Google's PowerPoint blunder
was preventable
By Dominic Jones, IR Web Report
It's a classic blunder
that many companies make, inadvertently leaving
information in Microsoft Office documents that
they don't want the outside world to see.
That's what has happened to Google. The company
posted its recent analyst day presentation on
its IR
website in a PowerPoint file. However, rather
than just post the slides, the company also
inadvertently included speaking notes for the
slides, some of which were from other presentations
several months old.
Anyone downloading the PowerPoint file and
then switching to the "notes view" could see
what the presenters were presumably supposed
to say. Problem is, what was in the notes
was not exactly what was disclosed at the analyst
day or even what was intended to be disclosed.
Blogger stumbles upon
a scoop
The first hint of trouble appears to
have come when blogger Greg
Linden, Founder & CEO of technology
company Findory.com, downloaded the presentation
on Thursday, March 02, 2006, switched to the
notes view and found a huge amount of information
that the company had not intended to disclose.
Linden, who was unaware of the significance
of his find, was mainly interested in Google's
future product plans rather than its financials.
He learned that Google was planning to offer
an online mirror storage of users' hard drives,
a so-called GDrive service. He wrote about this
on his website.
The launch of the GDrive service has been the
topic of much speculation among Google watchers,
so finding the information was something of
a scoop for Linden. However, he deleted his
copy of the PowerPoint presentation, apparently
unaware that other people had not noticed the
information.
Google replaces presentation,
but it pops up again
Linden's blog post and information about
the GDrive service slowly trickled out on to
the Web, eventually being picked up by other
bloggers, for whom it was big news, and then
by major news outlets like Reuters.
However, by this time Google had realized the
mistake and replaced the PowerPoint presentation
with a slides-only PDF download.
On Tuesday, March 7, Google spokeswoman Lynn
Fox told Reuters: "We deleted the slide notes
because they were not intended for publication."
However, another
blogger, known simply as Derrick, still
had a copy of CEO Eric Schmidt's PowerPoint
presentation. He posted the notes in full on
his blog on Tuesday, prompting other bloggers
to reference the newly available information.
The notes that Derrick posted included a
lot of additional information that had not
previously been published, including internal
financial projections that the company had not
released publicly.
For all of the stock market trading day Tuesday,
Google remained silent about the additional
information.
Google files 8-K revealing
that much more was exposed
Outside of the blogosphere, the bombshell came
after the market close on Tuesday when Google
filed an
8-K current report with the SEC revealing
that the removed PowerPoint presentation had
included erroneous ad revenue forecasts for
2006 as well as margin predictions.
"The statements regarding $9.5 billion
in 2006 ad revenue and AdSense margins were
not speaker notes prepared for the Analyst Day
presentation, and were inadvertently included
in the Analyst Day slides," said the company.
"These statements were instead speaker
notes prepared early in the fourth quarter of
2005 for an internal product strategy presentation.
These notes were not created for financial planning
purposes, and should not be regarded as financial
guidance. Consistent with past practice, Google
is not providing revenue guidance. In addition,
the statement with respect to AdSense margins
does not reflect Google’s current expectations."
Obviously, all of this must be embarrassing
for Google. As a technology company, it should
know better.
Following best practices
would have prevented problem
Now, the interesting thing here for us from
a web usability perspective is that what Google
did originally is actually not that bad an
idea, if the information is accurate.
Providing notes to slides can help people
understand the meaning of information in the
slides. This is most useful if you are downloading
the slides without the benefit of having heard
the presenters speak.
However, this should always be done in HTML
and PDF, never in PowerPoint. PowerPoint
not only increases the risks of
problems like Google's, it also often results
in meta
data leaks and poor usability. PowerPoint
files are typically bigger than PDF files, while
many Web users are unfamiliar with PowerPoint
or don't have it installed on their systems.
The reason companies post big PowerPoint files
is because they couldn't be bothered, or because
they don't leave themselves enough time to do
the right thing for their online users.
It's troubling that Google should demonstrate
such laxness and poor planning despite knowing
that it is the most-watched company on the planet.
It suggests a naivety that is unfitting of
a $100 billion market-cap company.
This story also illustrates the challenges
facing companies on the Web today. For a company
whose entire business hinges on people using
its web-based products, Google simply has to
get things right — even in its investor
relations.
The company's demonstrated lack of expertise
at the corporate level in this and other recent
fiascoes is a credibility blow.
Related: Best
practices for online investor presentations
(members only)
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