German regulators fined Google $189,225, a tiny fraction of its $10.7 billion profit last year, for violating privacy laws with its Street View project, Claire Cain Miller reports in The New York Times.
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The Check Is in the Mail, From Apple
Over the next few days, some customers who purchased an iPhone 4 in 2010 will receive a check for $15 in the mail. Special thanks to Apple.
The checks are part of a class action settled by the company last year after mobile customers complained about call reception on the iPhone 4.
The problem turned out to be with the phone’s antenna reception, and quickly became an Internet obsession in 2010. At the time, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, famously told one customer: “Just avoid holding it that way.†Before long, the problem was labeled The Death Grip and Antennagate.
Apple eventually admitted a problem with the phone’s hardware, and an Apple hardware executive left the company. Mr. Jobs apologized publicly, one of the few times he did so at Apple. “We are human and we make mistakes sometimes,†he said.
A class action accused Apple of “misrepresenting and concealing material information in the marketing, advertising, sale and servicing of its iPhone 4 â€" particularly as it relates to the quality of the mobile phone antenna and reception.†Apple last year agreed to a settlement of $53 million.
Apple iPhone owners took to social media Tuesday to share messages about their class action winnings.
“My iPhone 4 settlement check is here! Buying a boat and sailing the world. Thanks, lawyers! #retired†wrote Brad Kelly, an iPhone 4 owner who received his check, on Twitter.
Some people will have received larger checks in the mail, specifically the lawyers on the case. Although Apple agreed to pay $53 million to settle, $16 million went to the legal counsel for the plaintiffs.
Germany’s Complicated Relationship With Google Street View
Germany is one of the most privacy-sensitive countries in the world. So when Google started taking pictures of buildings and homes for its Street View maps, some people were outraged, even though it was legal.
Then, when Johannes Caspar, the data protection supervisor in Hamburg, Germany, discovered that Google was also illegally collecting personal online data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, the outrage overflowed. Mr. Caspar’s discovery, and his prodding of Google to turn over more information about what it was collecting, led to investigations in at least a dozen countries.
Despite Mr. Caspar’s persistence in trying to find out what Google was doing â€" and his dismay at discovering it was collecting private information â€" when his agency concluded its investigation on Monday, it fined Google $189,225, the amount of money Google made every two minutes last year. Mr. Caspar called on lawmakers to raise the amount that regulators could fine companies. Yet even he did not fine Google the maximum amount that he could have, which would have been $195,000. Why?
In an interview on Monday, Mr. Caspar said he had given Google the discount because the company gave him a copy of the German data it had collected and, he said, finally cooperated at the end of the investigation.
Google’s global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, said in a statement that Google had cooperated with Hamburg authorities all along. “We work hard to get privacy right at Google,†his statement said. “But in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue.â€
Google declined to comment on the size of the fine.
Street View has always been a challenge for Google in Europe, because European privacy laws and cultural norms are more sensitive to privacy issues than those in the United States.
Google uses technology to blur faces and license plates in its Street View images. But European data protection authorities also required that Google notify the public before the Street View cars start driving on European streets and limit the amount of time that it keeps unblurred images of faces and license plates.
In Germany, though, that was not enough. So Google allowed Germans to request that it blur pictures of their homes, too. When Street View went online for Germany’s largest cities in 2010, the company said 3 percent of German households opted out.
Street View, which Google started in 2007, is in 50 countries as of Tuesday, when the company added Hungary and Lesotho and 350,000 miles of roads worldwide, the largest single update of imagery it has published.
The Flattening of Design
It might sound audacious to think that Microsoft, the arbiter of uncool, was at the forefront of design a few years ago. But it was.
It turns out the company’s decision to focus on “flat design,†a type of visual scheme where everything has a smooth and even look, was a few years ahead of the rest of the technology and user interface industry.
While Microsoft was flattening its interfaces as if it were a child pushing down on a bulge of putty, its competitors - including Apple and Facebook â€" were focused on skeuomorphism, a type of look in which, say, a note-taking feature on a Web site or in an app would look like a spiral-bound notebook, a reference to the real world look of a notebook.
