Information Security & US & Life & Love & Fashion & Hacking & Passion

An executive from Google Inc. is becoming the latest CEO of AOL, raising hopes that he will be able to turn around Time Warner Inc.'s struggling Internet unit.

Tim Armstrong, who had been a senior vice president at Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) and head of the company's North and South American advertising operations, replaces AOL CEO Randy Falco, a veteran TV executive who took the job in November 2006. Falco, along with Ron Grant, AOL's president and chief operating officer, are leaving AOL.

Tim Armstrong, who had been a senior vice president at Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) and head of the company's North and South American advertising operations, replaces AOL CEO Randy Falco, a veteran TV executive who took the job in November 2006. Falco, along with Ron Grant, AOL's president and chief operating officer, are leaving AOL.

Armstrong, 38, also will take over from Falco as chairman.

This shake-up - one of several the company has experienced lately - could mean a spin-off of AOL is more likely. Time Warner (nyse: TWX - news - people ) CEO Jeff Bewkes has said he's open to a merger or sale of AOL, and in a statement Bewkes said Armstrong would help Time Warner "determine the optimal structure for AOL."

"Tim is the right executive to move AOL into the next phase of its evolution," Bewkes said. "At Google, Armstrong helped build one of the most successful media teams in the history of the Internet."

Armstrong worked at Google for 8 1/2 years. As the company's first employee outside of Mountain View, he started its New York office.

The transition is another sign of turmoil in Time Warner's decade-long attempts to salvage its 2001 acquisition by AOL, once known as America Online. The $147 billion AOL-Time Warner deal symbolized the astonishing wealth created by the dot-com boom and quickly became one of the most disastrous marriages in U.S. corporate history.

During the past few years, AOL has been realigning itself around three core businesses - its Platform A advertising unit, MediaGlow publishing unit and People Networks social media unit. These businesses are meant to bring in revenue through online advertising, as a way to offset losses from its fading dial-up Internet access service.

Besides realigning AOL, Time Warner has made moves to separate the dial-up operations from these ad-focused businesses, which would make it easier for Time Warner to sell one or both.

Problems have persisted, though. In early February, Time Warner reported that AOL's fourth-quarter revenue dropped 23 percent to $968 million, hurt by falling subscription revenue and ad sales.

There have been numerous management changes as well. A day before its parent company's quarterly report, AOL named former a Yahoo Inc. (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) executive, Gregory Coleman, to head Platform A. Coleman replaced Lynda Clarizio, who had come on just last March.

Another reminder of the ongoing troubles came the day of Time Warner's report, when Google - which paid $1 billion in 2006 for a 5 percent stake in AOL and is its largest shareholder aside from Time Warner - triggered an escape clause in its contract with AOL. The clause forces Time Warner to spin off Google's holdings through an initial public offering or repurchase the stake at current market value.

This came after Google wrote off $726 million of its investment in the fourth quarter because of AOL's falling value. Google had made the investment in an effort to increase its advertising partnership with AOL and prevent rival Microsoft Corp. (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) from trying to get involved with the company.

Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Research, called the management change "a huge positive all around" for Time Warner investors. With Armstrong at the helm, he thinks it's more likely that Time Warner will eventually separate the AOL unit from its main business.

Kevin Lee, chief executive of search marketing firm Didit, feels the same. If the economy and stock market improve, and Armstrong is able to shape up AOL, Lee thinks it is possible that Time Warner would spin the business off as a public company or sell it.

Regardless, he's certain Armstrong has plenty of work ahead of him.

"If he wanted challenges, he picked a great place for challenges," Lee said.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini

Boldness has always been part of Intel's DNA. In 1965, co-founder Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors that could in a cost-effective manner be put on an integrated circuit would increase exponentially, setting the pace for the computer industry for decades to come. In the mid-1980s, Moore and then company President Andrew Grove killed Intel's biggest business--computer memory--in order to place the risk-it-all bet that turned it into the world's largest manufacturer of microprocessors.

Now, with the global economy facing its darkest days since the 1930s, Chief Executive Paul Otellini says he will spend around $7 billion over the next two years to upgrade Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people )'s factories--or fabs--to crank out processors built from even smaller transistors.

Otellini has decided to hustle to market a new generation of affordable mass-market processors, code-named Westmere. "One of the best ways to use this kind of capacity is for what I call a 'square-wave transition,' to bring massive amounts of new technology at a great price point," Otellini told Forbes. Here are edited excerpts from his interview.

A new Forbes study finds that companies that hire their own CEOs perform better than ones that use executive recruiters.

Gov. David Paterson says the loss of tax revenue from just six executives of Goldman Sachs will cost New York $178 million.

The executives complied with the urging of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and others who said in November that major Wall Street companies benefiting from federal bailouts shouldn't pay out the usual huge bonuses to executives.

