I wish I watched more TV. Then, I would have realized that there are many ways to optimize the idiot box. For starters, there is search. To jump from one channel to another, even on a set-top box, is a pain. The distance between two interesting channels is always too much. Second, there is no way for me, as a user, to find out where an interesting program is being beamed unless I check some papers or websites, which I will never do. Takes us back to what we do on the web daily, search. Now, had there been a way to directly search on the TV, the idiot box would become a smart box. Just provide a good search bar somewhere on the screen, damn it. But then, TV's don't have operating systems. So, why not create an O/S for TVs?
That's what Google TV is doing. No, Google will not make the hardware but will partner with TV makers like Sony to pre-install the O/S to make TV's smart. And Google will make small boxes (like set-top boxes) that can be hooked to existing TV's so programs can be made searchable. The Google TV then, will have a built-in browser (Chrome, or some mutant version of it) that will help the user easily navigate through the clutter of content, search through the programs to what the user wants to see, help enable them to record and play these programs later. We cant do this now, although we can record on DVRs and that is why Google TV looks so bloody promising. Where Apple failed, Google goes. While Apple TV was a great idea badly implemented, GTV looks like it will redefine the media business slowly but steadily.
Of course there is YouTube, owned by Google. Legions of people daily use this web video service to upload, and watch videos. Google TV will take advantage of this demographic, which is huge. YouTube is already making money, reportedly about $500 million in 2010. If GTV kicks off, this number will reach the sky because GTV will sync perfectly with YouTube, making watching videos even more easier. We dont have to start laptops and desktops to watch videos anymore. Then there are apps. Super cool apps are being built for Android every single day, and these apps will sit pretty in GTV and enhance and enrich the user's television viewing experience. Bottom line, television is finally going to marry Internet and its all coming together by 2011. Video is the fastest growing media on the Internet (check this: 178 million people watched 33.2 billion videos in just one month recently) and Google is neatly positioned to take advantage of that. In the end, watching television and searching for what we want to see is going to be redefined and very soon.
I wish I watched more TV, I probably would have thought about this whole search-bar-in-a-television business long back. I have my excuse, hope you have yours ;)
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Thoughts on FaceBook's Revenue Model...
Another friend of mine posted more incisive questions to my ramblings on Google's precarious Social Network situation. He asked:
"Search Ads make so much money because the focus on "intent". FB/display ads work on 'brand awareness" and "generating intent". Yes, they are important, but monetizing them is hard. If you try too hard(like in Myspace) you end up pissing your users who leave your site.
What happens when this demographic grows up, or when everyone's FB circle becomes sooo huge that it becomes less useful, or if something better comes along? i.e how sustainable is FB?
Let me start off my trying to explain how Google makes money. Google's revenue model is very straightforward. It makes money through:
1. Advertising
2. Search results
3. Sponsored links
4. AdWords/AdSense
I agree that search ads work beautifully because of 'intent'. This means that more people search, more pennies fall into Google's coffers. On FB, people don't 'search'. Yes they do search for friends and groups etc but they don't search the web, they search within FB. So FB cannot monetize 'intent' as neatly as Google can. Regardless, advertising on FB has been growing like a virus in a petri dish. Lets dig deeper and check FB's revenue model in more detail. Those ads that you see on the right side (to the user) of your FB account brought in about $250 million to $300 million Users dont have to do anything on this (well they can click the Like tab and spread the message). These ads can also be custom targeted. For instance, if I am a fan of Beatles on FB, one of these ads could be Beatles' album or a guitar instruction DVD. I think that this revenue model is here to stay. Next, engagement ads, which need user-interaction and sometimes user endorsements brought in another $100 million or so to FB in 2009. These ads need the users to interact with the ad, they could be games that need to be clicked or puzzles or even quizzes (Haven't we all FB boys taken one of those silly "What animal are you" type quizzes at some point or other?). Next, Gifts and virtual goods brought in another $50 or million or so. These could be those ubiquitous and constant birthday reminders and gift suggestions that FB throws at us (quite surreptitiously). Finally, Microsoft which has an agreement in place with FB and sells around $50 million or so worth of banner ads on FB. Please remember that all these ar 2009 numbers.
So if you look really close, you have see that one through three from Google's revenue model above are applicable to FB in one way or another. FB is also smart enough (until now) to not piss us users off like MySpace (what a horrible site that has become) did. Sponsored links will appear as FB as the number of fan clubs and corporate profile pages grow. I think these corporate sites will bring in more revenues in the future. If for instance, Toyota wants to spread a product safety message or market a new technology, FB community would be a great place for such propaganda. A closed private network within the vast Internet. Revenues will keep flowing from that side. What is left is the mega-selling AdWords/AdSense type programs. Here intent plays a huge role, no doubt but I think its probably a matter of time before FB comes up with its own version of FaceWords and FaceSense programs.
Only a certain section of FB users are active on the site. Even if you take that as 40%, it translates to 200 million active users. The site is only a few years old and from what it was it has dramatically changed. As the users grow up, FB will morph itself into something more suitable to that particular demographic depending on the private network within. Basic services such as email, photos/videos uploading will only increase as the Net usage and speed increase. The users will start uploading more and more data to FB and keep throwing it around opening paths to better image searching (on which Google is working hard, even taking cues from rival Bing). So as the demographic matures so will that section of FB along with it, reinventing itself. The bigger the circle of influence gets, the better it is for FB from the perspective of advertisements. True, there could be a lot of chaff in an individual circle but that is users problem not FB's. Whom you add and what you share on your profile is entirely up to you. Such privacy issues will always remain (Whether its email or FB). The onus is on the user to be diligent about what she puts on the network. The safe bet being the assumption that someone somewhere has a copy of that image/document/whatever you put on the Internet. FB is not an exception to this.
Finally, I believe that FB has gained so much traction that something else coming up is really tough. There are so many social networking sites, its daunting to even keep a track (for an exhaustive list and the number of users on each network, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites). But FB is easily the most generic and famous among all these. Mail apps like Hotmail has about 350 million users (Yahoo around 170 million or so and Gmail 140 million or so) but FB has 500 million and growing. How will it sustain this growth or where the next 500 million will come from is tough to answer. It could acquire other budding social networks in Europe, increase presence in Asia/Latin America where it is weaker. It might also move into a different direction in terms of services/apps offered. I guess the possibilities are endless when you have 500 million registered accounts on a single network.
"Search Ads make so much money because the focus on "intent". FB/display ads work on 'brand awareness" and "generating intent". Yes, they are important, but monetizing them is hard. If you try too hard(like in Myspace) you end up pissing your users who leave your site.
What happens when this demographic grows up, or when everyone's FB circle becomes sooo huge that it becomes less useful, or if something better comes along? i.e how sustainable is FB?
Let me start off my trying to explain how Google makes money. Google's revenue model is very straightforward. It makes money through:
1. Advertising
2. Search results
3. Sponsored links
4. AdWords/AdSense
I agree that search ads work beautifully because of 'intent'. This means that more people search, more pennies fall into Google's coffers. On FB, people don't 'search'. Yes they do search for friends and groups etc but they don't search the web, they search within FB. So FB cannot monetize 'intent' as neatly as Google can. Regardless, advertising on FB has been growing like a virus in a petri dish. Lets dig deeper and check FB's revenue model in more detail. Those ads that you see on the right side (to the user) of your FB account brought in about $250 million to $300 million Users dont have to do anything on this (well they can click the Like tab and spread the message). These ads can also be custom targeted. For instance, if I am a fan of Beatles on FB, one of these ads could be Beatles' album or a guitar instruction DVD. I think that this revenue model is here to stay. Next, engagement ads, which need user-interaction and sometimes user endorsements brought in another $100 million or so to FB in 2009. These ads need the users to interact with the ad, they could be games that need to be clicked or puzzles or even quizzes (Haven't we all FB boys taken one of those silly "What animal are you" type quizzes at some point or other?). Next, Gifts and virtual goods brought in another $50 or million or so. These could be those ubiquitous and constant birthday reminders and gift suggestions that FB throws at us (quite surreptitiously). Finally, Microsoft which has an agreement in place with FB and sells around $50 million or so worth of banner ads on FB. Please remember that all these ar 2009 numbers.
