This apparent friction that exists in Facebook keeps coming up in story after story concerning the company and its latest actions. Some, like Robert Scoble, seem to be firmly in Zuckerberg’s corner as he continues to push against conventional wisdom and pressure to do things other than his way. For others this type of behavior raises concerns about what is actually going on at Facebook and if any of the other approximately 799 employees will be little more than Zuckerberg “yes-people” in order to keep their positions. Dissenters being shown the door is certainly becoming a pattern so it may be more likely that folks will “fall in line” because this economy is not exactly overflowing with opportunities.

“At Facebook, you’re either with Mark or you’re not,” said one source at the 800-person company, located in Palo Alto, Calif., and founded five years ago. “And, if you’re not, you leave.”

With Yu’s exit the questions continue about the financial condition of Facebook. All is speculation at this point but some insiders have told that internally the financial news is rosy with revenues up 70% this year and projected cash flow positive status in 2010.

Facebook is now approaching 200 million users which certainly is amazing. What’s on everyone’s mind though including potential advertisers is when the path to true monetization will be revealed and eventually unleashed.

Everyone will have detractors when you get this big so Zuckerberg’s situation is not unusual. While it may not be the most popular thing to say, one has to suspect that his age and lack of experience combined with what appears to be a pretty healthy ego could be giving some the jitters. The parade of high profile ex-Facebookers is growing as reported by the WSJ.

In the past year, two of Facebook’s co-founders, Dustin Moskovitz, its one-time head engineer, and Adam d’Angelo, the company’s chief technology officer, have left the company. Matt Cohler, an early employee who was a senior executive, also left last year.

Mr. Yu himself was a high profile replacement of CFO Mike Sheridan in 2007.

So what’s it all mean for Facebook? As with anything that being reported about a private company it all needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It is hard to deny, however, the pattern that is developing and accelerating at the social media monster. Whether it’s redesign issues, terms of service concerns or a high profile executive merry go round, Facebook has the opportunity to either end up as one the greatest success stories of all time or endless material for Dilbert cartoons. Which way do you see it going?

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Patrick Pichette won’t be coming into a pre-IPO Google, with billions of dollars in stock options waiting to be claimed. The former Bell Canada executive will step into a company with a globally recognized brand and a dominant position in its industry.

Google disclosed Pichette’s selection after the markets closed on Wall Street. Previously president of operations at Bell Canada, Pichette takes the role of senior VP and CFO with the search advertising company.

Pichette comes into Google on August 1, with formal assumption of duties scheduled for August 12. Along with his Bell Canada experience, Pichette worked for the McKinsey consulting firm on North American telecom issues.

“On behalf of all my colleagues at Google, we welcome Patrick and, once again, thank George Reyes for all that he’s done for Google,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement. Shame he didn’t mention why it took Google ten months to find a replacement for the retiring Reyes, who probably wouldn’t mind knowing that himself.

Google’s stock is currently sitting at $689.96.  Its market cap is $215.85 billion.  And these are the sorts of things that one might expect to draw applicants like crazy.  But there are some good reasons as to why the CFO position is still available.

After all, CFOs probably aren’t the sort of people who just want to roll around in piles of money – they want to ration and control it.  At Google, where a few million dollars seems to get spent on "this or that" once a week, control isn’t exactly a part of corporate culture.

Also, as Wendy Tanaka pointed out, "Clearly the financial incentives for joining Google in 2008 with its stock price in the stratosphere are less compelling than during its pre-IPO period when Reyes joined."

We’ll see what Google can turn up, then.  Since "[t]he company hoped it could find a new CFO in a few months," according to Tanaka, this could soon become a source of corporate embarrassment; it was bad enough when, in July, YouTube’s CFO ran off to join Facebook.

At $2.36 per share, Napster’s stock is not the sort of thing to which any self-respecting chief financial officer would want to be tied; it’s rarely a good sign when 4-year-olds can afford to invest in a company.

Shifting even more of our suspicion from Gangwani to his employer is the statement Napster put out to announce his departure.  “Mr. Gangwani has been commuting from his home in the Bay Area to Los Angeles for the last four years,” it noted.  Is that to imply a certain amount of drive time affected the CFO’s decision?