Paterson says it is the right thing to do, but the result is a further hit to the fiscal crisis of state government.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

But now that the Bush administration has agreed to lend GM and Chrysler $17.4 billion to stave off bankruptcy, Mulally is running as fast as he can from those other guys. "We're in a different place," says Mulally, whose company had $19 billion in cash on Sept. 30 and isn't seeking an immediate cash infusion.

Don't be so sure. Ford, which lost $8.7 billion through September, may yet need taxpayer money. It is burning more than $2 billion a month and has asked for a $9 billion line of credit as a safety net in case industry conditions worsen. And it's looking more and more like Ford will need it.

Ford's financial projections are based on a rosier industry sales forecast--12.5 million vehicles (including heavy trucks) in 2009 and 14.5 million in 2010--than most industry experts predict. JD Power & Associates is forecasting 11.4 million light-vehicle sales in 2009 and 13.6 million for 2010.

IHS Global Insight is even more pessimistic. It now forecasts sales of 10 million to 10.5 million light vehicles for 2009, and 12.5 million units for 2010. GM's best case scenario is 12 million units in 2009 and 14 million in 2010, though its business plan is based on more conservative estimates. Last year, the industry sold 16.1 million light vehicles.

If Ford's assumptions prove too optimistic--as is likely--it too will be approaching Uncle Sam for help. "All automakers, including Ford, are going to need government money," says IHS Global Insight analyst Rebecca Lindland.

Self-interest required Mulally to stand up for his weaker competitors. A collapse of one or both would hurt suppliers and could potentially bring down Ford as well. But in the meantime, Ford is shrewdly portraying itself as the healthiest U.S. carmaker and quietly stealing market share from its crosstown rivals. Ford gained 1.4 points of market share in November, while GM lost 1.6 points and Chrysler lost 2.3 points.\

Apple's chief executive is the master of surprise--and not just when he's launching new products.

Please spare us the "perfect storm" metaphor.

It's hackneyed, for starters. It doesn't square with the facts. And for people who fancy themselves leaders, it's downright unbecoming.

The reason the perfect storm is such an appealing metaphor for these shipwrecked captains of industry is that it appears to let them off the hook. After all, who can blame you if the ship goes down in one of those freak, once-in-a-century storms that result when three weather systems collide? It's an act of nature that nobody could have predicted -- or so the story goes.

The latest victim to offer the "perfect storm" defense is Sam Zell, the real estate tycoon who was smart enough to sell out at the top of the commercial real estate cycle, only to dive into the newspaper and broadcast business of the Tribune Co. just as circulation and advertising revenue were about to collapse.

Three weeks ago, it was the auto executives on their first visit to Washington who tried to convince us that the only reason they were running out of cash was a sharp drop in vehicle sales brought on by sky-high gas prices, a credit crunch and rising unemployment.

And in several recent interviews, Robert Rubin, the Treasury secretary turned boardroom consigliere, conjured up the perfect storm to explain how Citigroup and the rest of Wall Street nearly brought the global financial system to a grinding halt, vaporizing trillions of dollars in wealth and putting large swaths of the economy on government life support.

The first thing to understand about the perfect-storm defense is that these guys actually buy into this nonsense. The rest of us want desperately to believe that what brought us this economic crisis was some combination of greed, fraud and negligence -- and, no doubt, there was quite a bit of that. What the populist critique ignores, however, is that at the heart of any economic or financial mania is an epidemic of self-delusion that infects not only large numbers of unsophisticated investors but also many of the smartest, most experienced and sophisticated executives and bankers.

It's not that they don't see the excesses and dangers in front of them -- how could they not? But somehow they convince themselves that the world has changed, that the old rules no longer apply or that, because of competitive pressure, they had no choice but to run with the herd.

In recent months, I've had a chance to talk with half a dozen top business leaders whose companies have fallen into the soup and read published interviews with many more. And almost to a person, they say that they've been replaying the tape over and over in their minds and, even now, they still can't figure out what they might have done differently, given what they knew at the time and the various pressures they were under. Or put another way, they continue to think of themselves as victims of a perfect storm.

The second thing to understand is that, fundamentally, they're wrong.

It is useful to remember that in Sebastian Junger's gripping account of a shipwreck that popularized the notion of the perfect storm, Billy Tyne, the skipper of the Andrea Gail, received urgent and repeated warnings that he was heading into what could be a monster storm off the Grand Banks -- warnings that Tyne and his crew chose to ignore. After all, the weather immediately around them had been relatively calm, and the swordfish had been tantalizingly plentiful. And there were always worrywarts warning not to do this and not to do that. If Tyne had listened to them, the Andrea Gail would never have left port, let alone become one of the most successful sword boats in Gloucester, Mass.