So if you look really close, you have see that one through three from Google's revenue model above are applicable to FB in one way or another. FB is also smart enough (until now) to not piss us users off like MySpace (what a horrible site that has become) did. Sponsored links will appear as FB as the number of fan clubs and corporate profile pages grow. I think these corporate sites will bring in more revenues in the future. If for instance, Toyota wants to spread a product safety message or market a new technology, FB community would be a great place for such propaganda. A closed private network within the vast Internet. Revenues will keep flowing from that side. What is left is the mega-selling AdWords/AdSense type programs. Here intent plays a huge role, no doubt but I think its probably a matter of time before FB comes up with its own version of FaceWords and FaceSense programs.
Only a certain section of FB users are active on the site. Even if you take that as 40%, it translates to 200 million active users. The site is only a few years old and from what it was it has dramatically changed. As the users grow up, FB will morph itself into something more suitable to that particular demographic depending on the private network within. Basic services such as email, photos/videos uploading will only increase as the Net usage and speed increase. The users will start uploading more and more data to FB and keep throwing it around opening paths to better image searching (on which Google is working hard, even taking cues from rival Bing). So as the demographic matures so will that section of FB along with it, reinventing itself. The bigger the circle of influence gets, the better it is for FB from the perspective of advertisements. True, there could be a lot of chaff in an individual circle but that is users problem not FB's. Whom you add and what you share on your profile is entirely up to you. Such privacy issues will always remain (Whether its email or FB). The onus is on the user to be diligent about what she puts on the network. The safe bet being the assumption that someone somewhere has a copy of that image/document/whatever you put on the Internet. FB is not an exception to this.
Finally, I believe that FB has gained so much traction that something else coming up is really tough. There are so many social networking sites, its daunting to even keep a track (for an exhaustive list and the number of users on each network, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites). But FB is easily the most generic and famous among all these. Mail apps like Hotmail has about 350 million users (Yahoo around 170 million or so and Gmail 140 million or so) but FB has 500 million and growing. How will it sustain this growth or where the next 500 million will come from is tough to answer. It could acquire other budding social networks in Europe, increase presence in Asia/Latin America where it is weaker. It might also move into a different direction in terms of services/apps offered. I guess the possibilities are endless when you have 500 million registered accounts on a single network.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Why Google Needs A Social Network
A good friend of mine posted a very interesting question to my ramblings on Google's hubris. His question is:
"why does it even matter that google hasn't succeeded in social networking in spite of trying? should an aircraft manufacturer also make cars and succeed at it? should a tv network also make tvs or dvrs? some great companies have found it difficult to break into other related ideas. coke used to own a wine business that went nowhere. is there really a danger that google will become irrelevant if it doesn't do social networking?"
I think it matters a lot that Google makes its presence felt in the social networking space. Lets look at an analogy. Think of Microsoft getting into web browsers in mid-90s. Why did it matter to a O/S company to make browsers? It did because at that time Bill slowly realized that the future of IT industry is shifting from desktops to the Internet. Microsoft had to succeed in not only beating Netscape but also in bettering it (although I prefer Firefox to both). It cunningly reverse-engineered Navigator and bundled it in Office. Had Microsoft not gotten into browsers, it would have lost a great opportunity to make its presence felt in the Internet industry. Wonder how the tech world would have been now. Now that cloud computing is here to stay, it only makes MSFT's moves valid.
Google currently is the top dog when it comes to search. And it makes all its money thanks to its efficient search algorithms (thru Adwords and Adsense programs). But the way I see it, the net is growing into an animal the type of which we haven't seen before. For this animal, search will become a menial task. Don't get me wrong, people will still search and search hard for the net is so easy to get lost. We need a janitor who takes us where we want to go. But that's the role of the janitor, it stops there. Social networks offer the higher end services (if not now, in the future) and will make people stay more in their sites and engage users through various apps. Naturally, advertising dollars will shift to places where people hang more. How people navigate will matter less and where people will navigate to will matter more. Hence, its crazily important that a pure web company like Google has a strong presence in social networks, or it will risk becoming a more menial search service provider (not that its inherently bad or anything). This is exactly why Google is scrambling hard with its botched attempts like Orkut, Wave, Buzz and now something else.
If Coke fails in making wine it hardly matters because wine-making is not Coke's forte. But if Coke fails in expanding into other beverages (like filtered water, flavored water, juices, coke variants like coke zero, healthy beverages etc), it will not grow. Now being stagnant is the enemy of Wall St. Already Coke's market is stagnant. It has two basic choices, expand into new markets (China, India, Latin America) and/or move into new product lines. That's why Coke purchased Vitamin water. For Google, geographical expansion is not as important as paradigm expansion. The net's paradigm is shifting through social networks. Google China can take a hit from Baidu but FB has already gained traction across geographies. It does not matter if Apple is not into creating social networks for a business because Apple is not a net company, its a product company. But Google is a pure-play net company who's raison d'etre is the net. So if the net is moving into social networks, it only makes sense for this net company to have a strong presence in the same.
Had Sun gotten into consumer market (since it had some of the best technology/IP/brainpower) and focused on areas that Dell, HP focused on, it would still have existed today. Sun made halfhearted attempts, failed and paid a big price. If Google misses the social networking boat, I believe, that something similar will happen. For Google, the growth will come from controlling as much of the net as possible and its impossible to do this without a strong presence in social media. With FB and Twitter expanding the way there are, its hard to miss their power in Web 2.0.
I could be totally wrong in all this analysis but I sincerely believe in it. My belief only strengthens when I read/hear more about Google's perseverance in making a mark in social media. For a net company, it has to succeed in this space, or it can remain being an usher.
"why does it even matter that google hasn't succeeded in social networking in spite of trying? should an aircraft manufacturer also make cars and succeed at it? should a tv network also make tvs or dvrs? some great companies have found it difficult to break into other related ideas. coke used to own a wine business that went nowhere. is there really a danger that google will become irrelevant if it doesn't do social networking?"
I think it matters a lot that Google makes its presence felt in the social networking space. Lets look at an analogy. Think of Microsoft getting into web browsers in mid-90s. Why did it matter to a O/S company to make browsers? It did because at that time Bill slowly realized that the future of IT industry is shifting from desktops to the Internet. Microsoft had to succeed in not only beating Netscape but also in bettering it (although I prefer Firefox to both). It cunningly reverse-engineered Navigator and bundled it in Office. Had Microsoft not gotten into browsers, it would have lost a great opportunity to make its presence felt in the Internet industry. Wonder how the tech world would have been now. Now that cloud computing is here to stay, it only makes MSFT's moves valid.
Google currently is the top dog when it comes to search. And it makes all its money thanks to its efficient search algorithms (thru Adwords and Adsense programs). But the way I see it, the net is growing into an animal the type of which we haven't seen before. For this animal, search will become a menial task. Don't get me wrong, people will still search and search hard for the net is so easy to get lost. We need a janitor who takes us where we want to go. But that's the role of the janitor, it stops there. Social networks offer the higher end services (if not now, in the future) and will make people stay more in their sites and engage users through various apps. Naturally, advertising dollars will shift to places where people hang more. How people navigate will matter less and where people will navigate to will matter more. Hence, its crazily important that a pure web company like Google has a strong presence in social networks, or it will risk becoming a more menial search service provider (not that its inherently bad or anything). This is exactly why Google is scrambling hard with its botched attempts like Orkut, Wave, Buzz and now something else.
If Coke fails in making wine it hardly matters because wine-making is not Coke's forte. But if Coke fails in expanding into other beverages (like filtered water, flavored water, juices, coke variants like coke zero, healthy beverages etc), it will not grow. Now being stagnant is the enemy of Wall St. Already Coke's market is stagnant. It has two basic choices, expand into new markets (China, India, Latin America) and/or move into new product lines. That's why Coke purchased Vitamin water. For Google, geographical expansion is not as important as paradigm expansion. The net's paradigm is shifting through social networks. Google China can take a hit from Baidu but FB has already gained traction across geographies. It does not matter if Apple is not into creating social networks for a business because Apple is not a net company, its a product company. But Google is a pure-play net company who's raison d'etre is the net. So if the net is moving into social networks, it only makes sense for this net company to have a strong presence in the same.
