. Hopefully, it will grow into a larger web. This is one of the few applets that require your participation to work well. If your name is already on The Web because someone else has chosen to be linked to you, then you may choose two additional people to be linked with. Otherwise, if you see someone who you know and would like to be linked with but your name is not already on The Web, then you can contact me and I will link that person to you and put you on The Web. If you do not know anyone on The Web, contact me anyway and I will put you on it. In order for this applet to work, you must E-Mail me your name and the names of the two people that you would like to be linked with. Thank you!

Sounds like something a 15-year-old Mark Zuckerberg might create. Hopefully Aaron Sorkin’s already planning the prequel.

According to this version of Zuckerberg, the saying of the year at the time was “Suck it!”

You can check out the site here.

We’ve reached out to Zuck for comment, and will update if we hear back (which we almost certainly won’t).

Image: Zuckerberg launching “The Wall” in 2004

The apology comes after customers in the country complained of not getting the same treatment as those in the U.S. who get full replacements from the company when they get a defective device. Chinese customers were only getting their devices repaired with replacement parts.

This is the second apology Apple’s CEO has had to issue in recent memory. Cook also apologized for the lackluster Apple Maps product that accompanied iOS 6. This was the subject of numerous complaints from users who were used to Apple’s previous Google Maps-based offering.

Here’s the full text of the new letter as translated by Google Translate (obviously it’s not perfect):

To our Chinese consumers:

Tim Cook
Apple CEO

[Hat tip: AppleInsider]

In after hours trading on Thursday, the shares rose as high as 12% from the $4.53 closing price. Things have calmed down a bit in pre-market trading on Friday, with shares up to $4.65, up 2.65%.

Meanwhile, seemingly everyone on the Internet is throwing around their opinion of Mason and speculating on his and Groupon’s next move. Mason has been relatively quiet since just after the news broke, when he shared a letter he sent to Groupon employees, which included some of his characteristic sense of humor, and a comparison of Groupon to a game of Battletoads:

For those who are concerned about me, please don’t be – I love Groupon, and I’m terribly proud of what we’ve created. I’m OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I’ll now take some time to decompress (FYI I’m looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I’ll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.

He followed that up with this:

He also retweeted this:

That was 15 hours ago, and he’s been quiet (at least on Twitter) since.

According to CNN, Mason is getting a severance package of $378.36 due to his $756.72 per year salary (as some tech CEOs famously take low salaries because of their fortunes in stock). The report says Mason’s Groupon’s shares are worth $213 million at Thursday’s closing price.

Battelle wrote about the decision on his blog. Following is just a snippet:

So when Deanna told me earlier this year that she wanted – in a thoughtful and appropriate manner – to move on and do something smaller and more directly related to content creation, I immediately understood. As I said above – it’s alright to step away when the time feels right. We spent a month or more thinking about who might be best to replace her. FMP is a unique company – straddling the two fastest-growing sectors of the digital marketing world: Native content marketing, and programmatic platforms. There aren’t many executives who are fluent in both, and who also might be a cultural fit for a company as storied as this one.

And then it hit me – quite literally in mid-sentence while on a Board call. Why the hell don’t I simply step back in? I love this company, I am passionate about the Independent Web, and to be honest, I see a huge opportunity in front of us. What am I, nuts? Why didn’t I think of it the moment Deanna told me of her decision?

Under Brown, Federated Media grew its network to outrank Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft in audience reach, the company says, citing comScore data.

Battelle founded Federated Media in 2005.

There were already rumors being reported that she would be taking over all AOL content other than Huffington Post, though the company didn’t specifically mention this in its announcement. TechCrunch shares a company memo, however, which indicates that Arianna Huffington will still report to Tim Armstrong.

“In her roles as CEO then Chairman of Gilt, and previously as President and CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Susan has a proven track record of brand building and aggressive growth,” said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. “I know she’ll bring that same drive and growth-oriented mentality to our Brand Group. AOL ended 2012 growing revenue for the first time in eight years, and we expect Susan to help build on this momentum and take our brands to the next level.”

“In my three years as an AOL board member, I have partnered with Tim Armstrong and my fellow directors to help drive the company’s transformation, and have seen AOL make great strides as it continues to innovate, grow and evolve,” said Lyne. “I’m looking forward to contributing to the company’s continued evolution in my new role, and will focus on creating additional value with all of AOL’s premium brands. Our efforts center on making all of our brands true destinations for audiences worldwide, and to provide marketers with innovative opportunities to connect with these audiences.”

Lyne will remain Vice Chairman of Gilt, a role she recently transitioned to from Chairman.

She has also served as President of ABC Entertainment, overseeing the development of shows like Desperate Housewives, Lost, and Grey’s Anatomy. Not bad experience to have as AOL continues to make a big video push.

