Mozilla's CEO Makes the Case for the Firefox Mobile OS

via allthingsd.com

No one likes a duopoly — in the tech business industry, that is. And one of the largest duopolies today is the mobile OS split between Apple’s iOS operating system and Google’s Android.

Mozilla, the foundation behind the popular Firefox Web browser, wants to take the lead amid the multiple companies vying for third place. The company is working on the Firefox OS, a mobile system software initiative similar to what Google is doing with the Chrome OS for the desktop. In a nutshell, it’s taking the set of standards coding for a browser environment and bringing it to an entire operating system for the phone.

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Marissa Mayer Tells Inside Story of How Yahoo Wooed Her

via mashable.com

Marissa Mayer was originally planning a six-month maternity leave, but shortened that to two weeks after she got the CEO job at Yahoo, she revealed in a blog post on Friday.

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Michael Dell May Lose Control Of PC Maker After Two Competing Buyout Bids Emerge

via techcrunch.com

Dell’s board is looking at two surprise takeover bids from Blackstone Group and billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn, reports Reuters citing sources close to the discussion. A special committee is deciding whether either proposal would trump an existing $24.4 billion buyout offer from the PC maker’s founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake.

The new bids mean that Michael Dell could potentially lose control of the company he founded in 1984 and that he and Silver Lake will most likely need to reconsider their original proposal to make it more attractive to Dell shareholders, some of whom have complained that its terms undervalue the PC maker.

Icahn and Blackstone put in their bids on March 22, the last day of the “go-shop” period to solicit competing offers for Dell. The company could potentially announce as soon as Monday whether or not they will be interested in either of the new proposals.

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recovers Apollo spacecraft engines from the bottom of the ocean

via theverge.com

Last year, Amazon CEO and space enthusiast Jeff Bezos discovered the underwater whereabouts of Apollo 11's F-1 engines and announced his plans to bring them up to the surface. Now, nearly a full 12 months later, Bezos' team has recovered a number of F-1 engine parts and brought them out of the ocean — his blog goes into full detail, with a variety of great photos and a quick video showing the underwater recovery. Bezos says that his team recovered enough "major components" to put together displays of two flown F-1 engines. "We want the hardware to tell its true story, including its 5,000 mile per hour re-entry and subsequent impact with the ocean surface," Bezos writes. Unfortunately, many of the serial numbers from the recovered parts are missing, which will make determining which exactly Apollo mission the parts are from quite a bit more difficult.

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BlackBerry CEO Expects 100,000 Apps To Be Available In Time For BlackBerry 10′s U.S. Debu

via techcrunch.com

BlackBerry’s first BlackBerry 10 smartphone is about to make its official U.S. consumer debut in just a few days, and the long wait has seen the size of the platform’s app selection swell considerably. According to an interview with BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins conducted by the Australian Financial Review, Heins expects the BlackBerry World content portal to cross the 100,000 app mark in time for the company’s big Z10 smartphone launch later this week.

It’s a notable (if not entirely significant — there’s an argument for quality over quantity) milestone, and one that BlackBerry may be trying to highlight ahead of its fiscal Q4 2013 earnings release on March 28. That’s a sizable jump from the roughly 70,000 apps that debuted along with BlackBerry 10, but the platform still needs support from big-name developers and services if it wants to pose a credible threat to Apple and Google’s mobile hegemony.

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Pandora CEO announces resignation following record revenue and losses

via theverge.com

Pandora's CEO, Chairman, and President Joe Kennedy will resign from leadership of the company following yet another quarterly loss. Pandora's board of directors announced that it begun a search for a successor and that Kennedy would continue to lead the company through its transition.

"As I near the start of my tenth year at the helm of Pandora, I am incredibly proud of the team and what we have accomplished in redefining radio. As part of our Board discussions of the road that lies ahead, I reached the conclusion and advised the Board that the time is right to begin a process to identify my successor," Kennedy said in a press release from Pandora. "There is a tremendous market opportunity ahead and I look forward to continuing to work with all the great people at Pandora to keep driving the business forward."

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Groupon CEO: All Is Well! Nothing to See Here! Carry On!

via allthingsd.com

Andrew Mason says Groupon is “better positioned than any other company in the world to plug local commerce into the Web,” but you wouldn’t know it from the daily deals site’s latest earnings: A fourth-quarter GAAP loss of 12 cents per share — 10 cents more than Wall Street was looking for.

As Groupon’s shares tanked in after-hours trading, Mason fielded questions from analysts on the company’s earnings call, but didn’t do much to explain how the company is going to scale its core online-coupon business. Instead, he did all that he could to paint a happy face on today’s sad results, tossing out sound bites that glossed over the issues troubling the company...

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Box CEO Aaron Levie Launched 15 Startups As A Teen

via businessinsider.com

While other kids were out playing soccer or getting into trouble, Box CEO Aaron Levie and one of his best friends, Jeff Queisser, would hang out at home and launch startups.

They started something like 15 companies, Levie told ReadWrite''s Dan Lyons in an interview last week, including one called Zizap, which Levie described jokingly as "the fastest search engine on the Internet – minus Google."

Levie says that these childhood companies were often nothing more than a few Web pages. But a few were more ambitious like an Internet kiosk for hotels and malls, a Web portal for real estate listings, reports Forbes Victoria Barret.