Now everyone seems to be following in those flat footsteps.
As my colleague Nick Wingfield and I reported last year, Apple is expected to flatten its operating system interfaces in a major overhaul later this year. Facebook has been slimming down its site design for a while, slowly changing its complicated and intricate iconography to flat and legible shapes. Last week the company updated its main “f†logo, flattening the icon and removing an unnecessary light blue bar along the bottom.
These companies aren’t simply following Microsoft’s lead in the quest for flat. There are cultural and technological reasons for this new look and feel.
Steven Heller, co-chairman of the M.F.A. Design Department at the School of Visual Arts and author of more than 150 books on design culture, said that part of the push toward flat design was to try to escape the overabundance of design that looks digital, where things “have started to look cliché.â€
“Every so often there is a new fashion that comes about in design for any number of reasons, not the least of which is technology, and now there has been a reaction to mechanistic-looking design where you press a button and get a specific look,†Mr. Heller said. “In response, designers have started to turn to flatness.â€
One of the biggest drivers for this stylistic change is being forced upon designers by the constraints of smartphones.
Justin Van Slembrouck, design director at Digg, the social news site, said that while some design decisions were made as stylistic choices, “it is increasingly being driven by mobile, where you’re designing for the lowest common denominator so you can’t load a site up with heavy graphics.†He added, “The end result, with flat design, is that it all feels less cluttered.â€
In some respects, flat graphics can be seen as a nod back to early print, specifically Russian propaganda war posters. At the time, before computers â€" yes, there was such an era â€" designers were forced to create flat images because of printing constraints. Now it seems to be happening again, but with screens.
When today’s graphics are too busy â€" layered with gradients and elaborate typography â€" people are forced to try to navigate a clutter of information in a very small space. On a smartphone screen, for example, a flat icon of a musical note can tell a story much quicker than an intricate picture of a shiny sparkling CD.
“It’s that whole notion of ornamental decoration with excess baggage, which the Modernists wanted no part of because it wasn’t a pure design,†Mr. Heller said, noting that he calls overly ornate typography and design the Cult of the Squiggly. “It’s clear if you put too many things on a page you’re going to cause a distraction. In a small screen environment, you can’t do that either. You can’t afford distractions.â€
False Tweet on White House Blast Causes Stir
The Twitter account of The Associated Press was hacked on Tuesday and erroneously sent out a tweet saying there had been explosions at the White House, injuring President Obama.
Within a few minutes, Twitter suspended the account and Julie Pace, the chief White House correspondent for The A.P. announced at a White House briefing that the account had been hacked.
Jay Carney, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, confirmed that the president was unharmed.
Editors at The A.P. soon followed with a statement saying that “The (at)AP twitter account has been hacked. The tweet about an attack at the White House is false. We will advise more as soon as possible.â€
The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted more than 150 points when the news broke on Twitter â€" an indicator of traders’ presence on the social media platform â€" before immediately recouping the losses after it became clear that there had been no incident at the White House.
The A.P. typically uses Social Flow, a social media tool, to distribute tweets. But in this case, the attackers posted directly from the Web, according to the meta data associated with the tweet.
In the past few days, The A.P. discovered that malware had infected some of its company computers, according to a spokeswoman. Hackers can use malware to gain a foothold inside a company’s computer network and from there, can gain access to a company’s usernames and passwords to e-mail, administrative and social media accounts.
Shortly after the account was suspended, Mike Baker, a reporter for the news organization, posted a message saying that the attack may have originated with a spear-phishing campaign, in which attackers send a cleverly disguised e-mail from a friend, or work contact, that contains a malicious link or attachment.
Through a Twitter account, a group called the Syrian Electronic Army took credit for the attack.
