Also: Microsoft may back Dell buyout; Reid Hoffman on hiring a “professional” CEO.
The no-hire paper trail Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt didn’t want you to see [THE VERGE]
In his statement, Colligan says he received a call from Jobs in August of 2007, expressing concern about Palm’s hiring of Apple employees. He goes on to say that Jobs “proposed an arrangement between Palm and Apple” that would stop the practice, also suggesting that “if Palm did not agree to such an agreement, Palm could face lawsuits alleging infringement of Apple’s many patents.” Colligan later responded in an email, suggesting that any such agreement would likely be illegal and that Palm had patents of its own that it could use to countersue. Jobs replied, writing, “I’m sure you realize the asymmetry in the financial resources of our respective companies when you say: ‘We will both just end up paying a lot of lawyers a lot of money.’”
Microsoft may back Dell buyout [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
If completed, a buyout of Dell would be the largest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis, reaching levels unseen since the takeovers of Hilton Hotels and the Texas energy giant TXU. Such a deal is taking advantage of Dell’s still-low stock price and the abundance of investors willing to buy up the debt issued as part of a transaction to take the company private. And Silver Lake has been working with Dell’s founder, Michael S. Dell, who is expected to contribute his nearly 16 percent stake in the company to a takeover bid.
Keep your Blu-rays and DVDs, Hollywood — I’ve gone digital [CNET]
All this hassle and for what? To get “extras” from a DVD or Blu-ray disc that I’ll probably watch once? No thanks.
And no thanks especially that in order to even watch those extras, as well as the feature film itself, I’m often forced to sit through previews and promotions that either can’t be skipped or require hitting the next chapter button on your DVD or Blu-ray player repeatedly.
I went all digital on taking photos and buying music years ago; all digital on buying books last year. Now it’s time to leave buying physical movies behind, especially as the digital options are more-and-more offering the same extras that a physical disc provides.
If, why, and how founders hould hire a “professional” CEO [REID HOFFMAN’S BLOG]
To be a successful growth-stage CEO, you need to be ready to manage a 1,000 person organization and devote substantial time to time consuming things like running meetings and other business process. You can’t just do the exciting stuff like making the final call on product and speaking at conferences, while shuffling off everything else to the mythical COO who loves doing all the dirty work and doesn’t want any of the credit.
Google: Psy’s ‘Gangham Style’ has earned $8 million on YouTube alone [QUARTZ]
Gangnam Style, the most-watched YouTube video ever, with more than one billion views, by K-pop sensation Psy has generated $8 million revenue on YouTube alone, said Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora in a rare disclosure on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call. A previous analysis by the Associated Press indicated that Psy had earned $7.9 million from Gangnam Style in worldwide revenue, including downloads on iTunes and streaming and sales on services available only in Korea.
The end of an era: Intel’s desktop motherboard business to ramp down over next 3 years [ANANDTECH]
It’s not too tough to understand why Intel would want to wind down its desktop motherboard business. Intel has two options to keep Wall Street happy: ship tons of product with huge margins and/or generate additional profit (at forgiveably lower margins) that’s not directly tied to the PC industry. The overwhelming majority of Intel’s business is in the former group. The desktop motherboards division doesn’t exactly fit within that category. Motherboards aren’t good high margin products, which makes the fact that Intel kept its desktop board business around this long very impressive. Intel doesn’t usually keep drains on margins around for too long (look how quickly Intel exited the de-emphasized its consumer SSD business).
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