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Rogers CEO to step down next year, search begins for a successor

via engadget.com

Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed took over for company founder Ted Rogers in the Canadian communications company's top post back in March of 2009, and today announced he will step down in January 2014. The news comes along with Rogers fourth quarter earnings announcement, where it noted 58,000 net subscriber additions for wireless and 7,000 for cable. Milestones achieved in the last year include the rollout of NextBox 2.0 features for cable TV viewers and LTE coverage it says reaches 60 percent of Canadians. Meanwhile Mohamed leaves able to note the company becoming Canada's largest wireless carrier during his leadership. We don't know yet who will step up in his place, but the press release mentioned Rogers family members Edward and Melinda -- currently serving as a Deputy Chairman and Senior VP, respectively -- will not submit their names for candidacy.

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Ex-BlackBerry CEO Jim Balsillie Has Completely Sold His Stake In The Company

via businessinsider.com

Former BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie sold the last of his stake in the company last year, according to an SEC filing.

Balsillie joined BlackBerry in 1992, eight years after it was founded. He was co-CEO with founder Mike Lazaridis until in January of 2012 when they both stepped down to let Thorsten Heins take over.

Heins has overseen the development and introduction of BlackBerry 10, a new operating system which is supposed to compete with Android and iOS. He also rebranded the company as BlackBerry, killing the company's name of Research In Motion.

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How has Mark Zuckerberg been so private while running Facebook?

via techi.com

For a man who built an online empire that is dedicated to make as much of our lives as public as possible, Facebook co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been able to keep his personal life in the dark and his media attention under control for the most part. We know very little about the man other than what he has been willing to share. Is he really that boring or is he simply a master of privacy in the public world he’s building?

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Watch Marissa Mayer's Full Davos Interview Here

via businessinsider.com

Couldn't make it to Switzerland for this year's World Economic Forum?

No worries – you can watch a full video of one of the highlight events, Marissa Mayer's first one-on-one interview as CEO of Yahoo, right here thanks to Bloomberg Television.

She shares plenty of thoughts on what Yahoo needs to do and even some more general thoughts on the future of tech.

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12 Business Lessons You Can Learn from Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos

via blog.kissmetrics.com

When current and aspiring tech entrepreneurs are asked who they look up to the most, they give the usual names: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and maybe a few will mention Bill Gates. But, unfortunately, there aren’t many who mention Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.

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5 CEOs You Have To Watch In 2013

via businessinsider.com

We’re watching these five CEOs because they’re almost guaranteed to make news in 2013. Some of them are already pretty famous. Others we know pretty well at Inc., but are likely to be discovered by the rest of the world this year.

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Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Talks about AWS, Innovation, Customer Service & Space Travel At Re: Invent

via techcrunch.com

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, took the stage at the company’s re: Invent developer conference for a wide-ranging discussion with the company’s CTO Werner Vogels about Amazon’s web service and retail business, as well as his view about entrepreneurship and his personal projects, such as the 10,000 year clock and the Blue Origin space program.

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LinkedIn CEO: The Biggest Mistake People Make Is Chasing A 'Hot Company' Or Promotion

via businessinsider.com

At Business Insider's Ignition 2012 conference today, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner spoke about how his father always told him that he could do anything he put his mind to. "I assumed every kid got told the same thing," Weiner told Business Insider's Henry Blodget. "It didn't occur to me until much later how much of an influence that had on me."

According to Weiner, the big career mistake most people make is not having a real destination or goal in mind.

That feeds into the one question he asks the young graduates and professionals that come to him for advice. "It always starts with asking, 'In 30 years, what do you want to have accomplished?'" Weiner said. "It's OK not to have an answer, but you need to start thinking about it. Once you know that, things start to become clear. The people you meet, the opportunities and situations you find are often a function of that objective."

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The Difference Between Tim Cook And Steve Jobs, According To An Ex-Employee

via businessinsider.com

A former Apple employee named David Sobotta caused a bit of a stir when he called Tim Cook a technology "lightweight."

Speaking with ReadWrite, he said, "Technology-wise, I think Tim Cook is a lightweight. I never felt passion for technology from Tim like I did from Steve and some of the great engineers."

We reached out to Sobotta for some clarity about his remarks. We wondered how the CEO of the world's biggest technology company could be a lightweight in the world of tech. How could be not be passionate about technology and run Apple?

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Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Retire in May

via allthingsd.com

Chipmaker Intel just announced that CEO Paul Otellini, who has been on the job for eight years, will be retiring in May. A successor has not been named.

People are going to wonder if Intel’s board is forcing Otellini out. They’ll point to Intel’s mandatory retirement age of 65. Otellini is only 62, and his predecessor Craig Barrett retired from the CEO job at 65 or 66. But apparently there’s no hard-and-fast rule at Intel. The legendary Andy Grove, the company’s third employee, served as its CEO from 1987 until 1997, retiring closer to age 61.

But the bigger problems stem from the emergence of a fundamentally new computing environment over the last five years. When Otellini was promoted into the CEO job in 2005, Intel essentially set much of the computing industry’s agenda.

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What High-Growth CEOs Do Differently

via inc.com

Business coach and consultant Jim Schleckser has spent years trying to understand how start-up and small business CEOs budget their time. Not suprisingly, the best CEOs--the ones that are able to grow highly-profitable, fast-growing companies--had a lot in common.

As part of the CEO Project, a boot camp for entrepreneurs, Schleckser advises CEOs and company founders on the most important areas of their business to focus on. At the core of his advice, Schleckser believes CEOs need to put the blinders on and focus on what truly drives growth. Here are the core components Schleckser says you should focus on.

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Apple CEO Apologizes for Horrible Maps

via businessinsider.com

Tim Cook just released a statement aimed at customers apologizing for the Apple maps mess.

In the letter he says, Apple is "extremely sorry" for releasing a subpar product and "we are doing everything we can to make Maps better."

He even tells customers to try other apps while Apple fixes its maps: "You can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app."

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