A mini-revolt leading up to today’s Yahoo annual meeting made some impact: The company said investors with a third of its stock voted to tie executive pay more closely to company performance, as pressure builds on Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel to narrow Google’s lead in market share.
This is an interesting development. Unfortunately, this measure didn’t pass as 1/3 of the stockholder vote wasn’t enough to make it company policy. Still, it does reveal a certain change in perspective among shareholders in general. It could actually happen at some company in the future where executive pay is tied to performance. A lot of people have been calling for that to become national law for some time. Scandals involving Enron et. al. at the beginning of the Millennium made that much more on the minds of many people in the last few years. I believe this sentiment will grow stronger in future years. Meanwhile, back at Google …
Trying its best to quell privacy concerns raised by European regulators - gotta keep an eye on that evil thing - Google is cutting the time it keeps the personal search records of its users.
When Google first announced it’s limit on the time it will keep personal records, privacy advocates saw it as somewhat of a victory that Google would ditch personal information after 24 months. Now, the company has announced it will ditch records after 18 months. I still think that’s too long. I say cut it to 12 months and you’ve got a deal.
