Google Shakes Up Management

Any book written since 2005 on VC startups or funded dot com ventures or even enterprise angel funded corporations with bricks and mortar realities behind a new Internet presence has a different story today.The next page has been turned for Google (Earth), with a juggle king, veteran Page again newly crowned at the top of the biggest new media empire since, well , Microsoft, Ebay or Apple. Sergey Brin will turn to other projects.

Larry Page, coming back from semiretirement at thirty seven, will take up the reins as Google Czar at the company he helped found in 2000. Just as Google and many other flexible flyers in the new Internet race a decade ago flashed ahead of the huge titan companies still trying to grasp what the Web could mean, it now will muster new (old) leadership when products are most at stake. Google’s online apps, email and evolving omnimedia in Internet life needs a courageous hand at the tiller.

As Silicon Valley has ebbed and flowed in the last decade and then gone back out with the tide, dynamics like those posed with respect to FaceBook in the Social Network and other dotcom stories have never touched the giant that is Google. Ebay, IBM, Microsoft, Apple Computers, Yahoo, and other online behemoths have settled into their respective territories. Google is generally regarded as valuable rather than on the cutting edge among anaysts.

But this was the year FaceBook roared, in 2010 and probably louder in 2011 as well. Google, whose footprint currently is stamped in SEO, Android and online apps, will cement a possible social networking presence online soon. They’ll have to, with so many age rank and indexing players getting into the game (Yahoo, Bing). And if Google sees which way the wind is blowing, it might want to get into the domain business. Before Facebook does.

ICANN Security Czar Swirls Waters

The ongoing analysis of Rod Beckstrom as the incoming ICANN security chief has voices from all over the domaining industry chiming in. The pivotal window for operational change within ICANN has been a watched-for event by many in the domain industry.

Domain name Industry senior Page Howe, of Sitehq.com comments “They’ ve evolved into a better organization every year”. Howe, who specializes in domaining resales and development, has had experience with ICANN splitting hairs over security issues and tld management possibilities. 

Says one top flight domainer: “All in all, this Icann is better than no Icann or whatever the rest of the world will try to put in place”. International TLDs for global locations will challenge ICANN in coming years. Prepping for a tld application is almost an Olympic domaining sport. Howe’s story of his sub-TLD application to ICANN is told here.