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Google CEO Joins Apple's Board
Phooey42 writes "AppleInsider is reporting that Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, has been approved to join Apple's board of directors, bringing the board's total head-count up to eight. From the article, 'Schmidt also sits on Google's board of directors and Princeton University's board of trustees. He joins other Apple board members that include: former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore Jr.; President and CEO of Harwinton Capital, Jerry York; Chairman and CEO of Genentech, Arthur Levinson; Chairman and CEO J. Crew, Millard Drexler; Chairman and former CEO of Intuit, Bill Campbell, former CFO of Apple, Fred Anderson; and Apple CEO, Steve Jobs.'"
IF you look into the history of corporate america you will realize that current and past executives serve on the boards of many many companies. This is nothing new and never has been. In fact, alot of todays companies would not exist if not for such things. I am willing to bet you own little to no stock at all. If you did you would realize just how foolish your comment was. Saying that someone should be tied to only one company is like saying a stockholder should be able to only buy stake in one company. As a stock holder in 20+ firms, I for one know this would equal noone making any money on stocks (not that many are as it is). Brainshare is a huge part of what drives companies yesterday, today, and most assuredly tomorrow.
"And the heathens with their ways of trickery and deceit shall not prevail over the will of the righteous"
Sure, that is exactly what we need. The government needs to tell private businesses how they should be run. How about the government tell us what to drink, wear and what we should watch on TV too? Maybe, successful people create successful businesses.
Is capitalism a new concept for you or something? If that offends, you, go start a business that adopts different practices, until then, this is how they want to run it. Not saying I like it but they were the ones succesful enough to end up in these positions to begin with, they can let in whomever they want.
I once worked for an online retailer in their IT dept., and can tell you the board was full of executives from all over the retail industry. Lots of back room dealing, scratching each others backs. When one company cuts a deal for another company in the same business, it's usually not with good intentions.
If someone is involved in one company, it should be illegal to be involved in another. Any time power concentrates it's bad for the people.
This is a contradiction. If the board of directors of a company was comprised entirely of persons from within the same company, that would be an even greater concentration of power. There is basically no point in having a board that is responsible for overseeing itself. If I remember correctly, Sarbanes-Oxley (the Act designed to prevent another Enron or WorldCom) requires that at least half of a corporation's board be from outside the company for that very same reason.
The reason you see executives and board members serving for different companies generally has to do with them knowing something about running companies. Why should it be illegal for a qualified person to make use of their experience and skill?
Methinks you just don't know anything about corporate governance.
Hmmm, google is losing money? Amazing the shear amount of fud here. Yahoo is slowly losing revenue and profits while Google increases. BTW, MS is selling fewer units, but has an increase in total sales $ and profits. It is good to be a monopoly.
Don't be silly. It's our government that does that, not being on more than one board.
If you want the burgeoning aristocracy to stop forming, elect some officials to the federal government that actually care about people.
Your argument is otherwise absurd - being on a board of directors still means that the performance of the company has to be maintained, and the board of directors still has to work hard to make sure that happens by hiring the right executives, holding them accountable, and deciding what stock and dividends to issue. They also represent their shareholders, who can literally be *anyone* in the case of public companies and is not exclusive. It doesn't mean much else, since directors typically don't own a huge share of the company. It's really just a representative institution (dare I say democratic) - that is way to ensure public(and private) ownership of a company gets its voice heard. So it's a good thing that upholds a democratic ideal of what the economy should be. A far more important question is whether the Senate and the House of Representatives are exclusive playgrounds for the rich.
In a free market society, power is checked quite easily by consumer organization. If you disagree with their business practices, don't buy their products.
...with all of the chairs being tossed around by Steve Ballmer (according to Slashdot), you'd think that Microsoft ran out of chairs by now.
I swear that tossing chair jokes ARE NOT FUNNY ANYMORE .
Wasn't there an article recently about how Apple was one of the least environmentally-friendly tech companies?
More like Greenpeace wanted some attention, and decided to get it by bashing a company that gets a lot more press than they do.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I can understand that you don't read TFA (this is Slashdot after all), but not reading the post... come on, it's not about technology exchanges what they talk here, is the *board of directors*!.
A board is about meeting the corporations objectives, and members are voted in based on their ability to help meet those objectives. If the shareholders vote someone into the board based on ability alone, that's no more discrimination than an olympic coach choosing 100m runners based on ability and ending up with Kenyans.
Are you saying the shareholders should try and vote a woman onto the board just because there aren't any women in there at the moment? That's real discrimination (positive or negative, it's all bad).
If there was a 50:50 ratio of men to women, then what? Should there be representatives of all religions, skin colours, programming language preferences, etc?
Nevermind if they can meet corporate objectives, are their genetalia representative of the population?!
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Does it matter that Al Gore uses Macs at home?
I mean, if a person owns an iPod and then uses it at work, is that product placement, or endorsement, or is it, you know, using the tool to get the job done?
Al Gore uses his PowerBook and Keynote to do his presentations.
GPL Deconstructed
Google has helped Apple emensly. Think about it. Giving Mac Users to search he internet for Apps and stuff. Web Applications that work on their computers. Google has made a world that is not as depentant on windows. And Now people can decide what OS they like better.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.