Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

The Web world is shell shocked: Yahoo’s ranks are shrinking.

Who says the two Silicons aren’t one big happy family, though? Fred Wilson. BUT, that was last week’s “news”!

The New York City-based Union Square Ventures blogger screwed up his Silicon Valley headline rant–wrongly calling out a fellow Silion Alley chap for West coast arrogance–and STILL believes he nailed a bi-coastal tech angst problem.

SEE: Why Silicon Alley VCs Should Do Blogging Due Diligence, Too

Today’s mutual outpouring of tech love from both sides of the Web aisle for Yahoos, however, must surely warm even a grisled venture capitalist’s heart, as not so cold hearted entrepreneurs in both Silicons embrace the poor, displaced huddled masses of Jerry Yang refugees.

From sea to shining sea–and even from Canada–the feeding freenzy over the still warm Yahoos’ blood is fevered: “Wanted: Yahoo Product Managers” and “Why canned Yahoo employees should come talk to me,” and “Memo to YHOO Staffers: Looking for a Few Good People.”

While the reaching out is touching, offers from fledging, bootstrap ventures may very well NOT be compelling to the once coddled Yahoos!

Yahoos may take comfort though that there is someone looking out for them, a woman so determined that she is staking her very future on making sure all can continue to live the American dream, even laid off Yahoos!

Who says President Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, is old school? Is the American dream EVER outdated?

In what may be hailed as HER comeback (old) kid speech, Ms. Clinton rallied the El Paso troops last evening with a Texas sized cry to keep the dream alive and well, in America, under her watch:

What I think this election is about…It is about what kind of country and world we’re going to pass on…Are we going to give the same shot at the American dream that many of us were given? Well, if we make the right decision in this election, we sure are. We’re going to give not only confidence and optimism, but real results, 21st-century solutions for what we need to do to fix our problems, meet our challenges, and seize our opportunities.

Hillary may even have been thinking of the soon to be left out in the cold Yahoos when she hailed:

There isn’t anything America can’t do if we make up our minds to do it. Every once of us, every single one of us knows that tomorrow can be better than today, but it doesn’t happen just by wishing it or hoping for it. It happens by working really, really hard to make it a reality to give everybody a better chance.

I see an America where everyone willing to work hard has a job with a rising income.

SO, Yahoos: The sun will come out tomorrow, and there may be another Clinton in the White House next year!

Above all, remember, there isn’t anything ex-Yahoos can’t do if they make up their minds to do it.

ONE (not so) REFUGEE’S STORY: Antisocial Google: Googler Bradley Horowitz Mum

MORE: How Web 2.0 Meetups Displaced the New York Software Industry and Is Union Square Ventures Changing Exit Strategies? and Henry Blodget Tech Ticker Puts Yahoo Finance at SEC Risk and Silicon Alley Web 2.0 Startups: Bootstrap For Success

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

What information overload in the Facebook presidential debates? After all, Facebook users “have shared their political affiliations and opinions since the site’s inception,” the (don’t call it social networking) site boasts:

Facebook first began adding politicians to the site during the 2006 mid-term election. Today, more than 500 US politicians have Facebook Pages, where Facebook users can support candidates, learn more about them and communicate with them. These include all the major presidential candidates, most Members of Congress and many state governors. In November 2007, Facebook launched a partnership with ABC News for the 2008 presidential election – including a revamped US Politics application on Facebook and co-sponsorship of the televised debates ahead of the New Hampshire primary.

Who needs Google then? What CNN-YouTube debates? What have you done for me lately, rather! YouTube is playing the New Hamsphire priimary card with its standard “submit Your Voter Video” solicitation:

Anyone who is in New Hampshire and thinking (a la Facebook Soundboard) about the primaries can submit a video. You don’t have to be a New Hampshire voter necessarily, thought we are looking to highlight videos from the Granite Staters. Document your primary experience from start to finish. We want t shoe the natio what primaries are like, so bring your video camera along with you and give an on-the-ground view of your experience.

Facebook may be neck and neck with YouTube on the online-offline social networking political game, but in the high-stakes political power battlefield that really counts, Google is the hands down winner.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain…have all made their pilgramages to the mighty Googleplex for what Google CEO Eric Schmidt is fond of calling ”the ultimate job interview for the top job in the U.S.” The top Googler has made sure that “the presidential campaign trail winds though the Googleplex.”

