pimg src="http://paidcontent.org/images/uploads/lehman_nick.jpg" alt="image" align="right" width="120" height="136" /paidContent.org has learned that IAC (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=IACI" class="ticker" title="IACI"NSDQ: IACI/a) is dissolving its programming group as part of its post-spin reorganization. As a result, Nick Lehman, COO of programming, has to decided to leave. a href="http://iac.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=20item=104" title="Michael Jackson"Michael Jackson/a, the president of programming who also worked with Barry Diller at USA Networks and Universal Television Group, will stay on in a new role. Lehman confirmed his move but declined comment on the reasons and referred to IAC public relations for details. As we pointed a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-iac-which-emerging-businesses-will-it-sell-or-close/" title="out in some detail"out in some detail/a recently, Diller said in the Q308 earnings call that IAC would shed some of its emerging businesses and was rethinking investments; this appears to be part of that strategic shift. /p p Jackson's group has been responsible for IAC's efforts to develop, acquire and distribute "content-based" sites including CollegeHumor.com; Very Short List (VSL); 236.com; RushmoreDrive.com and Tina Brown's recently launched Daily Beast. The results have been uneven and some of the sites are among those likely to be sold. For instance, a href="http://www.236.com" title="236.com"236.com/a, the joint venture with The Huffington Post, could wind up be entirely owned by HuffPo. Kurt Andersen's eclectic a href="http://www.veryshortlist.com/" title="VSL"VSL/a doesn't have a good fit in IAC without something like the programming group. On the safe list, I'm told: a href="http://www.DailyBeast.com" title="DailyBeast.com"DailyBeast.com/a, which has made a big splash but is far from making money. br / /p pstrongRelated/strong/p ul class="related" lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-iac-which-emerging-businesses-will-it-sell-or-close/"IAC: Which Emerging Businesses Will It Sell or Close?/a/li lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-iac-earnings-call-diller-on-to-election-2012-not-so-fast-for-his-own-bu/"IAC Earnings Call: Diller: On To Election 2012; Not So Fast For His Own Business/a/li lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-earnings-iac-after-the-split/"Earnings: IAC After The Split: Revs Up But Spin-Off Expenses Push Profits Down/a/li lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-industry-moves-mtvns-lehman-jumps-to-iac-as-programming-coo/"Industry Moves: MTVN's Lehman Jumps To IAC As Programming COO/a/li /ul p!-- iMark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. a href="http://content.adbureau.net/accipiter/adclick/CID=000010cb0000000000000000/SITE=PC_US/AAMSZ=PREMB_NEWS/relocate=http://marklogicdps.eventbrite.com/"Register now!/a/i --/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=QrONWD"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=QrONWD" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=NVaNO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=NVaNO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=ocMvO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=ocMvO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=3uuwo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=3uuwo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=FNbbO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=FNbbO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=jenuO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=jenuO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/474157999" height="1" width="1"/

Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Google Cost Cuts Take The Company Away From Its Engineers (GOOG)  —  Google was never quite the engineer company its public relations and human resources teams made it out to be, but as Google gets serious about cutting costs, that myth of a decentralized company run by its engineers …

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=49368ad014b9b9c000f32a1cmaxX=240maxY=180" border="0" alt="GoogleEngineersFlickr.jpg" title="GoogleEngineersFlickr.jpg" width="240" height="180" /Google was never quite the engineer company its public relations and human resources teams made it out to be, but as Google gets serious about cutting costs, that myth of a decentralized company run by its engineers -- which was, in fact, more true at Google than most anywhere else -- grows ever fainter./p pFor example, remember Google's 20% rule? The one that allowed engineers to spend a fifth of their time on any project of their choosing?/p pGoogle CEO Eric Schimdt's not even pretending its real anymore. Here's the money quote from a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122826503489174369.html?mod=testMod"the emWall Street Journal/em's rehash/a of Google's cost cutting campaign:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;""We have to behave as though we don't know" what's going to happen, says Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. The company will curtail the "dark matter," he says, projects that "haven't really caught on" and "aren't really that exciting." He says the company is "not going to give" an engineer 20 people to work with on certain experimental projects anymore. "When the cycle comes back," he says, "we will be able to fund his brilliant vision."/p pGoogle's finally getting smart about allocating human resources and capital. Here's what that means in the short term:/p ul listrongA sense of urgency about diversifying the business/strong, which means new priorities include display ads, mobile ads and enterprise software.br / br / /li listrongNon-revenue generating products will starve/strong if they're not killed altogether. Project the company is just "fiddling with," Schmidt told the WSJ will get "will get "naturally smaller as people get plucked off."br / br / /li listrongReigning confusion./strong One Google current operations manager told the Journal: "It's not exactly clear where that bottom line is now. I don't think they know that either."br / br / /li listrongDispirited engineers./strong Google no longer belongs to the dreamy engineers and it's going to make them feel bad. Quoth the Journal: "Some engineers complain they can no longer tap the employees and machines they need to develop their ideas. This is no small issue among elite programmers, many of whom joined the company for the chance to work on such projects, according to current and former employees." br / br / /li listrongCramped quarters./strong