SiliconBeat

Last week, my column asked the question of whether sexism played a role in the firing of VMware CEO Diane Greene. I felt that Greene’s departure was unusually abrupt and harsh, compared to the way such things usually happen. And by way of example, I cited the recent departure of CEO Hector Ruiz at AMD.

No bit surprise: I heard an earful from readers. But because I was on the road for a chunk of last week, I’m just catching up with some of the chatter. I wanted to post some of the more thoughtful responses here, both in support and against my central point: Read the rest of this entry »

So Steve Ballmer says he’s given up trying to buy Yahoo. If that were true, than it would be good news. Merc reporter Elise Ackerman wrote the following last Friday:

Ballmer said Microsoft’s strategy is to win through innovation, reinvention and investment in “semantic expertise,” referring to Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Powerset, a San Francisco search company with technology for helping machines better understand the meaning of Web pages and human queries.

The question is whether he really believes that. After all, hasn’t Microsoft been trying to do that on the Internet for more than a decade? And where has it gotten them? Answer: Total disarray. Read the rest of this entry »

Reshaping our lifestyle in the “connected society” is the goal of a new research center to be formed as a joint ventures between Keio University, the oldest university in Japan and one of its most prestigious, and the National University of Singapore. It will be Keio’s first full-scale international research center located outside of Japan, according to a press release issued Friday.

Plans for the center, to be called the Keio-NUS CUTE Centre — CUTE standing for Connective Ubiquitous Technology for Embodiments (to be explained shortly) Read the rest of this entry »

Hewlett-Packard and Electronic Data Services settled five EDS shareholder lawsuits filed in
response to the proposed merger of the two companies, according to a release HP put out Friday announcing approval of the HP-EDS merger by the European Commission.

The lawsuits were brought by shareholders who questioned the deal’s valuation and who urged that EDS put itself up for auction in hopes of attracting a higher bid, something plaintiffs said terms of the deal
prohibited.

As part of the settlement, HP and EDS said that the closing of the merger will not occur prior to Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Hedger and Dave Davies asked me to come on Webcology, their Internet Radio show, on Thursday to talk about the Yahoo settlement with shareholder Carl Icahn and where things go from here. My part starts about 10 minutes in and lasts about 30 minutes (and there was a brief technical glitch where I got cut off). But otherwise, it was a good discussion. You can stream or download the episode here. And I’ve uploaded it to this post as well.

Let me know what you think. And be sure to check out their show.

General counsels of several Silicon Valley corporations are in the vanguard of critics railing against changes being proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board “”that would force public companies to disclose more about the risks of litigation,” judging by the sources in this story by Zusha Elinson of the San Francisco Recorder.

“Under the revised rules for FASB Statement No. 5,” Elinson writes, “the threshold for reporting the potential loss from a lawsuit would be lowered from ‘probable’ to Read the rest of this entry »

Why is it so difficult for Microsoft to compete with Google? Steve Ballmer tried to explain at the software giant’s annual analyst day up in Redmond on Thursday. (Thanks to our colleague Elise Ackerman, who covers Google and Yahoo for the Mercury News, for providing this to Docu-Drama.) Read the rest of this entry »

Citing “continued economic uncertainties and expected continuing demand weakness in the second half of 2008,” Sirf Technology announced “further reductions in force” in its current quarter, according to its earnings release filed with the SEC today.

The company said it would layoff from between 7 percent to 9 percent of its workforce before this quarter is over. The job cuts come on top of a Read the rest of this entry »

Genentech said today that its board of directors has formed a special committee to “assess” the offer from the Roche Group, its largest shareholder, to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Genentech it doesn’t already own for $89 each, according to a press release the company issued this afternoon.

The committee, made up of the board’s three directors deemed to be independent — and none of the Read the rest of this entry »

Rambus said it intends to “reduce our current cost structure through actions which may include downsizing our workforce” after reporting a 25 percent drop in sales for its second quarter compared with the year-before quarter, according to its earnings release this afternoon.

The company’s net loss ballooned to Read the rest of this entry »