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Abrasive and greedy behaviour of some internet company leaders is turning off the public, investors, and management This was the situation at Uber, resulting in new management at the company. At WeWork there are other problems and behaviours that are seen as totally inappropriate, including partying. Like many internet companies including Uber that investors have shown exuberance about but are losing money, WeWork is a fast growing subleasing company with losses of $1.6 billion in 2018. During a time when a large percentage of Americans lack savings to meet a medical crisis, this sort of behaviour and the greed of a small class of investors who have supported huge valuations in the absence of tangible products of matching value presents a strange picture of America with misguided priorities.

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Adam Neumann, the 40 year old startup founder of WeWork, which is basically a subleaser of real estate space, resigns. Aggressive brash attitude, a party heavy lifestyle, unpredictable decision making,  are cited by WSJ as reasons he lost the confidence of investors. Mr. Dimon of JP Morgan Chase was a key banker for the company. Chase under Dimon pursued startups in the hope of doing the IPO's. The company has substantial losses, and new management was brought in after Softbank decided Neumann should leave. Growth was fast, losses also mounted fast to $1.6 billion. WSJ says many investors decided that WeWork was not a tech company so much as a overvalued real estate company that engaged in business of leasing office space tricked out in millenial friendly decor. The greed for outsize returns has led to the accumulation of capital that could otherwise be spent wisely on infrastructure and other improvements in health and education, even though many of the gains in tech are behind us.  Recently the head of Uber was also asked to resign for an aggressive approach and questionable management style, also with substantial losses, and new management brought in. Fast expansion in an imprudent manner affects established companies. It led to collapse of India's Jet Airways, Britain's Thomas Cook in 2019. Yet the huge amount of capital of tens of billions of dollars wasted as investors seek outsize returns and are disappointed, is a pattern seen mostly in capital markets in the U.S. and to a lesser extent in Europe, China, Japan. The ideas piggyback on some aspect of tech already developed and are not major tech advances by and of themselves, and many as in the case of WeWork are touted as tech because of the catch and appeal of the word for everyone hoping to make an outsize return.    ...

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WSJ investigations of Facebook and Instagram showed how these social media companies business activity was damaging to young women's health in the US, Europe and other countries. Because of the reach of social media companies into the lives of millions of young people the damage was serious and extensive. This report in the WSJ describes the activities of management at Facebook and the resignation of one of the key executives from burnout herself. This WSJ report says that during the WSJ series on the investigations this and other key executives remained silent on the issues facing young women for mental health in the use of Facebook products.  One WSJ report in 2021 said that company documents showed Facebook knew that the company's products were toxic for teenage girls. Other issues emerged in the WSJ investigations such as the Outrage Algorithm which the WSJ says was made by tweaking some aspects of the company's algorithm as a way to counter dropping user engagement. This led to much angrier discourse on Facebook according to WSJ and other reports. The experiences at Facebook reflect the general experience of this period in 2000-2015 when business management shifted to an entirely different conception of business that ignored the importance of human values in the blind pursuit of rapid growth, profits to make acquisitions of smaller companies for further growth creating monopolistic firms. This extended to disruptions of democratic process with the Cambridge Analytica access to records of data of 87 million Facebook users as reported in WSJ, that were used to target social media users in the period leading to the 2018 election. With such activities the risks could be seen to the democratic process itself in addition to mental health by the emergence of social media in the short period of a dangerous decade 2010-2020, when there was little or no regulation of this medium.   ...

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Uber CEO Kalanick faces problems after the ride sharing app service company uses aggressive tactics in its business. Kalanick resigned after increasing pressure, with major investors on the board asking him to resign. Mike Isaac in the NYT says Uber is an example of how some aspects of Silicon Valley culture have caused a public outcry. A federal inquiry is under way into a software tool used to avoid law enforcement. Other complaints came up during the period Kalanick was CEO. The business conduct of CEO Kalanick has come under strong criticism and shows what can go wrong in the aggressive pursuit of business. For many it is an example of how not to run a company.