Napster also seems unjustifiably optimistic about its future.  Yet in any event, Gangwani will stay onboard in an official capacity through the end of the year, and will supposedly help whoever is found to replace him adjust to his (or her) new job.

Gangwani seems to have handled his resignation in a professional manner.  Here’s hoping that, if he decides to go back to work, he’s able to find something closer to home and with a stock above $5 per share.

They’d already heard from Steve Ballmer, who, with his infamy for saying and doing odd things, is somewhat hard to take seriously.  Liddell might have provided some solid data, or at least a comment referring to statistics, in support of Microsoft’s decision.  But he didn’t.

“Obviously, I feel comfortable with the transaction we’ve done, and I was involved in it,” Liddell told Todd Bishop.  “I think you have to look at the investment not only in the context of the dollar investment but the commercial transaction.  I think there’s a great example of finance taking a role in that and thinking about the holistic aspect of what we’re trying to do in the online services, how Facebook fits into it, and how a dual investment-commercial transaction is a very powerful way of creating a partnership.”

Liddell did allude to stock prices, later adding, “[T]he share market reaction I think was positive.”  And indeed, for about eight days following the Facebook deal, Microsoft’s stock rose somewhat sharply.  It’s now lost more than half that gain, though, so the Redmond-based corporation doesn’t seem to have received much in the way of long-term benefits.

Microsoft’s decision to invest so much money in return for so little of Facebook remains questionable.  Yet at least the company’s leaders are willing to share whatever credit or blame they’ve earned.

Google announced this week that Chief Financial Officer George Reyes is retiring and leaving the company later this year. Reyes, who has been with the company five years, is only the second major executive to leave Google, ever, as far back as anyone can remember. Reyes intends to stay with the company while it searches for a new CFO and help with the transition, leaving by the end of the year.
(via Search Engine Land)

Let see if we can figure out the Google executive history timeline:

Chairman: Eric Schmidt (March 2001-); Sergey Brin (1998-2001)
CEO: Eric Schmidt (August 2001-); Larry Page (1998-2001)
President (sole): Sergey Brin (1998-2001)
President, Products: Larry Page (August 2001-)
President, Technology: Sergey Brin (August 2001-)
CFO: George Reyes (2002-2007)
Chief Legal Officer: David Drummond (December 2006-) [previously General Counsel, February 2002-2006]

SVP, Business Operations: Shona Brown (January 2006-)[previously VP of Business Operation, September 2003-2006]
SVP, Corporate Development: David Drummond (January 2006-) [previously VP of Corporate Development, February 2002-2006]
SVP, Engineering and Research: Alan Eustace (January 2006-)
SVP, Operations: Urs Hölzle
SVP, Global Sales & Business Development: Omid Kordestani
SVP, Product Management and Marketing: Jonathan Rosenberg (February 2002-)
VP, Engineering: Bill Coughran and Jeff Huber; Alan Eustace (July 2003-2006); Urs Hölzle (1999-2003)
VP, Global Communications & Public Affairs: Elliot Schrage (October 2005-)

Anyone want to help fill in the gaps or correct anything, or suggest others I should include in this list?

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Google CFO To Pop Golden Parachute

A familiar voice will be missing from Google’s conference calls around earnings time in 2008. George Reyes plans to leave the Googleplex after helping the company move a new CFO into the position, Google announced after the markets closed today.

Reyes will leave behind his old Sun Microsystems workmate, Eric Schmidt. When Schmidt was Sun CTO, Reyes served in a variety of finance positions for the technology company.

“As Google’s CFO, George successfully navigated our innovative IPO, the regulatory demands of Sarbanes-Oxley, and the management challenges of scaling a global finance organization. Though we fully appreciate his decision to step back from active management, we’ll miss his thoughtfulness, good humor and wisdom,” said Schmidt.

Reyes has been with Google for five and a half years. Over that time, Google has moved into a dominant position in the search and online advertising industries. Their IPO price of $85 has soared to today’s close of $506.40.

Hint: it ain’t gonna work, even if they flush another billion or two down the “copy Google” toilet.

So, what should their strategy be? Go for a little cut against Google. Don’t try to attack Google’s castle head on. That won’t work. Instead, flank them.