Had Sun gotten into consumer market (since it had some of the best technology/IP/brainpower) and focused on areas that Dell, HP focused on, it would still have existed today. Sun made halfhearted attempts, failed and paid a big price. If Google misses the social networking boat, I believe, that something similar will happen. For Google, the growth will come from controlling as much of the net as possible and its impossible to do this without a strong presence in social media. With FB and Twitter expanding the way there are, its hard to miss their power in Web 2.0.
I could be totally wrong in all this analysis but I sincerely believe in it. My belief only strengthens when I read/hear more about Google's perseverance in making a mark in social media. For a net company, it has to succeed in this space, or it can remain being an usher.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
The Hubris of Google
Google, an integral part of our Web life, is hardly making any dent in the most exciting field of social networking. Totally out-shined in this sphere by FaceBook (FB), Twitter, and even Linkedin, Google seems to be scrambling for new ideas to make a mark in this space. Both FB and Twitter have a minuscule of resources Google has. Whether its brainpower or pocket depth, Google outguns these two companies put together and then some. Harvard folks call it disruptive innovation but the term has become so cliched these days that I shudder using it. Also, I am not sure if FB and Twitter are disrupting Google because they don't compete directly (search business I mean). Yet, the amorphous nature of the new economy makes companies like Sony and Microsoft work closely on a few things while being at each others neck's in other areas (example: gaming consoles). Apple and Google shared a lovely relationship before Android was born and caused a bitter divorce. Friends in the morning are foes at night and so on.
Google has a miserable presence in the social networking space. First, there was Orkut, then there was Wave, now its Buzz. Through all these avatars, Google failed to build a viable social network. While Orkut could only get popular amongst a certain section in a certain demographic, Wave totally failed to take off, with Buzz being a stillborn. FB has more than 400 million active users, of whom 50% or above log in, any given day and spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook. That's an awful lot of time (even to waste right?) for any company to capture if it wants to. While I don't want to digress into the sociological consequences of this type of usage, its hard not to notice that. Twitter ended 2009 with just over 75 million user account although a majority of Twitter accounts are inactive, with about 25% of accounts having no followers while around 40% or so of these accounts having never sent a single Tweet. But, Twitter is a white-hot medium for companies in their reaching out efforts. FB supposedly captured around $500 million in revenues in 2009 and is projected to be on the path to becoming a billion dollar (revenues) company in 2010. Advertising money is raining on FB. These are massive numbers for a website that lets people interact in a web 2.0 way. Dell and many other companies use Twitter avidly while FB is a darling of many companies (who end their TV commercials directing users to FB). Web is moving from being a search-able vault to being a private network, which allows users interact through any media (audio, video, files) they like. FB and Twitter are succeeding in building these private networks but Google does the menial task of being a search service provider.
If Google never tried in this space, it would have not mattered. But Google tried, hard. Orkut is a wannabe, it never captured a sizable market in the US or Europe. For some reason, its only famous in Asia and that too among a certain demographic. Google Wave (from a user experience) was a confused product, with no proper utility but some cool features. Who cares if it has sexy technology? As a user, its useless for me. Seems like, Google must have thought "wait a minute, what is FB anyway? It lets people share pictures (we have Picasa), it lets people email (We have Gmail), it lets people share videos (we own YouTube), it lets people update their status (they can do that in Gmail too), so lets put it all together and have a whole web in Wave with a search bar that lets users search the web while they are at it. Sorry, does not work. Wave is a confused and useless product that fails to generate any user interest what-so-ever. Next, Google comes up with Buzz. What is Buzz anyway? I still fail to understand it till today. Is is just mixing Gmail with Wave and then adding Picasa with a search bar on top? But that is Wave. I am lost by this point and I give up trying to define Google's social media initiatives. Bottom line, Google has a confused, botched up and muddled strategy in the single-most interesting aspect of Web 2.0
Google also seems to positively hate FB. I am not surprised. Its like Microsoft banning all its employees from carrying an iPhone. Never underestimate the power of denial. If Steve Ballmer says iPhone is trash compared to a Windows Mobile phone, he means it because he is delirious. If Google's triumvirate management thinks that FB is trash and social media is a trend, they mean it too. Its called, disconnection from reality.
The web is moving into a strange direction. Internet is the ultimate democracy. The whole world saw what happened during Iranian revolution, thanks to Twitter. There are more users on FB than there are human beings in the United States. That is something. Its hard to ignore. More recently, its heard that Google is trying to consolidate Orkut, Wave and Buzz under one single umbrella and give it another shot. But the social media train has left the station and Google is left behind. Nevertheless, Google has terrific new areas to be excited about (such as Smart phones through Android and net-book O/S thru Chrome) and also has a vital role to play in web 2.0 thanks to its YouTube acquisition. If Microsoft could be smart enough to invest in FB, why did Google miss out?
Google, being a hardcore engineering company, is filled with some of the best brain power there is on Earth. There is also some amount of justified pride in being Google, for all the greatness it accomplished in the last decade. But pride can easily turn into hubris. By neglecting this vital medium, Google might have shown what ancient writers have seen in great heroes. Because its so good at what it does, Google never looked at the social media seriously enough and that probably why it failed to build a viable presence in social media. I would love to be proven wrong in the coming few years, but for now social media networks seems to be the hubris for this hero, a sore tendon on the great Achilles.
Google has a miserable presence in the social networking space. First, there was Orkut, then there was Wave, now its Buzz. Through all these avatars, Google failed to build a viable social network. While Orkut could only get popular amongst a certain section in a certain demographic, Wave totally failed to take off, with Buzz being a stillborn. FB has more than 400 million active users, of whom 50% or above log in, any given day and spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook. That's an awful lot of time (even to waste right?) for any company to capture if it wants to. While I don't want to digress into the sociological consequences of this type of usage, its hard not to notice that. Twitter ended 2009 with just over 75 million user account although a majority of Twitter accounts are inactive, with about 25% of accounts having no followers while around 40% or so of these accounts having never sent a single Tweet. But, Twitter is a white-hot medium for companies in their reaching out efforts. FB supposedly captured around $500 million in revenues in 2009 and is projected to be on the path to becoming a billion dollar (revenues) company in 2010. Advertising money is raining on FB. These are massive numbers for a website that lets people interact in a web 2.0 way. Dell and many other companies use Twitter avidly while FB is a darling of many companies (who end their TV commercials directing users to FB). Web is moving from being a search-able vault to being a private network, which allows users interact through any media (audio, video, files) they like. FB and Twitter are succeeding in building these private networks but Google does the menial task of being a search service provider.
If Google never tried in this space, it would have not mattered. But Google tried, hard. Orkut is a wannabe, it never captured a sizable market in the US or Europe. For some reason, its only famous in Asia and that too among a certain demographic. Google Wave (from a user experience) was a confused product, with no proper utility but some cool features. Who cares if it has sexy technology? As a user, its useless for me. Seems like, Google must have thought "wait a minute, what is FB anyway? It lets people share pictures (we have Picasa), it lets people email (We have Gmail), it lets people share videos (we own YouTube), it lets people update their status (they can do that in Gmail too), so lets put it all together and have a whole web in Wave with a search bar that lets users search the web while they are at it. Sorry, does not work. Wave is a confused and useless product that fails to generate any user interest what-so-ever. Next, Google comes up with Buzz. What is Buzz anyway? I still fail to understand it till today. Is is just mixing Gmail with Wave and then adding Picasa with a search bar on top? But that is Wave. I am lost by this point and I give up trying to define Google's social media initiatives. Bottom line, Google has a confused, botched up and muddled strategy in the single-most interesting aspect of Web 2.0
Google also seems to positively hate FB. I am not surprised. Its like Microsoft banning all its employees from carrying an iPhone. Never underestimate the power of denial. If Steve Ballmer says iPhone is trash compared to a Windows Mobile phone, he means it because he is delirious. If Google's triumvirate management thinks that FB is trash and social media is a trend, they mean it too. Its called, disconnection from reality.