Circa 2007:

Google CEO Eric Schmidt to Hillary Clinton: Welcome to Google!

Senator Hillary Clinton: I am thrilled to be at the “best place to work in America” that is “helping to invent the future” and has “revolutionized the way we live, work, think…”

So began a one on one in February between the leader of one of the most powerful corporations in the world and the (then) Democratic frontrunner in the race to become the next leader of the most powerful country in the world. The Clinton chat with Schmidt before an audience of Googlers took place after Clinton privately meet at the Googleplex with Silicon Valley leaders.

Schmidt’s Q & A with the former First Lady offered presidential candidate Clinton an opportunity to present her stands on major election issues, such as Iraq, the environment…AND Google Health!

Schmidt set-up to Clinton:

These are the people that make Google a success. You are a Google user. How can Google help your vision happen?

Clinton return:

When Eric was showing me around, we stopped at the Google Health team office, we can not get to Universal Health Care coverage unless we have a much better information base that is very reliable that people can turn to make decisions on their own, to be empowered as consumers of health care, that is something I know you are working on and we really need you to be aggressively pursuing that.

We do need more Information Technology generally in health care, if you’ve gone to a new doctor, they probably took a new history on paper, they probably don’t have electronic medical records, if you go to a doctor out of state, they’ll have to do it all over again, because they probably can’t transfer what you have at your doctor.

The health sector is woefully deficient in Information Technology, any way you can help us move our health sector into the 21st century will help us to get a base of information on which we can make better decisions to provide health care for everybody.

Sound familiar? Ex-Googler Adam Bosworth’s ears may be ringing! His December 2006 “Connecting Americans to Their Health Care: Empowered Consumers, Personal Health Records and Emerging Technologies” speech seems to have “inspired” Clinton.

Bosworth is long gone from Google and Google’s health care intiatives seem to be going nowhere, but the leader of the leading Amerian corporation still has the ready ear of the next president of the United States, whomever that may be.

Google also is making political hay daily not only in our nation’s capital, but alongside governments worldwide. Worried about Google’s determination to control the world’s information? The Google triumvarite aims to rule the entire world Googley style, really.

Facebook’s wet behind the ears Mark Zuckerberg, though, is most likely NOT prepping to meet and greet the world’s power elite.

SEE: Google Global Power Grab: Aussie Politicians in Tow and
Google to World: AdWords Need Political Freedom and
PayPerPost Warns U.S. Congress of Google Monopoly: Barack Obama to the Rescue? and
Eric Schmidt: Google Cures What Ails the World and
The Next President of the U.S. Answers to Google and
Google Masters Art of Influence Peddling and
Google Joins Blogosphere in Mocking Wikia Search: Jimmy Wales Defiant

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

PayPerPost CEO Ted Murphy is stirring up a “Posties” revolt, spurring “everyday (i.e. PayPerPost) bloggers” to “write Google, and their Congressman.”

Just as Murphy took to the PayPerPost blog to lambast Google for “censorship” and a “monopolistic stranglehold on search and online advertisng,” however, Google’s fave presidential candidate, Barack Obama, was patting Google and its merry band of multi-millionaire Googlers on their backs during a mutual love fest cum personal political rally under the direction of CEO Eric Schmidt and team at the Googleplex.

Obama is the seventh candidate hoping to be the next president of the United States to make his or her campaign pilgimage to Mountain View. Bill Richardson undoubetdly still is sporting his scars from his “ultimate job interview,” as host Elliot Schrage, VP Global Communications and Public Affairs, led a visceral interrogation of the Governor, spurring Silicon Valley media to cheerfully portray Richardson’s performance as “awkward” and “bumbling.”

Schrage was quoted for condescendingly retorting to his guest, Governor Richardson: “Our nutritionist may end up running for president.”

Barack Obama was welcomed as the favorite Google son, though, with the Official Google Public Policy Blog fawning over the Congressman as the defacto honorary Googler in Chief. Obama has himself to thank, he put in a rocket scientist worthy performance, prepared even to “have a ready answer for a standard Google engineering question.”