That Twitter account is linked to the Web site Syrianelectronicarmy.com, a Syrian language Web site that broadcasts what the group says are its latest cyberattacks. Even as the Twitter accounts for @AP and @AP_Mobile were suspended Tuesday afternoon, the account for the Syrian Electronic Army was still live.
This is the third high-profile corporate account to be hacked in recent months. In February, Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked, the company’s logo was replaced by a McDonald’s logo and rogue announcements began to appear. A day later the Twitter account for Jeep was also attacked.
But the attackers used The A.P.’s Twitter account for more nefarious means. Within seconds, the erroneous A.P. headline about explosions at the White House had spread all over Twitter and been retweeted hundreds of times.
The incident, and hacking episodes before it, continue to raise questions about the security of social media passwords and the ease of access to brand-name accounts. Logging on to Twitter is the same process for a company as it is for a consumer, requiring just a user name and one password.
Twitter has tried to take an active role in ridding malicious content from its platform. It has manual and automatic controls in place to identify malicious content and fake accounts, and last year the company sued those responsible for five of the most-used spamming tools on the site.
But preventing hacking and identifying fake accounts continues to be more art than science. Security researchers estimate that as many as 20 million Twitter accounts on the platform are fakes, and real accounts continue to be catnip for hackers.
Updates in the Aftermath of the Boston Marathon
The Lede is following developments in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 280 others as more people have sought medical treatment in recent days. On Tuesday, funeral services were held for Sean Collier, the M.I.T. police officer who was shot and killed. Federal officials continue to investigate the bombings as the surviving suspect remains in a Boston hospital after being charged Monday for using a weapon of mass destruction.
11:47 A.M. Private Funeral for Slain M.I.T. Police Officer
Brian Snyder/Reuters The coffin of Sean Collier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus patrol officer said to have been killed by the Boston Marathon bombers, was carried into St. Patrick’s Church in Stoneham, Mass., at his funeral Tuesday morning.As the Boston Globe reports, private funeral services were held Tuesday morning for M.I.T. police officer, Sean Collier, 27, who was gunned down in his police car in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, not far from where the suspects lived. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis described the shooting as an “assassination.â€
Cj Gunther/European Pressphoto Agency Law enforcement officials and their motorcycles lined up outside St. Patrick’s Church in Stoneham, Mass., Tuesday morning for the funeral of Sean Collier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer said to have been killed by the Boston Marathon bombers.The shooting focused the manhunt for the suspects in the Cambridge and Watertown area, leading to a gun battle on a quiet residential street in Watertown. One of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev died while the younger brother, Dzhokhar, escaped until Friday evening when he was captured after hiding in a boat.
On Wednesday, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will attend a memorial service at M.I.T. for the slain officer on the university’s campus that is expected to draw thousands of law enforcement agents from across the country.
11:33 A.M. Americans See Terrorist Attacks as Part of the Future
Americans were transfixed by the news coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing last week, and most continue to say that occasional acts of terrorism will be a part of life in the future in this country, according to two new surveys.
Three-quarters of Americans consider occasional terrorist acts to be part of the nation’s future, up from nearly two-thirds a year ago, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Thursday through Sunday, while facts about the investigation and the pursuit of the suspects were still developing.
Americans were divided on whether the government could prevent attacks like the one in Boston, with 49 percent saying it could do more and 45 percent saying there was not much it could do. Still, 6 in 10 said the government had made the country safer from terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, while about a third said its actions had not had much of an effect. Republicans were more likely than Democrats or independents to say the government’s steps have increased security.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans said they followed news about the Boston attack very closely, expressing as much interest as they did for events like the 2002 sniper shootings in the Washington area, the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003 and the Wall Street bailout in 2008. In 2001, nearly 8 in 10 Americans said they were following news of the Sept. 11 attacks very closely.
While television was the source most widely turned to for information, nearly half of Americans said they followed the Boston news online or on a mobile device. And despite a number of factual missteps by news organizations during the week, 72 percent of Americans rated the news coverage as excellent or good.