The web is moving into a strange direction. Internet is the ultimate democracy. The whole world saw what happened during Iranian revolution, thanks to Twitter. There are more users on FB than there are human beings in the United States. That is something. Its hard to ignore. More recently, its heard that Google is trying to consolidate Orkut, Wave and Buzz under one single umbrella and give it another shot. But the social media train has left the station and Google is left behind. Nevertheless, Google has terrific new areas to be excited about (such as Smart phones through Android and net-book O/S thru Chrome) and also has a vital role to play in web 2.0 thanks to its YouTube acquisition. If Microsoft could be smart enough to invest in FB, why did Google miss out?
Google, being a hardcore engineering company, is filled with some of the best brain power there is on Earth. There is also some amount of justified pride in being Google, for all the greatness it accomplished in the last decade. But pride can easily turn into hubris. By neglecting this vital medium, Google might have shown what ancient writers have seen in great heroes. Because its so good at what it does, Google never looked at the social media seriously enough and that probably why it failed to build a viable presence in social media. I would love to be proven wrong in the coming few years, but for now social media networks seems to be the hubris for this hero, a sore tendon on the great Achilles.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Killed by Ignition
We are living with legacy transportation systems, while alternatives are available. We are demanding inefficiency while smarter choices exist. These choices will hopefully create a dent in the demand-side of the hydrocarbon value chain and help create an economy that will focus more on fuel that will not end this civilization soon. Driving an SUV in this time and age is like using a mainframe to update my blog. Its like spending $20 per minute calling India from the US while there are alternatives that cost a cent. But when it comes to cars, somehow we are blind to these alternatives. We refuse to believe that smarter choices are available and if we know that smarter choices are available, we refute to promote them.
We need to divorce the internal combustion engine from hydrocarbon energy and we need to do this on a war-footing. An obsolete technology, this engine wastes about 90 cents on a dollar. This is due to the fact that only about 10% of a gallon is used to propel the vehicle/driver forward, while the rest of it is wasted in various operational aspects of the engine ending up as heat and exhaust.
The most simple thing to do is to demand more fuel-efficient vehicles. But we are all caught in the web of form not function, style not substance. Hence, a lot of people think its cool to buy SUV's and sports cars which suck gas like a starving vampire would suck blood. The car companies (especially the big three in the US) are culpable for promoting a lifestyle that derives self-identity from the car a person drives. They stick up some "green" labels on the new vehicles which cunningly display some "sustainable" feature or the other, usually hogwash. Looked beneath the surface, most of these vehicles are made the same. Until the gas prices truly reflect their social cost, consumers will not change their habits. When gas prices fall, the SUV's will come out and when gas prices go up, the demand of hybrids will increase. But we do not understand that these price mechanisms follow the evil calculus of OPEC. These countries manipulate their supply to promote demand. The economics of oil dictate the lives of businessmen and politicians alike. Here is a facet of the oil economics (I found this breakup at http://jb-williams.com/).
Based upon a $3.00 gallon of gasoline, the average break-down is as follows.
Gasoline Retailer $.01 cents per gallon
Oil Company $.08 cents per gallon
Refining $.29 cents per gallon
Marketing/Distribution $.32 cents per gallon
Taxes $.59 cents per gallon
Cost of crude $1.71 per gallon (delivered)
As you can see, the retailer makes nothing, the oil company itself makes wafer-thin margins while the refiners and marketing make close to 20% of the margin. Government gets about the same (20%). Since most of the oil companies are vertically integrated, we can safely assume that about >21% of the cut goes to them while about an equal amount going to the Government. This is the reason why usually Governments do not care too much about reducing oil dependency. Tax money is easy money, it goes into running bloated and inefficient governments. This is why they refuse to make sincere efforts to promote hybrid and electric vehicles. Besides, the car companies have massive lobby operations which help reduce investments into public transport. So the more oil is sold at the retail outlets, the more tax money the Government gets and the more the profits of the oil company and the more dependency on cheap energy (since social cost is not taken into account). This web of dependencies can easily be classified as a socially acceptable drug addiction.
Since we, the people, are alone in this war against oil, there are a few things we can do. First, demand more fuel-efficient and smart cars with engines that do not waste too much fuel. We can promote and invest in companies that are innovating towards this end. Tesla, an electric car company, has been investing bucket loads of money to make a good looking electric car but they are too expensive at the current rates to cater to the mass market. Toyota Prius, Honda and Ford hybrids, while being more affordable are not well liked by consumers for the lack of sex appeal. Again, this is because we put more focus on style than substance. I guess, its up to the car companies to restyle these hybrids and electrics into more likable designs but at the same time, we can make a few style sacrifices as well.
There are a couple of others ways to increase the fuel efficiency of vehicles. The first is by using lighter materials for manufacturing, and this is the department of material science engineers. If spiders can make webs that are stronger than kevlar, I wonder why we cant make a material that is light enough to be fuel-efficient but strong enough to be safe. The second method is by using aerodynamic drag reducers. These drag reducers are perfectly suitable to trucks doing long-hauls and they help improve fuel-efficiency by about 10-15% depending on different studies. Using lighter and stronger materials could be cost-prohibitive which makes drag reducers a more cost-effective and scalable solution. The drag is created because of design issues. Almost all trucks that you see on highways are shaped like big boxes. Not a lot of thought is put into their design. Its easy to see that they are not efficiently designed since more energy is required to move a rectangle or square compared to sleeker shapes. A square has to displace a lot of air and this creates a drag which in turn demands more energy from the engine. There are already companies out there that place smartly designed drag reducers that help reduce this drag. We should have to start using them.
Drag-reducers for trucks and semis and hybrids and electrics are the way to go in the future. These technologies are not rocket science. In fact, these days even rocket science is not rocket science. If we can improve various aspects of our lives by focusing on efficiency, I wonder why we neglect something that is so basic. Transportation is an integral part of modern life. But the methods used for transportation are archaic and even anachronistic. To tolerate an internal combustion engine that wastes 90% of the non-renewable resource put into it is essentially living in apathy. To destroy ecosystems that took thousands of years to come to life because of this apathy, is to kill life by ignition, the ignition of our internal combustion engines.
We need to divorce the internal combustion engine from hydrocarbon energy and we need to do this on a war-footing. An obsolete technology, this engine wastes about 90 cents on a dollar. This is due to the fact that only about 10% of a gallon is used to propel the vehicle/driver forward, while the rest of it is wasted in various operational aspects of the engine ending up as heat and exhaust.
The most simple thing to do is to demand more fuel-efficient vehicles. But we are all caught in the web of form not function, style not substance. Hence, a lot of people think its cool to buy SUV's and sports cars which suck gas like a starving vampire would suck blood. The car companies (especially the big three in the US) are culpable for promoting a lifestyle that derives self-identity from the car a person drives. They stick up some "green" labels on the new vehicles which cunningly display some "sustainable" feature or the other, usually hogwash. Looked beneath the surface, most of these vehicles are made the same. Until the gas prices truly reflect their social cost, consumers will not change their habits. When gas prices fall, the SUV's will come out and when gas prices go up, the demand of hybrids will increase. But we do not understand that these price mechanisms follow the evil calculus of OPEC. These countries manipulate their supply to promote demand. The economics of oil dictate the lives of businessmen and politicians alike. Here is a facet of the oil economics (I found this breakup at http://jb-williams.com/).
Based upon a $3.00 gallon of gasoline, the average break-down is as follows.
Gasoline Retailer $.01 cents per gallon
Oil Company $.08 cents per gallon
Refining $.29 cents per gallon
Marketing/Distribution $.32 cents per gallon
Taxes $.59 cents per gallon
Cost of crude $1.71 per gallon (delivered)
As you can see, the retailer makes nothing, the oil company itself makes wafer-thin margins while the refiners and marketing make close to 20% of the margin. Government gets about the same (20%). Since most of the oil companies are vertically integrated, we can safely assume that about >21% of the cut goes to them while about an equal amount going to the Government. This is the reason why usually Governments do not care too much about reducing oil dependency. Tax money is easy money, it goes into running bloated and inefficient governments. This is why they refuse to make sincere efforts to promote hybrid and electric vehicles. Besides, the car companies have massive lobby operations which help reduce investments into public transport. So the more oil is sold at the retail outlets, the more tax money the Government gets and the more the profits of the oil company and the more dependency on cheap energy (since social cost is not taken into account). This web of dependencies can easily be classified as a socially acceptable drug addiction.