Obama also proved himself worthy of the hefty Googler political contributions coming his way: The Obama “technology platform” is a shamelessy pro-Google one.

Moral of the Obama-PayPerPost story? Murphy ought to encourage his “Posties” to “write Obama,” rather than their “congressmen” about any evil Google doing!

What are the alleged Google bad deeds, according to Murphy? Google may have revamped its own proprietary way of evaluating Web page quality for its own use in its own proprietary systems, i.e. the mighty PageRank.

Murphy is calling for a revolt against Google because not only does he believe his PayPerPost blog network is potentially impacted by prospective potential changes in “free” traffic referred by private company Google’s search engine changes, but Murphy has himself used Google’s private, proprietary PageRank calculations as currency to sell his own blog advertising products, characterized by him as “attractive alternatives” to Google AdSense.

Murphy may be able to make a case against Google, nevertheless. After all, Google flaunts that its mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usefull” and “Posties” posts are decidely part of the “world’s information”!

Murphy is not helping his anti-Google campaign, though, by proudly taking advantage of “Google Custom Search” to power the PayPerPost blog.

PLUS: Google’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: AdWords Inflation AND Google: U.S. Taxpayers To Finance GOOG Riches

PLUS: Paglo CEO ‘Nuts’ Over FREE ‘Google For IT’: INTERVIEW

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Insider Chatter presidential campaign 2008 special series on what I am calling “User Generated Politics”

The Next President of the U.S. Answers to Google

And, THE User Generated Politics debate question of last evening’s YouTube CNN democratic candidates debate: Chris Nolan, a democratic operative from illinois, queried abut the unseemlyness of having a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton U.S. presidential dynasty.

I have been asking the same thing; The U.S. is not Britan, after all!

Nwe York Senator Hillary Clinton, former first lady to president Bill Clinton and frontrunner to become the next president of the United States proudly declared at ther campaign Website in May: “Governor Spitzer, thousands turn out to support campaign.”

Pictures say a thousand words! Looking closely at the photograph below, Hillary has literally replaced Bill in pressing the flesh of the adoring throngs (only missing piece, of course, a Lewinsky style nod).

Below the showcase shot of Hillary in action for campaign 2008 at the campaign’s Website was a duet of photos: portraits of Hillary and Bill side by side, or rather, portraits of President Clinton and former First Lady, Senator Clinton.

Surreal or only in America? Clinton is firmly behind Clinton; HE is looking forward to returning to the White House, at HER side.

IS Hillary concerned that she is the new Bill? NO, the right man for THIS job is a woman, Hillary Rodham proclaimed last evening, via YouTube.

SEE The Next President of the U.S. Answers to Google

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Insider Chatter presidential campaign 2008 special series on what I am calling “User Generated Politics”

The winner of the YouTube fueled democratic debate last evening? GOOGLE! 

Sergey Brin has proudly underscored to Wall Street that there is no obvious ceiling to Google monetization. There is obviously no ceiling to Google’s ambition for power, as well.

Who is helping “choose” the next president of the United States? Google, and Google’s YouTube.

Google funded last May’s Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) “Technology is Changing Politics” conference in New York City, a masterful Google PR cum Political Business Development stroke, undoubtedly had by Google for a very reasonable price, CEO Eric Schmidt keynote honors included.

Google not only operates as if it is the “gateway to the Internet,” it aims to be the virtual Universe. Schmidt asserted at the PDF forum:

I don’t know that the Internet is more important than health care, but it almost is,” people need access to the (Google) Internet, for access to the modern world.

(Unfortunately, however, Google is NOT helping the world gain access to the Internet, despite its bravado about “open” broadband platforms; SEE Africa NOT Online: Will ‘Open’ Google ‘Put Up or Shut Up’?)

Speaking of health care, Schmidt spoke in depth about it at the Googleplex earlier in the year, Google’s version of it that is, in a tete a tete with the presidential front runner, Hillary Clinton. The result? Between Schmidt’s charm and Googlers’ money, Hillary for President is also Hillary for Google branded Personal Health Records.

