quid.pro

Hey, mine is transformative too!

“We have the position to be able to jump and make big acquisitions… In the case of large transformative ones, we look at them all the time, right? If we had one that actually made sense to finally accelerate a big piece of our agenda, we would do it.”

Google CFO Patrick Pichette warming the hearts of corp dev guys (and their bankers) everywhere

NYNewspaperClean?

“I’m a big fan of the newspaper in question; I would’ve taken the page down in exchange for a manila envelope with leftover detritus from Bill Safire’s old desk.”

David Hayes, the coder who wrote NYTClean, in response to a trademark infringement claim (not a cease and desist!) from the New York Times

And all they want to do is make more money

“I don’t understand why, with all of the success of the show, they suddenly need to change it. All I want to do is continue to make my show, and make it in the way I want to, with the people I want to make it with.”

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner on why he’s not happy with having to let AMC sell more advertising on a show that glorifies advertising

Goldman Sachs’ business model

“We generally make money.”

Lloyd Blankfein testifying to Goldman Sachs approach to business

Silencing The Trolls

“But the other interesting thing we’re seeing is that whereas trollish garbage used to infest the comment section, now we’re seeing almost the opposite. Many people are now leaving comments that gush about the subject of the article in an overly sycophantic way. It’s quite odd. The cold pricklies have turned to warm fuzzies.”

MG Siegler on the addition of Facebook comments to TechCrunch — identity is such a bitch

Companies lose to themselves

“Companies don’t lose to competitors – they lose to themselves. MySpace lost to itself, not Facebook. MySpace essentially handed Facebook the keys to the castle by devolving into a service that wasn’t delighting its customers. For whatever reason, it got stuck. It stopped innovating.”

Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon, as quoted in a company memo reposted at blogs.wsj.com

Psych! JK

“Turns out I was totally wrong.”

Robert Scoble — does the context really matter?

Blog Fight!

“Fight up the food chain.”

Michael Arrington in post where he tries to outline the rules of engagement of blog fights while starting at least two blog fights himself and ending with a phrase that exemplifies the most important rule of blog fights that he didn't name: "that’s all I’m going to say... for now"

The pendulum will swing back

“Anyone with a 401k should be wishing that Facebook had gone public at a $5 billion valuation three years ago. The subsequent $45 billion of value creation would be dispersed across thousands of 401k’s and not concentrated here in Silicon Valley.”

Rory O’Driscoll, from a blog post well worth reading in its entirety

Masterstroke or ruin. Or both!

“Extending tax cuts and allowing the deficit to remain extremely elevated could be an economic masterstroke, thus pushing up growth. Or it could lead us a step closer towards fiscal ruin. It could be eventually be both.”

Jim Reid, head of fundamental strategy at Deutsche Bank AG, quoted in Bloomberg