Since we, the people, are alone in this war against oil, there are a few things we can do. First, demand more fuel-efficient and smart cars with engines that do not waste too much fuel. We can promote and invest in companies that are innovating towards this end. Tesla, an electric car company, has been investing bucket loads of money to make a good looking electric car but they are too expensive at the current rates to cater to the mass market. Toyota Prius, Honda and Ford hybrids, while being more affordable are not well liked by consumers for the lack of sex appeal. Again, this is because we put more focus on style than substance. I guess, its up to the car companies to restyle these hybrids and electrics into more likable designs but at the same time, we can make a few style sacrifices as well.
There are a couple of others ways to increase the fuel efficiency of vehicles. The first is by using lighter materials for manufacturing, and this is the department of material science engineers. If spiders can make webs that are stronger than kevlar, I wonder why we cant make a material that is light enough to be fuel-efficient but strong enough to be safe. The second method is by using aerodynamic drag reducers. These drag reducers are perfectly suitable to trucks doing long-hauls and they help improve fuel-efficiency by about 10-15% depending on different studies. Using lighter and stronger materials could be cost-prohibitive which makes drag reducers a more cost-effective and scalable solution. The drag is created because of design issues. Almost all trucks that you see on highways are shaped like big boxes. Not a lot of thought is put into their design. Its easy to see that they are not efficiently designed since more energy is required to move a rectangle or square compared to sleeker shapes. A square has to displace a lot of air and this creates a drag which in turn demands more energy from the engine. There are already companies out there that place smartly designed drag reducers that help reduce this drag. We should have to start using them.
Drag-reducers for trucks and semis and hybrids and electrics are the way to go in the future. These technologies are not rocket science. In fact, these days even rocket science is not rocket science. If we can improve various aspects of our lives by focusing on efficiency, I wonder why we neglect something that is so basic. Transportation is an integral part of modern life. But the methods used for transportation are archaic and even anachronistic. To tolerate an internal combustion engine that wastes 90% of the non-renewable resource put into it is essentially living in apathy. To destroy ecosystems that took thousands of years to come to life because of this apathy, is to kill life by ignition, the ignition of our internal combustion engines.
Friday, June 11, 2010
A Travesty of Education
From my experience of working in the education industry, living in three different countries and meeting students from a cross-section of universities across the world, I can safely observe that the current state of education is in a deep state of disarray. I believe that richer countries like America and Australia can somehow live with this trend because they have built a certain level of efficiency and productivity into their societies and systems but countries in Asia (I will not comment on Africa as I have never been there) will pay a big price if the policy makers there keep playing deaf to the call of the day. Even in countries like the US and UK, which are so advanced in terms of human development compared to the rest of the world, it is deeply troubling to see many schools survive and prosper with sub-standard curriculum's and callous faculties. Whether private or public, these schools have survived mostly because the world economy has been growing post-WW II. Except a few hiccups in the 70s and 90s, mostly the world growth has been positive, till now. Post 2000, the world has been growing exponentially, thanks to China entering WTO in 2001 and India bidding adieu to Hindu rate of growth. This has prompted corporations (mostly based out of US/Europe) to expand and get a large share of their revenues from the growing Asian and Latin American populations, which compensated for the slow growth in their home countries. This has further led to the demand of managerial talent and hence management education. Which has in turn led to the growth of business schools across the world. Entrepreneurs in the private sector and public schools under the aegis of incompetent Government bodies, took advantage of this demand. While some of these schools, a minuscule, are truly thought-leaders, most others are just shops. Public business schools are under-funded and hence under-staffed. They make do with a nonchalance attitude to education. Living life on a quarterly basis with no focus on the longer term aspects of what they are imparting, these schools seldom try sincerely to hear what the travails of students are. Private schools are better equipped to deal with these issues because they are financially independent. But they often care only about the "success" of their alumni and how large the checks these alumni would cut in the future.
Modern education is evolving into a beast. The objective of real education is not to confer degrees with fancy titles. Education, in any discipline should be about kindling the fires of the mind and not filling it with nonsense. Curriculum's should lead students into a direction that allows them to explore the world and see things that are above and beyond the grasp of text books and case studies. It must be about teaching humility and honesty and live a life with fulfillment and contentment. It must fire the imagination and awaken the creativity that has led to so many great innovations in the past few decades. Is it pure chance that most of such innovation came from the streets and not the schools? Is it just a constant coincidence that creativity comes from areas one least expect?
But modern education instead instills either pride or self-doubts in the minds of the student. Pride comes from association and exclusivity. Self-doubts are born out of delinquent pedagogy. From the course structure, to the assessments and the mode of teaching in between, everything has gone wayward and misdirected. Business education is in a bigger state of disgrace as compared to other non-mainstream disciplines. Media is busy with ranking schools based usually on the cliched metrics of salary levels achieved and placements generated while accreditation companies are filled with people who seem disconnected from reality. It does not matter if the top management of the the Enron's, Global Crossings, Lehman Brothers and Satyams of the world were educated at the best schools in the world. Were these people not imparted with values that should have stopped them from doing what they did? Accreditation companies fail miserably in gauging the efficacy of their accreditation just like ratings companies fail to properly predict the bankruptcy of a AAA rated company. Life looks good when these people look down from their high-rise glass buildings but the reality in the schools/companies they rank, rate and accredit is different. Back in the olden days in India, apparently good kings roamed the streets at night, in disguise, so as to see how their citizens are living and what their problems are. Maybe accreditation companies and journalists should enroll as students to see what a travesty modern education has become.
In India, the emphasis in most schools is on rote learning rather than building analytical skills. It is surprising to find that a similar model is followed in most schools in the UK and the US as well. Scranton tests are the enemy of creativity while being a matter of convenience for the faculty. Such tests destroy the soul of education. One can get A's in these tests and fail in the real world. This model of education is akin to missing the forest for the trees. The point of good education is help a person do their job with diligence and propriety while staying within a framework of ethical and moral respectability. This requires analytical skills and a sense of what is right and wrong. Multiple-choice tests cant teach this, only interaction can. It is the duty of the teacher and his/her discretion to think through these issues. Its the job of the teacher to develop values and real knowledge (lets forget wisdom, it cant be learned in a school) in a student. Teachers are responsible for inspiring or destroying the students. Why don't teachers take this to heart? Why do elite schools fail to instill values in their students? Why don't lesser than elite schools focus differentiating themselves by creating such niche?
The problem is not in the schools but in the way society has come to evolve. Focus, from childhood, is put on being "successful" in life, which usually means making money. Big businessmen and successful actors are the role models these days instead of people of character, integrity and selfless leaders. Greed has come to replace altruism, which fell out of fashion decades ago. Media reflects (through movies and fiction) these trends by portraying success as the be all and end all of human life. Every person I talk to, these days reflects a sense of dissatisfaction with his/her current situation regardless of the fact that they have a job, a car and a house. They all want to be somewhere else, do something else and look like someone else. And yes, these are also men and women who come out of good schools and even elite schools. Why does this happen? While elite schools instill "bragging rights" in their students, lesser ones often are left feeling inadequate. Regardless of professional choices, both seem unhappy about their lives in general because they are not "successful" enough. Somebody else has more than you, always. This stress and the ensuing pressure cracks families, neighborhoods and finally nations. Everything begins at the schools. If teachers did their jobs well in the first place, there would have been more secure people in the society. Kids growing up in single parent homes have lesser opportunities to be nurtured compared to kids who grow up with both the parents. But fathers and mothers these days are busy earning bread and promotions so where do they have time to talk to kids? That leaves the teachers to do this job. But sadly, teaching, just like all the other professions, has become a wage job so nobody takes it passionately. If this is the bottom-up analysis for the breakdown of modern education, the top-down looks even more disturbing.
