In one of my recent posts I commented on the actions of a Canadian family who found a camera of a woman in Hawaii, but were refusing to send it back. It seems that through the power of the internet and the publicity this got, they decided it was in their best interest to return the camera.
Yes, it did take a lot of publicity around the net, but they did the right thing in the end and that is all that counts.
Link via Kottke.
It’s been said before and they’ll say it again: the Oscars have lost all credibility. Even Jack Nicholson was surprised when he announced Crash as the winner of the Oscar for “Best movie”.
And sure, there’s no accounting for taste, but everywhere you looked it was Brokeback Mountain who was the heavy favorite. And deservingly so. It’s a masterful film, with a gripping story and some amazing filming by director Ang Lee who won a deserving Oscar for his directing (my sympathy vote was for George Clooney of the excellent Good Night And Good Luck (which I also found a better film than Crash btw), but as he mentioned himself while excepting the Oscar for his work in Syriana, he could now forget winning “Best director”).
I hate to think that it had to do with the subject matter of the movie, instead thinking that yes, it pays to throw buckets of money in a “For your consideration” marketing campaign to get the voters on your side. And despite the Oscars they won, I still believe they were robbed.
As the good guys at Chud already said:”Most shameful, dubious choice since Shakespeare in Love“.
Although it’s not that Google will be viewed as “just another company on the stock exchange” any time soon, it seems that ever since Google filed their IPO (and making billions in the process) their image has taken a few hits.
Before they went public, all that Google did was considered cool. The way they ran their business, the software they created (even if it was in beta) and the people involved. They were considered a novelty with Adsense and Adwords and the power of their search engine. Even if they messed up on the PR side of things, that was seen as being a learning experience for a young web company.
But things have changed. Now Google has stockholders to report to and a little slip of the tongue from a CFO can lead to falling of stock prices, causing the company to lose millions. New products are more scrutinized and the company is being scoffed for their dealings with the Chinese government (on this blog discussed here). It even seems that journalists who at first where delighted with Google are now taking a more criticizing role. Even their hiring of all those PHD’s is being looked at differently. It’s often wondered if that practice leads to better products for consumers or to pet projects of those highly intelligent programmers. Things that were seen as being the faults of a young company are now attacked as un-businesslike.
But that’s what happens as soon as you become a public company. There is a growth process to go through and it seems that however Google is successful in other things, that part of the business world is not going as smoothly as hoped for. Google has to find a way to become a respectable publicly owned company which analysts and investors trust and are willing to put money in, but still be considered a leader in both search technology and advertising, thus creating positive publicity with the press. Otherwise the goodwill and great image that is still there will vanish like snow in the sun.