A Washington Post poll released on Monday and conducted last Wednesday and Thursday, while the suspects were still at large, found that a majority of Americans were concerned that there would be more major terrorist attacks in the United States.
Nearly a third of Americans said they were worried about future attacks a great deal, up from about 2 in 10 in 2008. But most Americans continued to say they were not concerned about the possibility of an attack in their own community. Only 6 percent said they had changed their daily activities after the marathon bombing; after the Sept. 11 attacks, 53 percent said they had altered their daily lives.
The Post poll also found that two-thirds of Americans said terrorists would find a way to stage major attacks no matter what the federal government did.
Both polls were conducted by telephone nationwide using land lines and cellphones. The Pew poll was conducted among 1,002 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. The Post poll was conducted among 588 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.
â€" Allison Kopicki
11:03 A.M. Number of Injured Rises to 282
The number of people being treated from injuries related to last week’s twin bombings at the Boston Marathon has risen from an initial estimate of 170 to 282, according to a report in The Boston Globe. The increase comes as people have started seeking treatment for problems that many assumed would go away on their own, like hearing loss or minor shrapnel wounds, doctors told The Globe.
“One of the best examples is hearing issues,†said Nick Martin, a spokesman for the Boston Public Health Commission. “People might have first thought their hearing problems would be temporary.†Instead, hearing loss or continuous ringing or buzzing in their ears remained. Others sought delayed care for minor shrapnel wounds.
State health officials told The Globe that 48 people remained hospitalized in the greater Boston area on Tuesday, including two who remain in critical condition: a 7-year-old girl at Boston Children’s Hospital and a man in his 60s at Boston Medical Center.
All of the injured who made it to hospitals survived, and the only wounded person connected to the attacks to arrive at a hospital and later die was one of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Nevertheless, doctors have cautioned that the survivors of the bombing face a long recovery, according to The Globe.
Still, many of the patients â€" among them 14 who had limbs amputated â€" are facing daunting recoveries. The 7-year-old girl remains in intensive care and had surgery last week for extensive leg injuries.
“She’ll recover, and I expect that within the next couple of days she’ll come off the critical list,†said Dr. David Mooney, director of the trauma program at Boston Children’s who has been involved in her treatment. “She’s much better than she was; her improvement has been slow and steady.â€
Shapeways Raises $30 Million to Bring 3-D Printing Mainstream
Three-dimensional printing still largely feels like a novelty or hobbyist technology, best for creating quirky trinkets, fancy desk adornments and pieces of jewelry. The dream that the average person will be able to print out a steak knife, a replacement screw or a new chair at home, as easily as microwaving popcorn â€" still feels a bit far-fetched.
But Peter Weijmarshausen, the chief executive of Shapeways, a company that lets people design and order objects that are printed on high-end 3-D printers, says that such a vision of the future is coming and he hopes his company will help usher it in.
“We still have interesting technology challenges,†he said. “The key is really to let people manufacture whatever they want and have it be affordable. Then it will hit mainstream.â€
On Tuesday, the company, which is based in New York, announced that it raised $30 million in a Series C round of venture financing, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures participated in the round, among others. Chris Dixon, who recently joined Andreessen Horowitz as a partner, led the investment in the company. Previously, the company raised a little over $17 million in capital.
Shapeways has a community of 300,000 members and three million products in its online catalog. “We also have 10,000 shops selling designs and items,†said Mr. Weijmarshausen. Each month, the company receives, prints and ships 60,000 orders to customers all over the world.
Mr. Weijmarshausen said that he planned to use the new money to expand the team and increase production at the factory.
Shapeways has been introducing new materials, like sophisticated plastics, metals and ceramics, to expand the possibilities of what can be made, and it recently opened a factory in Queens to help cut the costs of printing and shipping even further.
Three-D technology is “a technology that’s been around for 20 years,†Mr. Weijmarshausen said. “Its potential has not even begun to be tapped into.â€
Internet Sales Tax Gains Ground in Senate
Internet Sales Tax Bill Gains Ground in Senate
WASHINGTON â€" It has been labeled a tax grab and a bureaucratic nightmare by conservative antitax activists, an infringement on states’ rights and a federal encroachment on the almost-sacred ground of Internet commerce.
