Meg Whitman steers HP straight at the rocks [View all]

[Renew Deal]

If Captain Queeg and Captain Ahab were commanding the same ship, you wouldn't be surprised if it wound up on the bottom of the ocean. Now we have Captain Meg Whitman and First Mate Todd Bradley steering the SS Hewlett-Packard -- and one of Silicon Valley's iconic companies is lurching ever closer to the rocks.

Whitman's decision to merge the company's PC and printer divisions is without a doubt the worst business move the company could have made. (OK, it would have been worse to sell off the PC arm, but barring that. ... ) Whitman has taken two not really related businesses that need help and glued them together in a way that's sure to minimize their individual strengths and maximize their weaknesses.

Even worse, in Bradley she has chosen a second-rate executive -- remember his abysmal record at Palm? -- and put him in charge of a group that will be responsible for roughly 50 percent of the company's revenue.

There's a reason why it's generally a bad idea to hire a CEO who has no experience in the computer business to run a computer company. Not to be mean, but can't you just picture Whitman thinking: "Mmm, people connect their computers to their printers, so they're really kind of the same." D'oh!
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http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/meg-whitman-steers-hp-straight-the-rocks-189188