Google will close offices in Dallas and Denver.br / br / /li listrongShutting off services/strong. Search sandbox SearchMash, virtual world Lively and Google Page Creator will soon be gone. Google Audio Indexing and Google Notebook could follow.br / br / /li listrongMore grunt work./strong Google wants to "significantly" cut its 10,000 its contractor workforce and somebody has to pick up the slack./li /ul pstrongSee Also:/strongbr /a href="../../2008/12/analyst-google-revenues-will-shrink-till-2010"Analyst: Google Revenues Will Shrink Through 2010 (GOOG)/a/p pemPhoto: a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/martl/"heartbeaz/a/em/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/BzXnDzVKiHF6zgl2tf7YN5K3ChU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/BzXnDzVKiHF6zgl2tf7YN5K3ChU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=XmWD4eRa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=XmWD4eRa" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=lTa8Hl8i"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Aed7roJ9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=tfC8lN7u"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=tfC8lN7u" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=FI2XZbt7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=XH6hlZlr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=aL0Z2JDG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=EXj8iuBF"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/qU-Ti-ZVFNQ" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/culture/" rel="tag"Culture/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/features/" rel="tag"Features/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/pc/" rel="tag"PC/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/mmo/" rel="tag"MMO/a/pcentera href="http://www.massively.com/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/12/moltencore_490_12-2.jpg" alt="" //a/center a href="http://www.massively.com/"Joystiq's sister site /aa href="http://www.massively.com/"Massively.com/a has all the news you'll need about MMOs. Here's the best, brightest, and most interesting stuff from the last week, all in one convenient place for your MMO minute. table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" style="border: 0pt none ;" tbody tr td valign="top" align="right"a href="http://www.massively.com/2008/12/01/ea-licenses-dungeon-keeper-mmo-for-china/"img border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2008/12/ae5yw45y4wrq44327y6hgjyty_thumbnail.jpg" //a/td tdstronga href="http://www.massively.com/2008/12/01/ea-licenses-dungeon-keeper-mmo-for-china/"EA licenses Dungeon Keeper MMO, for China/a/strongbr /emElectronic Arts has licensed out the Dungeon Keeper property as an MMO to Chinese-based developer NetDragon Websoft with the intent to eventually bring it overseas./em/td /tr tr td valign="top" align="right"a href="http://www.massively.com/2008/12/02/warhammer-online-1-0-6-patch-adds-new-classes-tidal-wave-of-upd/"img border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2008/12/e5yt3256erwyhtru454_thumbnail.jpg" //a/td tdstronga href="http://www.massively.com/2008/12/02/warhammer-online-1-0-6-patch-adds-new-classes-tidal-wave-of-upd/"Warhammer Online 1.0.6 patch adds new classes, tidal wave of updates/a/strongbr /emToday, Mythic brings us Black Guards and Knights of the Blazing Sun! For those who didn't finish the full Heavy Metal event, don't worry, the classes will become available to everyone next week./em/td /tr tr td valign="top" align="right"a href="http://www.massively.com/2008/12/01/dc-universe-probably-coming-early-2010-late-2009-says-comics-wr/"img border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2008/12/dcconcetheader37_thumbnail.jpg" //a/td tdstronga href="http://www.massively.com/2008/12/01/dc-universe-probably-coming-early-2010-late-2009-says-comics-wr/"DC Universe probably coming early 2010/late 2009, says comics writer/a/strongbr /emMost intriguing was his up-front information on the game's launch window. According to Johns, the developers are aiming to release the game in "early 2010, it could be late 2009." Read on into the brief interview for the goods./em/td /tr tr td valign="top" align="right"a href="http://www.massively.com/2008/11/27/richard-bartle-responds-to-torture-quest-issue/"img border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2008/11/deathknight1_thumbnail.jpg" //a/td tdstronga href="http://www.massively.com/2008/11/27/richard-bartle-responds-to-torture-quest-issue/"Richard Bartle responds to "torture quest" issue/a/strongbr /emA few days ago we ran a report on Richard Bartle's take on a torture quest in World of Warcraft, the Art of Persuasion. Since then, the discussion has exploded and some have taken Bartle's quotes out of context. Because of this, Bartle has created a follow-up post to clarify some of the points that may have been misinterpreted./em/td /tr tr td valign="top" align="right"a href="http://www.massively.com/2008/12/01/ncsoft-clarifies-its-rationale-for-closing-tabula-rasa/"img border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2008/12/trlogosheader_thumbnail.jpg" //a/td tdstronga href="http://www.massively.com/2008/12/01/ncsoft-clarifies-its-rationale-for-closing-tabula-rasa/"NCsoft clarifies its rationale for closing Tabula Rasa/a/strongbr /emLast week we spoke very briefly with NCsoft's Director of Public Relations David Swofford about the company's decision to close Tabula Rasa. He reiterated the basic statement we heard from several sources surrounding the call: this was all about the bottom line. /em/td /tr /tbody /tablepa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/massively-week-in-review/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emMassively week in Review/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/massively-week-in-review/"Massively week in Review/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:00:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/massively-week-in-review/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1388749/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/massively-week-in-review/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/SUyldFk2n97hE8sAo_1dFTiDSc4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/SUyldFk2n97hE8sAo_1dFTiDSc4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=XthpCe6N"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=XthpCe6N" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=1ZwK3c6i"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=1ZwK3c6i" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/yFhT8jyVkes" height="1" width="1"/