Google, Apple and Facebook are all planning to ramp up their boards by year-end, after failing to meet a deadline for the changes imposed by their shareholders, according to people familiar with the matter.
The three companies have been working on ways to reduce their board sizes for years, but have been slow to implement the changes. The board size limit will take effect in 2019, but Google and Apple are trying to speed up their transitions to smaller boards by the end of this year, one of these people said.
Facebook is also working on a plan to reduce its board size by the end of this year, this person said. But the social media company is still several months away from making a decision on whether it will meet its deadline, another person said.
Google, Apple and Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Google has a plan to build more and more boards to match the demand of its users. This is a smart move because if they don’t someone else will. Apple plans to launch the new iPhone with a 4 inch screen, this is great because they are getting up with the times and listening to their customers. Facebook is planning on putting ads in your news feed, this is not such a good idea because people want their news feed free from ads.
These are just some of the plans these tech companies have for the future.
Google, Apple and Facebook are the three dominant technology companies of our time: they all make their billions by collecting people’s personal data and selling that information to advertisers. But as all tech companies know, what is valued today may be worthless tomorrow.
In the past year, Google’s stock price has dropped by more than a third; Apple is worth about half what it was at its peak; Facebook is currently trading at less than half its value from a year ago. The future of these tech giants is in doubt; their financial struggles are symptomatic of how difficult it will be for them to remain profitable.
How can they adapt? In the coming years, they will need to build new products and services that help them become bigger and better businesses. If they want to survive, they must do this without compromising their core values: transparency, fairness and privacy.
Google: Big Data
Google’s strategy is simple: use big data to help advertisers target consumers more effectively. The company collects vast amounts of user data through its search engine, email service and popular mobile apps like Gmail and Maps. This information allows advertisers to pay Google to target ads at specific people in specific locations at specific times on specific devices with specific messages.
The problem is that Google faces competition from other
Google+ seems like the obvious place to start, since Google is a search engine and Google+ is a social network. This puts it in direct competition with Facebook, one of the biggest giants in the technology world.
Google has been a household name for years, but in recent time it has been slipping. They have almost lost their dominance of the search engine market, being overtaken by upstarts like DuckDuckGo and Yahoo!. The launch of Google+ was seen as an attempt to regain their edge, but so far it has failed to make much impact on Facebook’s massive userbase.
Apple is the undisputed leader of the music industry with iTunes, by far the most popular site for downloading music legally. But with Spotify and other new services offering free music online many fear that iTunes will face obsolescence soon.
More recently Apple launched iCloud, a service that stores your music online so you can stream it on any device at any time. This could be a game changer if they can pull it off. Things look good so far; they’ve signed up many major labels and have almost got their entire back catalog available for streaming. So far only users in North America have been able to use iCloud though, and there are plans to roll it out
As a celebration, we are going to have an annual event to honor the best tech companies. Next year, we will be having it in New York. It will take place on May 1st and 2nd. If you want to attend, please get your tickets here.
For the first time in our history, we are having a formal dinner for the awardees and their families. The dinner will start at 6:00pm and end at 10:00pm. If you would like to attend the dinner, please contact us by email or phone so that we can reserve your seat.
We are looking forward to seeing you at the dinner.
“How Google and Apple are planning for the end of the smartphone era”
“Apple’s New Strategy: A Giant iPhone”
“Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have now taken over the smartphone wars. Here’s how they plan to rule your life.”
These headlines all sound like satire from The Onion, but they’re not. They’re from serious publications like The New York Times and The Economist. In fact, the first is a cover story for this week’s issue of the latter.
The reason I’m bringing them up is that they remind me of how difficult it is–even for smart people who write about technology for a living–to forecast what will happen in our industry. As an example, let’s look at this week’s Economist article.
Here’s a quote: “Even as [the things these companies are doing] begin to take off, however, they may be blown out of the water by something else: augmented reality (AR), which overlays digital images on to real ones.”
And here’s another: “The success of these technologies will depend on two things: how good they are at solving problems people actually have (such as walking directions), and whether consumers find them useful or merely fun.”
In a post-PC world, Google and Apple are going big. Literally. The two companies have both placed orders for huge displays from Samsung Display that could be anywhere from 55 to 65 inches in size. Sources familiar with the matter say Google plans to use the display as part of its next-generation Nexus Q, while Apple is expected to use its display in a forthcoming HDTV product.
The orders come as both Apple and Google look toward the living room as their next major area of expansion. Apple’s efforts have been long rumored, but Google has more recently begun placing an emphasis on home entertainment with products like the Nexus Q and Chromecast.
As you might expect, this move doesn’t just represent a natural evolution for these companies; it also represents a shift in the way they view their competition. While both companies still see plenty of room to grow in smartphones and tablets, they’re now looking at TVs as an area where they can outpace rivals like Microsoft and Sony by offering similar hardware at lower prices. As a result of this deadly competition, even Samsung — which is supplying some of these massive displays — could soon find itself outpaced by its software-focused rivals in the very market it now dominates.