An Amazon.com center in Phoenix. Amazon, once an opponent of collecting a sales tax, has reversed its policy.
Yet legislation to help states force online retailers to collect sales taxes easily cleared its first procedural hurdle on Monday evening, and even its fiercest opponents are looking to the House for a last stand. The Senate voted 74-20 to take up the legislation for debate and amendment.
“I’m not above believing in miracles,†said Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action, the activist arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has made opposition to the Internet tax bill a “key vote†â€" so far with little impact.
The bill, known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, is that rare piece of legislation that has turned Democrat against Democrat, Republican against Republican and business against business, while uniting states as different as New Hampshire, Montana and Oregon â€" which have no sales taxes â€" against virtually every other state.
An odd confluence of events has swung the political momentum to one side. Less than a week after the Senate could not muster 60 votes to expand gun background checks supported by a vast majority of voters, lawmakers from both parties are poised to steamroll opponents and greatly broaden the imposition of sales taxes on the Internet.
Under the bill, online retailers would collect an estimated $22 billion to $24 billion that now goes uncollected. A final vote is expected in the Senate by the end of the week. When the House will take up the issue is uncertain.
“We think this is inevitable, with states looking for revenue, with the growth of e-commerce,†said Stephen Schatz, a spokesman for the National Retail Federation, which has said for years that brick-and-mortar retailers were at a competitive disadvantage against online giants.
“Inevitable†is not a word used often for legislation that Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform mobilizes against and eBay rallies millions of its users to oppose, as they have with this bill. But sometimes the stars align. State and local governments are pleading to lawmakers to help fill their budget holes with legislation that technically does not raise a penny in federal taxes.
“What it means is a lot of money for states and localities,†Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and one of the bill’s champions, said on Monday.
Old-fashioned retailers are going bust, leaving towns marred by vast, empty storefronts. Those that remain complain of “showrooming,†when shoppers inspect their wares, then leave the store to buy the same products on the Internet, finding lower prices and avoiding sales taxes.
Republicans including Senators Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee are as adamantly in favor of the bill as Democrats.
Finally, Senate Democratic leaders needed a bill to move to quickly after gun legislation all but died last week, and the Internet tax bill was ready.
President Obama on Monday threw his support behind the bill, which the White House said “will level the playing field for local small business retailers that are in competition every day with large out-of-state online companies.â€
The bill would allow states to require all Internet sellers to collect sales taxes for the state and local governments of the buyers. State governments would be required to provide software free to Internet retailers to calculate sales taxes. Online retailers with out-of-state sales of less than $1 million a year would be exempt.
Opponents predict a bookkeeping nightmare. Online retailers would have to keep track of more than 9,000 sales-tax regimes. Internet companies in states with no sales taxes â€" Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon and Delaware â€" would have to build a collection apparatus from scratch.
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, called the legislation “a targeted strike against the Internet and a targeted strike against the digital economy.â€
Many of the largest Web retailers have already begun collecting sales taxes. Amazon.com has joined a vast constellation of brick-and-mortar retailers in collecting taxes, leaving eBay to fight an increasingly lonely battle. In March, the Senate held a test vote of sorts, a nonbinding amendment to the Senate budget that mirrored the Marketplace Fairness Act.
It passed 75 to 24 and won the votes of some of the Senate’s most ardent conservative Republicans, including Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
Shifting his company’s position, eBay’s chief executive, John J. Donahoe, has begun pressing for compromise, a $10 million exemption that would shield virtually all of eBay’s sellers.
For many opponents, the fight is already shifting to the House, where an identical measure by Representative Steve Womack, Republican of Arkansas, has collected 55 co-sponsors from both parties. Mr. Womack said on Monday that he had held several meetings with Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, including one where Senators Enzi and Alexander joined the pitch.