The deans and heads of private and public schools treat their schools and universities as a business. They act and behave like modern day CEOs. You could ask me what the trouble with this attitude is. Here is what is wrong. Education is NOT business, and it should never be. They are two totally separate fields. While business schools impart students with a set of heuristics on how businesses are run, education is actually about uplifting the soul and ennobling. Its another question whether business education can ever be uplifting, but it surely can be ennobling. There are capitalist philosophers and men/women of vision who made this world a better place through merchandise. Whether public or private, elite or street, its about showing such light in the darkness of daily din. If universities are run like businesses, their focus is on profits, growth and power. To obtain these ends, universities will make any compromises. Such compromises could be in quality or in morals. Complete this quarter, update the roaster and file away a few more students, irrespective of how we taught what we taught or why we taught what we taught. So from the teacher to the university, there is nobody who truly cares for the student, which they can do by taking some time out to understand what this individual actually wants. Humans are treated like sheep with no respect paid to their independence and personality.
A large part of my essay is trying to expose the current problems, hence you could ask me what the suggestions are. I do propose a few. More specifically, business schools should revamp their curriculum's to include brave courses on sociological issues and philosophical subjects, not just the usual accounting and marketing rigmarole. There has to be a cross-pollination of ideas in curriculum's. Business schools should include a few art classes to encourage the students to think out of the box for solving business problems. Inter-disciplinary studies are important for enhancing a person's critical thinking. Furthermore, universities should ONLY and STRICTLY be run on a non-profit model and any profit made should be sunk back into building libraries and sports facilities. Teachers should be regularly evaluated irrespective of whether they are tenured or not. Likewise, feedback should be 360 degrees and not just students ranking teachers. Finally, for the younger section and maybe not at the graduate level, home schooling could be an alternative and this is already becoming popular in the Western world. Children could be exposed to classical education and this will enhance their worldview in a way, current curriculum's cannot. While its true that experience is the best form of all educations, its equally important to have a basic training in the functioning of the world. "Ipsa scientia potestas est" or knowledge itself is the real power. All forms of power corrupts, but real knowledge liberates.
Modern education is evolving into a beast. The objective of real education is not to confer degrees with fancy titles. Education, in any discipline should be about kindling the fires of the mind and not filling it with nonsense. Curriculum's should lead students into a direction that allows them to explore the world and see things that are above and beyond the grasp of text books and case studies. It must be about teaching humility and honesty and live a life with fulfillment and contentment. It must fire the imagination and awaken the creativity that has led to so many great innovations in the past few decades. Is it pure chance that most of such innovation came from the streets and not the schools? Is it just a constant coincidence that creativity comes from areas one least expect?
But modern education instead instills either pride or self-doubts in the minds of the student. Pride comes from association and exclusivity. Self-doubts are born out of delinquent pedagogy. From the course structure, to the assessments and the mode of teaching in between, everything has gone wayward and misdirected. Business education is in a bigger state of disgrace as compared to other non-mainstream disciplines. Media is busy with ranking schools based usually on the cliched metrics of salary levels achieved and placements generated while accreditation companies are filled with people who seem disconnected from reality. It does not matter if the top management of the the Enron's, Global Crossings, Lehman Brothers and Satyams of the world were educated at the best schools in the world. Were these people not imparted with values that should have stopped them from doing what they did? Accreditation companies fail miserably in gauging the efficacy of their accreditation just like ratings companies fail to properly predict the bankruptcy of a AAA rated company. Life looks good when these people look down from their high-rise glass buildings but the reality in the schools/companies they rank, rate and accredit is different. Back in the olden days in India, apparently good kings roamed the streets at night, in disguise, so as to see how their citizens are living and what their problems are. Maybe accreditation companies and journalists should enroll as students to see what a travesty modern education has become.
In India, the emphasis in most schools is on rote learning rather than building analytical skills. It is surprising to find that a similar model is followed in most schools in the UK and the US as well. Scranton tests are the enemy of creativity while being a matter of convenience for the faculty. Such tests destroy the soul of education. One can get A's in these tests and fail in the real world. This model of education is akin to missing the forest for the trees. The point of good education is help a person do their job with diligence and propriety while staying within a framework of ethical and moral respectability. This requires analytical skills and a sense of what is right and wrong. Multiple-choice tests cant teach this, only interaction can. It is the duty of the teacher and his/her discretion to think through these issues. Its the job of the teacher to develop values and real knowledge (lets forget wisdom, it cant be learned in a school) in a student. Teachers are responsible for inspiring or destroying the students. Why don't teachers take this to heart? Why do elite schools fail to instill values in their students? Why don't lesser than elite schools focus differentiating themselves by creating such niche?
The problem is not in the schools but in the way society has come to evolve. Focus, from childhood, is put on being "successful" in life, which usually means making money. Big businessmen and successful actors are the role models these days instead of people of character, integrity and selfless leaders. Greed has come to replace altruism, which fell out of fashion decades ago. Media reflects (through movies and fiction) these trends by portraying success as the be all and end all of human life. Every person I talk to, these days reflects a sense of dissatisfaction with his/her current situation regardless of the fact that they have a job, a car and a house. They all want to be somewhere else, do something else and look like someone else. And yes, these are also men and women who come out of good schools and even elite schools. Why does this happen? While elite schools instill "bragging rights" in their students, lesser ones often are left feeling inadequate. Regardless of professional choices, both seem unhappy about their lives in general because they are not "successful" enough. Somebody else has more than you, always. This stress and the ensuing pressure cracks families, neighborhoods and finally nations. Everything begins at the schools. If teachers did their jobs well in the first place, there would have been more secure people in the society. Kids growing up in single parent homes have lesser opportunities to be nurtured compared to kids who grow up with both the parents. But fathers and mothers these days are busy earning bread and promotions so where do they have time to talk to kids? That leaves the teachers to do this job. But sadly, teaching, just like all the other professions, has become a wage job so nobody takes it passionately. If this is the bottom-up analysis for the breakdown of modern education, the top-down looks even more disturbing.
The deans and heads of private and public schools treat their schools and universities as a business. They act and behave like modern day CEOs. You could ask me what the trouble with this attitude is. Here is what is wrong. Education is NOT business, and it should never be. They are two totally separate fields. While business schools impart students with a set of heuristics on how businesses are run, education is actually about uplifting the soul and ennobling. Its another question whether business education can ever be uplifting, but it surely can be ennobling. There are capitalist philosophers and men/women of vision who made this world a better place through merchandise. Whether public or private, elite or street, its about showing such light in the darkness of daily din. If universities are run like businesses, their focus is on profits, growth and power. To obtain these ends, universities will make any compromises. Such compromises could be in quality or in morals. Complete this quarter, update the roaster and file away a few more students, irrespective of how we taught what we taught or why we taught what we taught. So from the teacher to the university, there is nobody who truly cares for the student, which they can do by taking some time out to understand what this individual actually wants. Humans are treated like sheep with no respect paid to their independence and personality.
A large part of my essay is trying to expose the current problems, hence you could ask me what the suggestions are. I do propose a few. More specifically, business schools should revamp their curriculum's to include brave courses on sociological issues and philosophical subjects, not just the usual accounting and marketing rigmarole. There has to be a cross-pollination of ideas in curriculum's. Business schools should include a few art classes to encourage the students to think out of the box for solving business problems. Inter-disciplinary studies are important for enhancing a person's critical thinking. Furthermore, universities should ONLY and STRICTLY be run on a non-profit model and any profit made should be sunk back into building libraries and sports facilities. Teachers should be regularly evaluated irrespective of whether they are tenured or not. Likewise, feedback should be 360 degrees and not just students ranking teachers. Finally, for the younger section and maybe not at the graduate level, home schooling could be an alternative and this is already becoming popular in the Western world. Children could be exposed to classical education and this will enhance their worldview in a way, current curriculum's cannot. While its true that experience is the best form of all educations, its equally important to have a basic training in the functioning of the world. "Ipsa scientia potestas est" or knowledge itself is the real power. All forms of power corrupts, but real knowledge liberates.
Friday, June 4, 2010
The Recall Fiasco
Over the past one year, there have been so many product recalls, spanning various facets of our consumer life, its intimidating to think about the safety of anything we use in our modern lives. In the last one hundred or so years, a multitude of products have entered our daily lives to make us lead a product-centric and contemporocentric lives. But in the past two decades, the escalation has been incredible. People across the World are now regularly bombarded with products and advertisements hundreds of times, everyday. Our lives get shorter as the margins of companies get longer. And as the cycle of innovation reduces, more and more products hit the street. Subliminal and explicit messages pollute our sub-conscious minds making us gullible customers controlled by a puppet master. Someone is selling something constantly, creating an endless feed of commerce interspersed within the already chaotic daily schedules of men, women and children. Here is a fact of modern life, we live in a society which cares more about the shelf life of a product, than the shelf life of a person. Product > Person.
McDonald's, about whom investors have been salivating in the last few years, recalled glasses it started selling in conjunction with Dream Works' franchise flick, Shrek IV. While the ogre is pretty damn popular with kids, his green color has come to signify the greed of cross-product placements and movie-product tie-ins. I know how crazy kids can get about these tie-ins, as in their gullible age they associate everything sold out there with the chirpy, fun-loving nature of the ogre. My nephew used to pester me to get these toys in our visits to the not-so-friendly neighborhood McDonald's. I was amazed at how cunning these companies are in their reach-out efforts to the younger sections. Even kids are neatly market segmented and psycho-graphically profiled. The McDonald's glasses apparently (recalled in the millions, as there are 12 million glasses in the market now), have a lethal chemical cadmium (a carcinogen no less) inside them. Kids drink the already nasty colas (Coke and Pepsi found traces of pesticides in their formulas recently in India) in place of water in a glass made with cadmium and down a hamburger made from a cow that was fed some more lethal hormones. Looks like the entire value chain of our lives is polluted. Will our next generation of men and women turn to aliens in their lifetime, being fed such trash? No wonder the folks of our parent generation have more energy and mental stamina than the kids these days. Fortunately, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission found the McDonald's cadmium-tainted glasses in time to even launch a recall. What if it wast found? What about all those other products floating in the market now with some lethal ingredients in their DNA? Where are the testing standards to stop corporations putting carcinogens into our daily lives? How come investors don't cry for safety in products instead of ever-increasing returns? In their eagerness and hastiness to to get tainted products to market in time when their movies hit the screens, the DreamWorks', McDonalds' and Coke's of the world will do anything. They will even allow their manufacturing (usually China, cause its cheap, never mind the quality) facilities to get tainted with carcinogens. Just like all those crackers and peanut butters etc recalled last year as someone found salmonella in some of these products. Essentially, one of us should put ourselves in peril or even die so others will know how bad these products are. Unfortunately, modern industrial production systems are so integrated and so large scale, its impossible to test every product in time to check if everything is safe or not. Please remember the toys from China that were filled with toxic substances. These profit-seeking corporations will not stop at anything for a little extra growth and a nicer quarterly number. Not even the toys of our kids. We were not safe by what we drank or ate and now our kids are not safe by what they play with and the glasses from which they drink their colas.
Update on June 25th. Kellogg recalled some 28 million boxes of its breakfast cereal, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks cereals, due to a "bad smell" coming from the package. Interestingly, the news item only reveals so much about the recall but adds "shares of Kellogg unchanged at end of trading". Look at the apathy of this situation. While we are worrying about the life/death of human beings here, the conclusion of news items talks about the frigging stock price of the company? Is that the only raison d'etre of modern existence?
Toyota, whose production systems and kanban/kaizan processes cause many managements gurus to jizz in their pants, recalled millions of its cars recently. Why? Because the floor mats were disabling drivers to hit brakes or accelerate the cars automatically. There are problems with gas pedals. Imagine sitting in a car that you cant control. Imagine trying to stop the car when you see pedestrians, but instead the car starts racing. All these decades, Toyota, an otherwise smart company because of its focus on innovation and hybrid technologies, was praised high for its ability to advance production processes through just in time (JIT) manufacturing and constant improvement yada yada yada. JIT practice is not a panacea, while it can save inventory costs, it puts a strain on human beings to do things in the last minute, it clogs traffic and finally it responds weakly to variance in demand. I see a link between these methods like JIT and other fancy Japanese words to the recent recalls. Management consultants would like you to believe otherwise, because they sell crappy ideas with fancy words and make fancy bucks doing so. In its quest to increase market share, Toyota might have sent an unfinished product to the market without proper testing. Is this the constant improvement they were doing for last two decades? Most of the major Toyota brands like Prius and others were recalled. Even Lexus, which prides itself in its quality has recalls. Please remember the ads of Lexus extolling its virtues and how cool you are as a person just because you drive a Lexus. Well, if you stay alive driving one that is. And this week Chrysler announced that it is recalling nearly 600,000 Jeep Wranglers and Chrysler/Dodge because of a possible brake fluid leak from front inner fender liners causing friction and a possible loss of brakes not to mention the fire hazard the wiring can cause. We were not safe crossing the road but now we are not safe inside the cars.
Johnson & Johnson, loved by many B school professors who constantly give the cliched example of Tylenol recall in the 70s, recalled Children's Tylenol and Other Children's Medicines in the last few weeks. batches of regular and extra-strength Tylenol, children's Tylenol, eight-hour Tylenol, Tylenol arthritis, Tylenol PM, children's Motrin, Motrin IB, Benadryl Rolaids, Simply Sleep, and St. Joseph's aspirin have been recalled. If you ate them, J&J is sorry about it. Sorry, we had some bacteria in our manufacturing plants and this bacteria (which is resistant to anti-biotic by the way) seeped into the tablets your kids take. I ask, why is there not a revolution already in the streets demanding the heads of people responsible for these things? Is it just enough to start a boycott J&J or Toyota page on FaceBook? Does J&J know about something called testing? According to FDA, problems with these drugs surfaced as early as 2008, but no one bothered to follow up. What kind of manufacturing standards do these companies use? Is it just enough to put anything out, as soon as can? It does not even matter if the consumer dies using the product? Companies don't care about this, because Wall St., does not care. All investors care is about the return on their investment, it does not matter if their kids are taking contaminated medicines of a company in which their parents are investors. Who cares if a few children get sick or even die when the company has been consistently giving returns and meeting quarterly expectations? We were not safe using these drugs in the first place, because they cure the symptoms not the disease. Now, we have to think ten times before we load our kids with Motrin and Tylenol and who knows, maybe J&J will come up with another medicine to cure those who are affected by the contaminated Tylenol. Now, that would be a great business idea, which would make those investors drop their pants and dance.
HP, another paragon of virtues as extolled by gurus, recalled thousands of laptop batteries last week cause they were a fire hazard. Simply put, you or I could be blown to bits by just using a laptop. Why do we need weapons of mass destruction, if we have batteries like that? Why not install them batteries into laptops and gift them to our enemies? Now, since I bought a HP laptop in 2007 (recall period, August of 2007 and July of 2008), my heart skipped a beat and I hastily checked my battery serial number. No, its not in the recall. But yes, the battery overheats like crazy causing either my clunky Windows OS to shutdown, or drive the fan nuts or barbecue my thighs or all. CPSC, the primary safety watchdog for technology in the United States, can be contacted if consumers have problems but what about those laptops that were sent to places like India where finding someone who cares is as hard as finding a snowball in hell? It does not matter right, because HP already booked those laptops into their sales figures, which is reflected in its share price and investors already made their returns. Why care if a few people's lives are jeopardized because their laptops have suddenly turned to landmines. We are not safe by using our "productivity" enhancing gadgets.
We might have to strip ourselves naked and go live in the jungle. Might could be right there but at least there is honesty in such a killing. The above named corporations should be ashamed of themselves for the fact that they will go to any length in their naked pursuit of profit. Investors could care less if these companies make lethal products that masquerade as kids toys or cars or laptops. I don't believe that only a few people who are exposed to these products and endanger their lives will pay the price along with their families and friends. I believe that we are all doomed as long as we think and act like sheep (read consumers). Nobody will question these companies because they are too big. A few heads could fall, business will be back to normal but processes will not change. Investors will only clamor for quarterly performance. Soul searching will not happen and our cars, glasses, laptops, burgers, medicines, and lives will keep getting contaminated until the last day. We will all eventually meet our maker, and hey, I have my defects but I don't want to be recalled just yet. But I'm sick and tired about these companies and their cadmium-tainted souls.
McDonald's, about whom investors have been salivating in the last few years, recalled glasses it started selling in conjunction with Dream Works' franchise flick, Shrek IV. While the ogre is pretty damn popular with kids, his green color has come to signify the greed of cross-product placements and movie-product tie-ins. I know how crazy kids can get about these tie-ins, as in their gullible age they associate everything sold out there with the chirpy, fun-loving nature of the ogre. My nephew used to pester me to get these toys in our visits to the not-so-friendly neighborhood McDonald's. I was amazed at how cunning these companies are in their reach-out efforts to the younger sections. Even kids are neatly market segmented and psycho-graphically profiled. The McDonald's glasses apparently (recalled in the millions, as there are 12 million glasses in the market now), have a lethal chemical cadmium (a carcinogen no less) inside them. Kids drink the already nasty colas (Coke and Pepsi found traces of pesticides in their formulas recently in India) in place of water in a glass made with cadmium and down a hamburger made from a cow that was fed some more lethal hormones. Looks like the entire value chain of our lives is polluted. Will our next generation of men and women turn to aliens in their lifetime, being fed such trash? No wonder the folks of our parent generation have more energy and mental stamina than the kids these days. Fortunately, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission found the McDonald's cadmium-tainted glasses in time to even launch a recall. What if it wast found? What about all those other products floating in the market now with some lethal ingredients in their DNA? Where are the testing standards to stop corporations putting carcinogens into our daily lives? How come investors don't cry for safety in products instead of ever-increasing returns? In their eagerness and hastiness to to get tainted products to market in time when their movies hit the screens, the DreamWorks', McDonalds' and Coke's of the world will do anything. They will even allow their manufacturing (usually China, cause its cheap, never mind the quality) facilities to get tainted with carcinogens. Just like all those crackers and peanut butters etc recalled last year as someone found salmonella in some of these products. Essentially, one of us should put ourselves in peril or even die so others will know how bad these products are. Unfortunately, modern industrial production systems are so integrated and so large scale, its impossible to test every product in time to check if everything is safe or not. Please remember the toys from China that were filled with toxic substances. These profit-seeking corporations will not stop at anything for a little extra growth and a nicer quarterly number. Not even the toys of our kids. We were not safe by what we drank or ate and now our kids are not safe by what they play with and the glasses from which they drink their colas.
Update on June 25th. Kellogg recalled some 28 million boxes of its breakfast cereal, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks cereals, due to a "bad smell" coming from the package. Interestingly, the news item only reveals so much about the recall but adds "shares of Kellogg unchanged at end of trading". Look at the apathy of this situation. While we are worrying about the life/death of human beings here, the conclusion of news items talks about the frigging stock price of the company? Is that the only raison d'etre of modern existence?
Toyota, whose production systems and kanban/kaizan processes cause many managements gurus to jizz in their pants, recalled millions of its cars recently. Why? Because the floor mats were disabling drivers to hit brakes or accelerate the cars automatically. There are problems with gas pedals. Imagine sitting in a car that you cant control. Imagine trying to stop the car when you see pedestrians, but instead the car starts racing. All these decades, Toyota, an otherwise smart company because of its focus on innovation and hybrid technologies, was praised high for its ability to advance production processes through just in time (JIT) manufacturing and constant improvement yada yada yada. JIT practice is not a panacea, while it can save inventory costs, it puts a strain on human beings to do things in the last minute, it clogs traffic and finally it responds weakly to variance in demand. I see a link between these methods like JIT and other fancy Japanese words to the recent recalls. Management consultants would like you to believe otherwise, because they sell crappy ideas with fancy words and make fancy bucks doing so. In its quest to increase market share, Toyota might have sent an unfinished product to the market without proper testing. Is this the constant improvement they were doing for last two decades? Most of the major Toyota brands like Prius and others were recalled. Even Lexus, which prides itself in its quality has recalls. Please remember the ads of Lexus extolling its virtues and how cool you are as a person just because you drive a Lexus. Well, if you stay alive driving one that is. And this week Chrysler announced that it is recalling nearly 600,000 Jeep Wranglers and Chrysler/Dodge because of a possible brake fluid leak from front inner fender liners causing friction and a possible loss of brakes not to mention the fire hazard the wiring can cause. We were not safe crossing the road but now we are not safe inside the cars.
Johnson & Johnson, loved by many B school professors who constantly give the cliched example of Tylenol recall in the 70s, recalled Children's Tylenol and Other Children's Medicines in the last few weeks. batches of regular and extra-strength Tylenol, children's Tylenol, eight-hour Tylenol, Tylenol arthritis, Tylenol PM, children's Motrin, Motrin IB, Benadryl Rolaids, Simply Sleep, and St. Joseph's aspirin have been recalled. If you ate them, J&J is sorry about it. Sorry, we had some bacteria in our manufacturing plants and this bacteria (which is resistant to anti-biotic by the way) seeped into the tablets your kids take. I ask, why is there not a revolution already in the streets demanding the heads of people responsible for these things? Is it just enough to start a boycott J&J or Toyota page on FaceBook? Does J&J know about something called testing? According to FDA, problems with these drugs surfaced as early as 2008, but no one bothered to follow up. What kind of manufacturing standards do these companies use? Is it just enough to put anything out, as soon as can? It does not even matter if the consumer dies using the product? Companies don't care about this, because Wall St., does not care. All investors care is about the return on their investment, it does not matter if their kids are taking contaminated medicines of a company in which their parents are investors. Who cares if a few children get sick or even die when the company has been consistently giving returns and meeting quarterly expectations? We were not safe using these drugs in the first place, because they cure the symptoms not the disease. Now, we have to think ten times before we load our kids with Motrin and Tylenol and who knows, maybe J&J will come up with another medicine to cure those who are affected by the contaminated Tylenol. Now, that would be a great business idea, which would make those investors drop their pants and dance.
HP, another paragon of virtues as extolled by gurus, recalled thousands of laptop batteries last week cause they were a fire hazard. Simply put, you or I could be blown to bits by just using a laptop. Why do we need weapons of mass destruction, if we have batteries like that? Why not install them batteries into laptops and gift them to our enemies? Now, since I bought a HP laptop in 2007 (recall period, August of 2007 and July of 2008), my heart skipped a beat and I hastily checked my battery serial number. No, its not in the recall. But yes, the battery overheats like crazy causing either my clunky Windows OS to shutdown, or drive the fan nuts or barbecue my thighs or all. CPSC, the primary safety watchdog for technology in the United States, can be contacted if consumers have problems but what about those laptops that were sent to places like India where finding someone who cares is as hard as finding a snowball in hell? It does not matter right, because HP already booked those laptops into their sales figures, which is reflected in its share price and investors already made their returns. Why care if a few people's lives are jeopardized because their laptops have suddenly turned to landmines. We are not safe by using our "productivity" enhancing gadgets.
We might have to strip ourselves naked and go live in the jungle. Might could be right there but at least there is honesty in such a killing. The above named corporations should be ashamed of themselves for the fact that they will go to any length in their naked pursuit of profit. Investors could care less if these companies make lethal products that masquerade as kids toys or cars or laptops. I don't believe that only a few people who are exposed to these products and endanger their lives will pay the price along with their families and friends. I believe that we are all doomed as long as we think and act like sheep (read consumers). Nobody will question these companies because they are too big. A few heads could fall, business will be back to normal but processes will not change. Investors will only clamor for quarterly performance. Soul searching will not happen and our cars, glasses, laptops, burgers, medicines, and lives will keep getting contaminated until the last day. We will all eventually meet our maker, and hey, I have my defects but I don't want to be recalled just yet. But I'm sick and tired about these companies and their cadmium-tainted souls.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)