Start by surrounding Google with lots of niche engines. Technorati showed the way three years ago, even though Google has largely caught up now, by doing Blog Search, which was something that Google didn’t do well (still doesn’t really: if someone wants to find a blog on, say, Scrapbooking, what search engine really gives a nice set of blogs? Neither Technorati, nor Google’s blog search engines do.

But, there’s another engine that’s showing a way to start building a more successful search strategy: Krugle.

Buy it, and buy it now.

Why? Cause it’s a search engine for developers. Go talk to Steve Ballmer about that one. Remember him screaming “developers, developers, developers?” Well, Krugle delivers.

Krugle does something demonstratable that Google does not do: searches code and indexes it and helps developers in a real, demonstrable way.

Here’s an example. If you’re a Windows programmer you probably will need to look up some API name, like “DestroyWindow,” to learn more about it. Krugle’s search for DestroyWindow not only has links to the proper MSDN page, but shows off book mentions and code, and links to examples of its use in code.

I keep hearing about Krugle from developers. They tell me it rocks for looking up stuff. Need shopping cart code? Search for it on Krugle. Now compare that to Google/Yahoo/MSN.

Now, I can hear you now “developers don’t matter to search engines.”

Oh, yeah? When I visit Google there’s a huge plasma screen that shows every Google search done in real-time (it only shows that a search was done, not what the search was about). Everytime I look at that screen Redmond, WA does more Google searches than most other large cities in the world and does more Google searches than the entire continent of Africa.

Hint: there’s not much in Redmond except for Microsoft. So, what are all those Microsofties doing on Google?

I bet they are doing searches for technical information and looking for code samples, error names, algorithm tips, and API names.

I remember talking to tons of developers on the Windows team about why they love Google: it was the best engine three years ago, by far, to look up information on Microsoft’s own Web site!

That brand love for Google spread from geeks and developers to others in society. Don’t underestimate the influence that developers have here. YOUR OWN DEVELOPERS MICROSOFT!!!

So, start small. Don’t try to be Google. Why don’t you buy Krugle, get a position in search, then build on that?

It sure couldn’t hurt. What you’re doing now sure ain’t working.

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …

Turns out, neither of those theories were correct.

Here’s an excerpt from the Yahoo! press release that just crossed the wire:

“Yahoo!’s senior management team, actively led by Semel and with the continued participation of Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, will work closely together on a daily basis to ensure that the company is aggressively moving its strategy forward, driving long-term growth and fulfilling Yahoo!’s core mission to connect people to their passions, their communities, and the world’s knowledge.

The company has a search under way for a new chief financial officer to succeed Decker, who will be assisting in this search. Decker will continue to serve as CFO in the interim. The new CFO and other corporate functions, including corporate development, legal affairs, human resources and corporate communications will report to Semel. Dan Rosensweig, chief operating officer, has decided to leave Yahoo!, at the end of March, to ensure a smooth transition.”

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Trevor Jonas is an account director at Bite Communications (http://www.bitepr.com/), a worldwide public relations firm with offices in London, New York, San Francisco and Stockholm. An avid observer of the social media revolution, he can often be found posting about his favorite topics–PR, marketing and news consumption habits–on the Bite blog (http://blog.bitepr.com/).

Apparently, Second Place IS The First Loser

Here is what Bloomberg printed in their interview with her:

Bloomberg is a pretty solid and reliable news source. It’s difficult to imagine a scenario where one of its reporters would put together that statement out of context. Decker has not denied making that statement, so it seems safe to take these comments at face value, despite one commenter’s opinion on the Yahoo Search Blog that “Decker was quoted incorrectly.”

Yahoo’s talented search team must have taken them as a slap in the face. Yahoo Search executives Qi Lu, VP Engineering, and Eckart Walther, VP Products, posted a response to the widespread coverage of Decker’s comments rebutting her statement:

Lu and Walther then listed their reasons for keeping the faith: search relevance is improving since the engine launched two years ago; they have smart, respected scientists working on improvements; Yahoo has hundreds of projects aimed at improving search; and they have opened Yahoo Search with web services for innovative third-party application developers.

The duo then summarized their view of Yahoo’s place in the search world, and it’s not the view that Decker has:

Maybe Decker, the Search team, and a couple of people from PR and legal need to get together for sushi and hash out a cohesive, unified message about Yahoo and its search intentions. Because right now, their search message is mixed, at best, and that needs to be fixed.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.