AOL’s Chief Operating Officer, Arthur “Artie” Minson, who previously oversaw all three of AOL’s business unites: the Membership Group, AOL Networks, and the Brand Group, is stepping down. He will remain with the company for a transition period.

Have you learned anything about business from the Facebook story? Let us know in the comments.

Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a Wall Street Journal bestselling book about a topic which is made fairly obvious by its title. While it was just published in December it could go on to be considered one of the major works dealing with entrepreneurship in the age of the social network. We had a conversation with author Ekaterina Walter, a “social media innovator” at Intel and board member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, about what it means to “think like Zuck” and how doing so can help entrepreneurs build the best businesses possible.

“‘Think Like Zuck’ is an analogy of a leader who follows his/her passion, leads with purpose, builds great teams, and strives for continued excellence in his/her product (or services) and partners smartly,” Walter tells WebProNews. “It is a mentality that drives great leaders to build successful businesses and the approach they use to do so.”

The one trait Mark Zuckerberg holds that entrepreneurs should strive to emulate, Walter says, is “Long-term strategic outlook and the courage to stand up to the pressures (both internal and external) that would veer him away from his vision.”

“For example, everyone was saying NewsFeed was a bad idea and now it is the feature we can’t live without,” she says. “People were saying Facebook becoming a platform is not the right strategic and business decision and now 24.3 percent of the top 10,000 websites in the world have some form of official Facebook integration on their home pages.”

“It isn’t easy (especially when you are in your early twenties) to withstand those pressures,” adds Walter. “It is even harder to walk away from a billion dollar buy-out offer. But Zuck has a clear long-term vision of where he wants to go and where he wants to take this company and he is executing on that vision. Everything he does consistently supports his purpose of connecting the world and making it more open and transparent. Having a clear direction and focus is critical for a success of any company.”

For some, it’s become hard to remember what the Internet was even like before Facebook. Still, even today, Zuckerberg is only 28 years old, and he’s had far more success than most of us, including many entrepreneurs with years more experience, will ever see.

When asked what more experienced entrepreneurs can learn from Zuck, Walter says, “Creating the culture of urgency, staying in the state of permanent beta, not resting on [and] its laurels. That is something a lot of leaders are struggling with, especially once they reach some level of success. The hacker culture that Zuck created is the key to its continuous innovation and fluid adaptability.”

“Find and hire passionate people (independent of their age and sometimes experience) and offer them non-traditional career paths,” she suggests. “Zuckerberg understands the power of passion and the right attitude. Sometimes Facebook hires people just to have the right talent on board, and later on matches up their passions to the projects that they are best suited to work on.”

“Facebook runs hackathons where engineers can work on new ideas outside of their current projects and anything goes,” Walter notes. “A lot of traditional leaders a lot of times are afraid to give young and inexperienced a big chance and that’s where they are missing a huge opportunity to tap into passion and motivation of the entrepreneurial generation.”

As big and ubiquitous as Facebook has become, many wonder what direction the company would take, should Zuckerberg ever decide to step down from his role. Walter is not so sure Facebook could continue to thrive if someone else took over as CEO.

“Zuckerberg has always had this profound vision of where he wants to take the company,” she says. “He has made some unpopular decisions that ended up paying off big time. I believe the reason Facebook stayed so successful was because Zuckerberg maintained control over the company and a laser focus on his vision. How many leaders do you know have courage to stand up to the short-term pressures to create long-term value? And how many companies fell apart because they were bought out and/or changed leadership? More than we care to admit.”

Near the beginning of her book, Walter talks about how organizations need “intrapraneurs.” This is a term she credits Edelman Digital executive vice president David Armano with coining, and defining as “someone who has an entrepreneurial streak in his or her DNA, but choose to align his or her talents with a large organization in place of creating his or her own.”

So how can an employer foster this kind of development within its staff?

“Hire for attitude, not just skills,” urges Walter. “Skills can be taught; passion can’t. You need to get the right people on board. The right people are those people who share your beliefs, live your values, and strive for the same purpose.”

“Zappos is considered to be the company that not only treats its customers right, but also treats its employees right,” she continues. “Zappos has a rigorous screening process and intense 3-week training for new hires. But even with that, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, thinks bad hiring has cost Zappos more than $100 million. ‘This cost is a result of not only the bad hires we’ve made, but the decisions those people have made and how they have contributed to additional poor selections,’ he says. That’s why Zappos offers its new hires a substantial sum of money to leave the company if after the training they feel like this isn’t the right fit for them. You see, a great company not only has to focus on bringing the right people on board, but also make sure it leaves the wrong people behind.”

“Also, foster the environment of fearlessness, not fear,” she adds. “Empower your employees to innovate and execute on their ideas…passion, curiosity and sometimes naiveté prevail. Don’t dismiss ideas and believe in impossible.”

In the book, Walter says that when a company starts growing, it gets harder and harder to find employees who share the same bigger purpose or who fit perfectly into the unique environment created by its founders, but if building the right team around the values of the company is so important, how can employers overcome this challenge? How do you find the right people?

“First, look within,” says Walter. “Rally your employee base and involve them in finding the best candidates. Chances are if your employees are passionate about your brand and your mission, they connect with similar-minded people. In the early days every single employee at Facebook was serving a function of a recruiter. They were scouting their connections, universities, friends to see if they can find people who are passionate about what the company does and wanted to join them.”

Second, watch the industry closely,” she says. “Who are some of the people who write about the issues you are passionate about? Who are the ones that are being mentioned in the hallway conversations?”

“Third, invite the candidates in. Events like the Hacker Cup that Facebook puts together every year brings a lot of like-minded people together. That is an amazing (and elite) candidate pool to choose from.”

“Be creative in building communities internally and externally that would allow you to identify and single out the most passionate people,” Walter says.

That’s a handful of the things you can learn from Zuckerberg, but of course, there are enough to fill a book. On the other hand, as another book (and the film that adapted it) taught us, some have different views of Zuck’s principles.

Do you consider Mark Zuckerberg an inspirational figure? Let us know in the comments.

The quirky executive took to Twitter today to rant about the issue (hat tip to Forbes).

Follow @andrewmason

Andrew Mason
@andrewmason

I am about to my first multipart twitter rant, even though as I sit here about to embark I realize I am acting emotionally and may regret

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Andrew Mason
@andrewmason

It. The topic is sandwich stores that put mayonnaise on all or most of their sandwiches by default – it makes no sense. Even if you like

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Andrew Mason
@andrewmason

Mayonnaise I would think you would prefer to have it on te side so you can admit yourself – will make the bread less soggy. Sandwich stores

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Andrew Mason
@andrewmason

Would lose exactly zero sales by requiring mayonnaise lovers to manually apply their mayonnaise and they would attract a lot of new

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Andrew Mason
@andrewmason

Customers who would otherwise be really interested I. Their sandwiches. This is an especially annoying issue in the uk which seems to be

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Andrew Mason
@andrewmason

Going through a sort of sandwich store renaissance period but its completely off limits to those of us who don’t like mayonnaise.

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One can only help but wonder if any of Groupon’s restaurant customers are guilty.

Q&A is, in some ways, very similar to search. It’s all about seeking answers, and this is something Google and the rest of its search peers continue to try to improve upon. Yet some of the biggest names on the Internet, including Google have only stumbled when trying to take on Q&A. Jones thinks it has to go beyond the algorithm and include a human touch. He says that for Q&A, ChaCha is doing a much better job than Apple’s Siri, which he says will “basically punt,” and search the web (though he acknowledges that the product is good for device-internal purposes).

Google, as you may recall, bought Aardvark a few years ago to get pretty much into ChaCha’s space. It didn’t work, and Google shut it down. Facebook has tried the Q&A space to no avail. LinkedIn just killed its answers service as recently as last week. These other companies just “aren’t built for realtime Q&A,” says Jones. “They try to bolt something on, and it just doesn’t work that way.”

ChaCha certainly isn’t the last man standing (Ask, for example, is still grinding it out, and has even been doing some TV advertising lately). Quora has been getting a lot of attention, but Jones says he doesn’t really view it as a competitor, in that it’s more about long form answers (a point validated by Quora’s recent launch of a blogging feature) as opposed to ChaCha’s realtime quick answer style.

But ChaCha thinks it has the Q&A formula down, or at least closer than anyone else. According to Jones, while you may not have seen that from ChaCha yet, you will soon.

The new funding is all about growth, and a significant part of that is a new upcoming mobile experience, which will inevitably take over ChaCha’s web presence. They’ve been cooking up a new mobile app, which is codenamed “Go Big,” but is essentially a complete overhaul of the ChaCha apps that are out there today. It will first come to iPhone, then Android and others. It is a much more social media-oriented experience, and utilizes the Social Reactor feature the company unveiled not long ago. More on that here.

The biggest change ChaCha users will see is that the Q&A experience is moving from a faceless/nameless experience to a social one, so you know who’s answering the question.

“None of us are good enough for consumers,” Jones says of Q&A services, in reference to delivering useful answers consistently. He says people need these answers to come at least nine out of ten times, and the new app gets ChaCha “darn close”. He’s been using an early beta version.

Look for the new app to hit the iPhone in March, then Android and the web later. Jones says he isn’t all that proud of the current ChaCha web experience, going so far as to call it “kind of crappy”. But the experience that comes with the new app will hopefully change all of that once it hits the web.

It’s going to be interesting to see if ChaCha can make a bigger mark. The service is already getting two to three million questions on an average day.