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Defense experts in Britain say the part of the Russian army that is modern is not large, and the part that is large is not modern. The Russian advance attack in Ukraine has floundered, says this report in the WSJ. About 25% of the Russian army is made up of conscripts. The hundreds of billions of dollars spent on modernization of the Russian armed forces have been spread thinly, and dissipated also because of corruption and poor management.  The Russian encrypted communications did not work as expected leading to relying on open communications that could be intercepted or jammed. The Russian government and president Putin were still stuck on 2014 and did not realize the determined resistance and the desire for independence of the Ukrainian people. Ukraine is a technologically advanced European country the size of Germany with a population of 40 million, and Russia has an economy the size of Italy, factors that also played a part. The corruption and poor economic conditions in the border Ukrainian republics setup by Russia led many Ukrainians in the eastern border region to question any advantages from Russian rule. The user of poorly motivated conscript soldiers led to many generals and other officers to have to be present on the front lines leading to Russian officer level casualties. The use of antitank weapons supplied quickly from the European Union and the US, and use of small mobile units of Ukrainian volunteer and army forces to tactically destroy the front and rear of miles long convoys of tanks and armored vehicles - leaving the rest of the convoys trapped in between. Logistics also failed to resupply deep inside Ukraine as Russian forces depend on rail based resupply which could not happen without control of cities on the rail lines. The volunteer forces in Ukraine after 8 years of war since 2014 and the immediate assistance with antitank and other military assistance from US, and EU, played a part in the western response to the Ukraine crisis and president Putin's actions.   ...

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Mims raises questions about how productive current investments in Silicon Valley are in tackling real problems we face. He points out that advertising represents about $100 billion in an economy of $16 trillion, yet most startups focus on advertising revenues. Is $1.2 billion invested in Uber ride sharing service too much when other startups tackling bigger problems could be funded with some of that money, is a question raised by some in Silicon Valley.

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Vindu Goel provides an exceptional indepth account of the efforts inside Yahoo to reverse ad revenue decline using magazine content of Yahoo Food,Yahoo Tech and other magazines. These efforts are part of a new strategy of CEO Mayer to get Yahoo's user base of 800 million users to visit the site daily.

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With the popularity of Apple iPhones and smartphones, Nokia has lost ground. Its share price is down 73% from 2007 end. It is looking for a new CEO. The lack of new mobile phones to compete with the iPhone and other smartphones and generate the kind of excitement that Apple's iPhone has generated, is Nokia's main problem.

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Comcast buys the remaining 49% stake in NBCUniversal for $16.7 billion in Feb 2013. Comcast acquired a 51% interest in NBCUniversal in 2011 with the option of buying out G.E. in 3 and half to 7 year time frame. The deal was accelerated because it would have cost Comcast more if it waited longer.

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Kazuo Hirai becomes the new CEO of Sony, succeeding Howard Stringer. Hirai faces some tough decisions at Sony, as the company's position as a pioneer in electronics has been eroded by Apple, and sales of product hardware have been eroded by Samsung Electronics. Hirai says his strategic goal is to get the 168,000 employees of Sony to place getting the user experience right first before anything else. And that simply being a great producer of hardware products isn't enough for Sony. Hirai's experience is in turning around the Playstation videogaming business. To this he brought an unconventional style. He was educated in the U.S. and Canada as the son of an expatriate Japanese banker, and in Japan he went to the American School where he founded its Audiovisual Club. His first job at CBS/Sony Inc. in Japan was as a translator for bands such as the Beastie Boys and Journey during the visits of these bands to Japan.

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Nokia is initiating a search for a new CEO to replace Mr Kallasvuo who became CEO in 2006. Since then Apple's iPhone has changed the market and Nokia has not been able to match the trend set by iPhones in the mobile phone device market. Nokia's stock has fallen 42% since April 19, 2010. Nokia's response to the iPhone was to replace its mobile phone executive and to create a separate operation for smartphones. Nokia plans to have a new line of smartphones in 2010 to compete with the iPhone. The main problem is its operating system software which needs to be more sophisticated. Nokia holds about 40% of the cell phone market with Europe and countries like India being its strong points. But Nokia's margins in India are low because of intense competition. Apple has already surpassed Nokia in the profit in phones, making $1.6 billion in profit in the third quarter of 2009 compared to Nokia's $1.1 billion.