(SEE Google, Hillary Clinton and U.S. Health Care)

Google is determined, in fact, to not only control all the world’s information, but to make sure “the presidential campaign trail winds though the Googleplex” as well. 

The Google top brass, led by Googler in Chief Eric Schmidt, is enjoying the political fruits of intimate sit-downs with all who hope to become the next president of the United States, AND the not so humble, but very merry, band of Googlers are having their say, and their way, with the candidates, as they dutifully pay homage to the most powerful Internet company, and gateway sponsor of presidential debates.

Schmidt is fond of calling the Mountain View meet and greets part of the ultimate job interview for the top job in the U.S.

Google is succeeding in requiring the next president of the United States personally answer to Googlers, and to Google’s YouTubers.

ALSO: Google Masters Art of Influence Peddling and User Generated Politics Slams U.S. Royal Dynasties

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

 Special “User Generated Politics” Coverage of Presidential Campaign 2008, by InsiderChatter.com 

Google YouTube makes for a powerful one-two political punch in presidential campaign 2008.

First, Google makes sure the “presidential campaign trail winds though the Googleplex.”  Now, YouTube is hosting its very own presidential debate, in conjunction with CNN!

Google is determined to control all the world’s information and has its eyes currently set on the powerful political kind. Not only is the Google top brass, led by Googler in Chief Eric Schmidt, enjoying the fruits of intimate sit-downs with all who hope to become the next president of the United States, the not so humble, but very merry, band of Googlers are having their say, and their way, with the candidates, as they dutifully make their pilgramages to the Goolgeplex.

First Hillary Clinton, then John McCain, Bill Richardson…Schmidt is fond of calling the meet and greets part of the ultimate job interview for the top job in the U.S. and, as Richardson can attest to, an interview at Google is no walk in the park, even with a Mountain View!  

When Schmidt welcomed Clinton in February to his “house” with the requisite courtesy, the frontrunner candidate reciprocated with a rousing endorsement of Google Vice President Adam Bosworth’s ambitions for Google branded Personal Health Records.

McCain and Richardson did not have such smooth Googley sailing, however.

Googlers in attendance were visceral in their interrogations of McCain and Richardson and Elliot Schrage, VP, Global Communications and Public Affairs, was a more direct host, in for Schmidt to represent the $150 billion market cap corporation before presidential candidate Richardson.

McCain of course can tell a story or two about what is to be under interrogative fire and following his Googleplex experience he can add a few more tales to his repertoire. Many Googlers put forth what they believed would be best for McCain to do if he became President. McCain apparently got the message.

In response to a Googler question about immigration laws, McCain got his biggest round of applause of his “job interview” at Google:

If Google is going to be able to maintain its supremacy in the world, it is going to have to continue to get the best and the brightest from all over the world, and I accept with your gigantic egos, that you are the best…we need an H1B visa program that works.

Richardson was apparently double teamed: Host Schrage and Googlers let Richardson know how they REALLY feel. 

Schrage is not a disinterested party, in more ways than one. He is the point man for the Google effort to grab the biggest chunk it can of the $80 million that is projected to be spent online during campaign 2008.

Google’s reception of Richardson, according to the San Jose Mercury News:

Richardson didn’t know his audience very well. After he promised to give companies such as Google tax incentives to install solar panels, the audience roared - in laughter. Google already does that, without any tax incentive, one employee noted.

In one awkward moment, Richardson told the audience “I’m Hispanic; the Richardson name doesn’t help.” He looked around the audience, and said, “You have no Hispanics here.” Elliot Schrage, vice president for global communication who was interviewing Richardson, replied, “Of course we do.”

Is it really an honor to be honored with an invitation to the Googleplex?

Fifty lucky YouTubers will soon be honored when a televised Democratic debate scheduled for July 23 will feature questions for the candidates derived from “citizens,” their snack-sized videos that is. 

CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman will produce the broadcast and has these words of advice to  political YouTubers seeking to submit video questions for the presidential candidates:

Be concise, no more than 30 seconds, provocative, and creative. But, NOT “obscene” or “inappropriate.”

Despite CNN censoring for “appropriateness” in a political debate for the most powerful position in the world, Bohrman is confident the network will get “some very inventive questions.”

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN