Two excellent podcasts I recommend.
William Cohan on his new book How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World. Cohan, a former banker, seems more knowledgeable than most financial journalists.
Steven Levy on his book How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. Based on my own experience, Levy knows what he is talking about.
William Cohan and Michael Lewis are the best at exposing the shenanigans of Wall Street.
ReplyDeleteSteven Levy on the other hand, sounded almost incoherent on the podcast. Maybe he was having a bad day. For example, he said that Google innovated in search engines and how to monetize search. In fact, they "stole" the idea from Goto/Overture (founded by Bill Gross of Idealab) by pretending to be interested in a partnership, getting all the inside info and then going off by themselves. A classic Microsoft move. It was in a documentary on PBS a few years back. Google lost a lawsuit brought by Yahoo/Overture. Trying to find any info on Goto/Overture and Google on Google's page is hard. Had to use Bing. Funny how that works.
Don't be evil??? It's pretty much impossible to be a very large corporation not be at least a little bit evil. Even Apple though they do it less than most.
ReplyDelete"Behind every great fortune there is a great crime." - Balzac
Hmm... I'll have to listen to Levy again; perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention. What you say about Goto is true, of course.
ReplyDelete"Don't be evil. It's bullshit"--Steve Jobs.
ReplyDeleteThe last line in the chapter about Google 's Android OS in "In the Plex" by Steven Levy.
G is def becoming too powerful for our good.
ReplyDelete