For House members from both parties, Mr. Norquist’s voice may be no match for the hometown retailers, Mr. Womack said.
“I’m just hopeful we can send a life vest to our traditional retailers,†he said.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 23, 2013, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Internet Sales Tax Bill Gains Ground in Senate.
Salesforce Wants to Remake Marketing — and Itself
The head of Salesforce.com has what he hopes will be a major new product. What he really thinks it is about, though, is remaking his company for the age of social media.
“All of us have to become connected companies, changing fundamentally how we sell our products to customers,†said Marc Benioff, the founder and chief executive of Salesforce.com. Trends like social networking and mobility, he says, “are the future of computing.†He added, “Everyone has to move to being a connected, customer-oriented company.â€
To that end, on Tuesday Salesforce announced the creation of a new product line, Social.com, which is software to automate the way a company’s potential customers are found, analyzed and sent personalized ads over social media like Facebook and Twitter. Over the longer term, Mr. Benioff said, he will change how Salesforce products look and work.
For the announcement of Social.com, Mr. Benioff prepared a 90-minute presentation on the forces he says are fundamentally reshaping how business must work.
He sees seven major trends: social media; mobile devices; large amounts of data analysis; self-organizing communities at work and in society; software apps from industrial organizations as well as consumer companies; cloud computing; and what Mr. Benioff called “the human factor, how we are connecting and how we build trust.â€
In part, we are connecting by using big computers. Much of the social media marketing jobs of Social.com are now done with a lot of humans in the process, but that is insufficiently quick or far-reaching enough for a big company. Companies involved in the Social.com announcement include Ford and Omnicom, an advertising conglomerate that works with some of the world’s largest companies.
The announcement deepens as well what has been a significant transition in control of information technology assets at many companies, from IT departments, to customer-facing managers.
It also marks a closer integration into Salesforce, which sells software to manage things like sales leads, contacts and customer service follow-up, with some of its recent acquisitions.
In 2011 Salesforce paid $326 million in cash and stock for Radian6, which monitors and analyzes conversations on social media. Last June Salesforce bought Buddy Media, which helps marketers publish content and place ads in social media, for $689 million in cash and stock. Just before the deal, Buddy Media had bought Brighter Option, an ad purchasing and management company.
Last October, Salesforce laid off some of the Radian6 employees, and disclosed losses at Buddy Media before it was bought, leading many analysts to speculate on the role these companies could play in Salesforce’s core business.
For Mr. Benioff, the integration of the two outfits is not about absorbing their woes, but keeping Salesforce up with the times. Awareness of leads, selling in a way that is more personalized and better customer attention, he said, are all necessary in the new world.
“There isn’t a business customer I see who doesn’t have the same problem,†he said in an interview before the announcement of the new product. “How do you market, service and sell to customers?†Within Salesforce itself, he said, this means building enterprise software for mobile products, being capable of understanding in real time what customers are doing with the products they have purchased, and staying in constant, and appropriate, contact with customers.
“We’re rebuilding our software†to work in a world of mobile devices and social networks,†Mr. Benioff said, and increasing the transparency of communications within Salesforce itself by allowing common access to lots of corporate information. “By our Dreamforce conference in November we will have the whole thing done, I think.â€
Mr. Benioff is one of the most relentless, and successful, promoters in tech, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay attention to what is going on here. He has also been an incisive technology entrepreneur, building Salesforce into the first multibillion-dollar online software business. Companies like SAP and Oracle at first ignored him, then dismissed him, then finally purchased cloud-based software companies of their own.
Now, he says, selling cloud-based software that works well on personal computers for conventional organizations is not enough. The changes he is talking about mean that companies must be aware of the way their own employees now get work done, and how powerful and aware customers have become.
And, if what he is doing creates a new challenge to SAP and Oracle, while Salesforce is again seen as cutting edge, that is probably fine with Mr. Benioff.
Why Tim Cook Is Like Steve Ballmer
On Monday, Matthew Panzarino of the Next Web, a tech news site, tweeted an ironic message that read “Fire Tim Cook!,†along with a link to a couple of charts showing the steady upward march of Apple’s revenue and profit over the last few years.
Looked at that way, the campaign by some of those who are bearish on Apple stock to unseat Mr. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, seems rather absurd.
It’s worth pointing out that Apple is not the only big tech company where there seems to be a disconnect, at least a superficial one, between the doom-saying of some investors and the company’s financial performance.
For many investors, Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, has long been one of tech’s favorite villains. His company’s stock has lost 43 percent in value since he got Microsoft’s top job on Jan. 13, 2000. Periodically, pundits, investors and even former executives call for Mr. Ballmer to get the boot.
During the 13 years Mr. Ballmer has led Microsoft, though, annual revenue at the company has grown 221 percent, to $73.72 billion, and profit has jumped 80 percent, to $16.98 billion.
Whenever he’s asked about the company’s poor stock performance under his leadership, Mr. Ballmer typically says there are two Microsoft numbers he is most concerned with â€" profit and revenue. The share price, he usually responds, is outside his control.
In comparison, during Mr. Cook’s relatively 20 months as Apple’s chief executive, the company’s annual revenue has grown 45 percent, to $156.51 billion, while profits have jumped 61 percent, to $41.73 billion.
Apple’s shares have been pummeled by investors, losing more than 43 percent of their value since last September. Apple’s stock is still up about 6 percent since Aug. 24, 2011, when Mr. Cook got the top job. It’s up even more than that if you consider Mr. Cook’s true start date as early 2011, when he filled in for his predecessor, Steve Jobs, during Mr. Jobs’s medical leave of absence.
Of course, the real reason both Microsoft and, more recently, Apple, have become sources of investor disgruntlement have little to do with how profits and revenue have fared in the past. In Microsoft’s case, the list of Wall Street’s grievances includes the billions of dollars the company has lost seeking to compete with Google in search, multiple missed opportunities in the mobile market and worries that Microsoft’s longtime profit engines will run out of gas.
In Apple’s case, the concerns are different. In January, Apple warned Wall Street that it expected its profit to decline about 20 percent during its fiscal second quarter, results for which the company will report on Tuesday. Slowing sales, a shift to products like the iPad Mini with lower profit margins, and a lull, whether real or perceived, in breakthrough new products are all weighing heavily on Apple’s shares.
It’s too soon to tell whether Apple can shake off the disaffection of investors. The case of Mr. Ballmer and Microsoft, though, suggests that a company can be stuck in investor purgatory for a long time even if it keeps up profit and revenue growth.
Why Tim Cook Is Like Steve Ballmer
On Monday, Matthew Panzarino of the Next Web, a tech news site, tweeted an ironic message that read “Fire Tim Cook!,†along with a link to a couple of charts showing the steady upward march of Apple’s revenue and profit over the last few years.
Looked at that way, the campaign by some of those who are bearish on Apple stock to unseat Mr. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, seems rather absurd.
It’s worth pointing out that Apple is not the only big tech company where there seems to be a disconnect, at least a superficial one, between the doom-saying of some investors and the company’s financial performance.
For many investors, Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, has long been one of tech’s favorite villains. His company’s stock has lost 43 percent in value since he got Microsoft’s top job on Jan. 13, 2000. Periodically, pundits, investors and even former executives call for Mr. Ballmer to get the boot.
During the 13 years Mr. Ballmer has led Microsoft, though, annual revenue at the company has grown 221 percent, to $73.72 billion, and profit has jumped 80 percent, to $16.98 billion.
Whenever he’s asked about the company’s poor stock performance under his leadership, Mr. Ballmer typically says there are two Microsoft numbers he is most concerned with â€" profit and revenue. The share price, he usually responds, is outside his control.
In comparison, during Mr. Cook’s relatively 20 months as Apple’s chief executive, the company’s annual revenue has grown 45 percent, to $156.51 billion, while profits have jumped 61 percent, to $41.73 billion.
Apple’s shares have been pummeled by investors, losing more than 43 percent of their value since last September. Apple’s stock is still up about 6 percent since Aug. 24, 2011, when Mr. Cook got the top job. It’s up even more than that if you consider Mr. Cook’s true start date as early 2011, when he filled in for his predecessor, Steve Jobs, during Mr. Jobs’s medical leave of absence.
Of course, the real reason both Microsoft and, more recently, Apple, have become sources of investor disgruntlement have little to do with how profits and revenue have fared in the past. In Microsoft’s case, the list of Wall Street’s grievances includes the billions of dollars the company has lost seeking to compete with Google in search, multiple missed opportunities in the mobile market and worries that Microsoft’s longtime profit engines will run out of gas.
In Apple’s case, the concerns are different. In January, Apple warned Wall Street that it expected its profit to decline about 20 percent during its fiscal second quarter, results for which the company will report on Tuesday. Slowing sales, a shift to products like the iPad Mini with lower profit margins, and a lull, whether real or perceived, in breakthrough new products are all weighing heavily on Apple’s shares.
It’s too soon to tell whether Apple can shake off the disaffection of investors. The case of Mr. Ballmer and Microsoft, though, suggests that a company can be stuck in investor purgatory for a long time even if it keeps up profit and revenue growth.
Why Tim Cook Is Like Steve Ballmer
On Monday, Matthew Panzarino of the Next Web, a tech news site, tweeted an ironic message that read “Fire Tim Cook!,†along with a link to a couple of charts showing the steady upward march of Apple’s revenue and profit over the last few years.
Looked at that way, the campaign by some of those who are bearish on Apple stock to unseat Mr. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, seems rather absurd.
It’s worth pointing out that Apple is not the only big tech company where there seems to be a disconnect, at least a superficial one, between the doom-saying of some investors and the company’s financial performance.
For many investors, Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, has long been one of tech’s favorite villains. His company’s stock has lost 43 percent in value since he got Microsoft’s top job on Jan. 13, 2000. Periodically, pundits, investors and even former executives call for Mr. Ballmer to get the boot.
During the 13 years Mr. Ballmer has led Microsoft, though, annual revenue at the company has grown 221 percent, to $73.72 billion, and profit has jumped 80 percent, to $16.98 billion.
Whenever he’s asked about the company’s poor stock performance under his leadership, Mr. Ballmer typically says there are two Microsoft numbers he is most concerned with â€" profit and revenue. The share price, he usually responds, is outside his control.
In comparison, during Mr. Cook’s relatively 20 months as Apple’s chief executive, the company’s annual revenue has grown 45 percent, to $156.51 billion, while profits have jumped 61 percent, to $41.73 billion.
Apple’s shares have been pummeled by investors, losing more than 43 percent of their value since last September. Apple’s stock is still up about 6 percent since Aug. 24, 2011, when Mr. Cook got the top job. It’s up even more than that if you consider Mr. Cook’s true start date as early 2011, when he filled in for his predecessor, Steve Jobs, during Mr. Jobs’s medical leave of absence.
Of course, the real reason both Microsoft and, more recently, Apple, have become sources of investor disgruntlement have little to do with how profits and revenue have fared in the past. In Microsoft’s case, the list of Wall Street’s grievances includes the billions of dollars the company has lost seeking to compete with Google in search, multiple missed opportunities in the mobile market and worries that Microsoft’s longtime profit engines will run out of gas.
In Apple’s case, the concerns are different. In January, Apple warned Wall Street that it expected its profit to decline about 20 percent during its fiscal second quarter, results for which the company will report on Tuesday. Slowing sales, a shift to products like the iPad Mini with lower profit margins, and a lull, whether real or perceived, in breakthrough new products are all weighing heavily on Apple’s shares.
It’s too soon to tell whether Apple can shake off the disaffection of investors. The case of Mr. Ballmer and Microsoft, though, suggests that a company can be stuck in investor purgatory for a long time even if it keeps up profit and revenue growth.
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