New GM Chairman

[Volvohead]

Originally Posted By: XS650
Many of the upper echelon of CEOdom are convinced that you don't need to know anything about what your company produces.


It's all just widgets and fungibles? I don't think so. But that is what some of them think, particularly the mediocre ones and the ones with finance backgrounds. That simplistic philosophy is what got GM into the tank in the first place.

I wonder if Ford would have succeeded early on if Henry Ford thought that way. We all know the answer.

 

[wapacz]

Originally Posted By: XS650
Originally Posted By: 65cuda
I don't see where is much worse of a risk than what was running the company. I agree that the basic idea is the same. Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes to look at a situation to get a change. Just throwing another auto guy in there probably won't change a thing. He certainly couldn't do any worse that Wagoner did.


Don't underestimate Whitacre, he has the potential of being worse for the auto industry than Wagner.


This is the guy that want google and others to pay to send data to there customers. When there customers are already paying for Internet service.

here a quote of it.

"How concerned are you about Internet upstarts like Google (GOOG ), MSN, Vonage, and others?
How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! (YHOO ) or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"


http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/10/5498.ars

 

[XS650]

Originally Posted By: wapacz
Originally Posted By: XS650
Originally Posted By: 65cuda
I don't see where is much worse of a risk than what was running the company. I agree that the basic idea is the same. Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes to look at a situation to get a change. Just throwing another auto guy in there probably won't change a thing. He certainly couldn't do any worse that Wagoner did.


Don't underestimate Whitacre, he has the potential of being worse for the auto industry than Wagner.


This is the guy that want google and others to pay to send data to there customers. When there customers are already paying for Internet service.

here a quote of it.

"How concerned are you about Internet upstarts like Google (GOOG ), MSN, Vonage, and others?
How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! (YHOO ) or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"


http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/10/5498.ars


Thanks for helping make my point.

 

[brianl703]

So he wants to charge content providers to provide content to his customers? Without those content providers, he'd have nothing to offer his customers! The customers want the content, not the pipe. What a moron.

 

[brianl703]

Or..put another way..go have your head network engineer add a block for google.com on your core router. Then call Google and tell them you'll only remove this block if they pay you, say, $50k a year. See what Google tells you.

My predictions:

1)Google tells you to go pound sand
2)Your customers start becoming ex-customers

 

[XS650]

Originally Posted By: brianl703
So he wants to charge content providers to provide content to his customers? Without those content providers, he'd have nothing to offer his customers! The customers want the content, not the pipe. What a moron.



In his world, as long as it makes short term money, he's a genius.

If I didn't despise the local cable company more than I despise ATT, I would get rid of ATT.

If he wants some of the money that Google is making, all he has to do is develop a competing service that outdoes Google.

Parasites don't think that way though, they just perfect their ways of sucking life from their hosts.

 

[BrianWC]

Well, I dunno. ATT gets over $200 from me every month. GM gets none.

 

[brianl703]

AT&T hasn't gotten any money from since I dumped their long distance service years ago.

I've also dealt with their skilled teknishuns at BellSouth as part of a contract I worked on. I do not care to repeat the experience.

 

[Cardinal49]

I don't work for the government, GM or AT&T. Personally I think GM is a complete disaster and the fact that the government is involved will mean that GM will most likely fail completely in a few years (if they are not split up and bought by European or Asian competitors).

I do not think the new GM Chairman needs to know about cars. He needs to know how to make a company profitable for the short and long term. Whether you like SBC, AT&T, etc. doesn't matter. The fact is he took a borderline bankrupt company (old AT&T) a couple of old tech companies (Bells) in a dying industry (telecom)and made a very profitable company with a strong future.

Can one person fix this mess? I don't think so. However, given that they had to get someone, I think he is a pretty good choice.

 

[digitalSniperX1]

Lou Gerstner turned around IBM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_V._Gerstner,_Jr.

He headed a RJR Nabisco prior to taking on IBM.

So if a cookie man can turn around a computer company, I'm hoping the phone man can turn around a car company.

We want our money back. The sooner the better.