Silicon Valley is obsessed with a presentation by Sequoia Capital, the backer of Google, titled "R.I.P. Good Times". The venture capital firm's partners delivered it to its portfolio companies at a special meeting, predicting a long, painful recovery and advocating immediate cost cuts. We'd gotten notes from an…
Bad times have hit sunnily optimistic northern California. Does it matter if the mayhem on Wall Street had any real connection with the tech-powered Silicon Valley economy? Some of the region's most influential power brokers believe it will — and by pushing others around, they can make perception reality. A helpful…
The good times are over, the partners of Sequoia Capital are telling the entrepreneurs they fund. Quite literally: They sent a summons to a summit meeting with a picture of a gravestone with the writing "R.I.P. Good Times," rival venture capitalist Om Malik reports. There, partners including Michael Moritz and Doug…
Microsoft's Department of Losing Money — the Xbox and Zune division — has reportedly frozen hiring. [Silicon Alley Insider]
So much for the value of user-generated content: AOL is shutterings its Journals blog, and a much older webpage-hosting service, AOL Hometown. [Silicon Alley Insider]
Wilson Sonsini, the giant law firm which grew fat in the '90s tech boom, has struggled ever since. Its involvement with many companies implicated in stock-options backdating scandals has tarnished its image, even as the faltering market for tech IPOs shrank a once-lucrative business for the firm. So who's paying the…
Perhaps readying itself for a sale to Microsoft or Yahoo, Time Warner company AOL began cutting costs yesterday. One memo, from Kevin Conroy, AOL’s EVP of Products and Marketing, told employees AOL will "sunset" products Bluestring, Xdrive and AOL Pictures. MyAOL will go into maintenance-only mode and investment in…
This is not how the Google's story supposed to go: Google is closing offices in Dallas and Denver. The locations may well be duplicative — a Google Maps search shows three Dallas-area offices — but it doesn't fit the narrative of relentless, candy-colored expansion around the globe. What's next — overcharging…
In April, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell said the company was not feeling the effects of any economic slow down. Now its is, reports Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.
Cisco has told some managers to limit expenses and use up accumulated vacation days. In February, Cisco cut growth targets to 10 percent from 15. CEO John Chambers also warned that the current slowdown in growth could last from two to five quarters. Why not just offer buyouts to employees who are unhappy with the…
Shareholders have already figured out Cisco's not meeting expectations. Now employees are feeling it, too. In good times, Cisco employees get a mid-year advance on their annual bonus, paid in March. But managers have just informed their charges that they're getting half the usual amount. Cisco bonuses start off…
Yahoo's ambitions have long exceeded its abilities. Its large global audience and corps of engineers has lulled it into thinking that anything one can code is actually worth doing. The cold numbers of website traffic logs tell another story. It's hard to get people to try new things; even harder to get people to…
Earlier this year, AOL reps told Loudoun Summer Music Fest organizer Tracey Parent they'd pony up the usual $80,000 for the show in next year's budget. That's no longer the case, local paper Leesburg Today reports. And that's a surprise how?
VeriSign, the company trusted with protecting our data when we go on online shopping sprees, has decided to clip its wings after revenues fell 6 percent in the third quarter. It's dropping new ventures, like mobile banking technology and Internet telephony, which it acquired in moments of irrational exuberance, in…
You may recall CNET Networks sold Webshots to American Greetings yesterday at the fire-sale price of $45 million. Well, it's not stopping there. In an effort to build the "media company of the future," CEO Neil Ashe said, "it is also important to sell some of our properties and we won't shy from it." Important in…
Earlier this month, Internet service provider EarthLink held San Francisco's proposed citywide Wi-Fi network hostage while asking the city to pony up some extra cash. Turns out that wasn't strong-arm tactics — EarthLink is in a world of financial hurt. To cauterize the bleeding, it's cutting 900 employees. Among the…
Another one of Yahoo's sprawling properties has gotten the axe: Come mid-September, Yahoo Bill Pay is shutting down. You didn't even know Yahoo let you pay your bills? Exactly. The service, notable when it launched for undercutting banks' online bill-payment fees, has become outmoded. Almost all banks now offer free…
A Long Island correspondent reports that Newsday has stopped giving its reporters free newspapers, and that's rankling some of the reporters—especially those who live in the five boroughs, where they can't get home delivery. Sniff! Our tipster writes:
