Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, January 25

• A Personality Profile of Larry Page: How Larry Page’s Obsessions Became Google’s Business: Three years ago, Charles Chase, an engineer who manages Lockheed Martin’s nuclear fusion program, was sitting on a white leather couch at Google’s Solve for X conference when a man he had never met knelt down to talk to him. They spent 20 minutes discussing how much time, money and technology separated humanity from a sustainable fusion reaction — that is, how to produce clean energy by mimicking the sun’s power — before Mr. Chase thought to ask the man his name. “I’m Larry Page,” the man said. He realized he had been talking to Google’s billionaire co-founder and chief executive. “He didn’t have any sort of pretension like he shouldn’t be talking to me or ‘Don’t you know who you’re talking to?’” Mr. Chase said. “We just talked.” Larry Page is not a typical chief executive, and in many of the most visible ways, he is not a C.E.O. at all. Corporate leaders tend to spend a good deal of time talking at investor conferences or introducing new products on auditorium stages. Mr. Page, who is 42, has not been on an earnings call since 2013, and the best way to find him at Google I/O — an annual gathering where the company unveils new products — is to ignore the main stage and follow the scrum of fans and autograph seekers who mob him in the moments he steps outside closed doors. But just because he has faded from public view does not mean he is a recluse. He is a regular at robotics conferences and intellectual gatherings like TED. Scientists say he is a good bet to attend Google’s various academic gatherings, like Solve for X and Sci Foo Camp, where he can be found having casual conversations about technology or giving advice to entrepreneurs.

• SoftBank's Slide Leaves It Worth Less Than Stake in Alibaba: SoftBank tumbled below the value of its stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. amid growing concerns about the Japanese company’s other assets, including struggling U.S. wireless carrier Sprint. SoftBank’s market capitalization stood at 5.89 trillion yen ($50 billion) Friday after its stock rebounded 8 percent after a four-day losing streak triggered by rising pessimism about Sprint’s ability to pay down debt. That still lags the $56 billion that its stake in Alibaba is worth, according to its own website.  Billionaire Masayoshi Son has struggled to turn around Sprint since buying a controlling stake in 2013 for SoftBank’s biggest acquisition ever. The wireless operator lost its place as the third-largest U.S. carrier to T-Mobile US Inc. and its stock this week fell to the lowest level in more than two years. Its bonds led declines among junk-rated debt Wednesday. “It’s symbolic because it tells you that investors feel SoftBank has been destroying value,” said Amir Anvarzadeh, a manager of Japanese equity sales at BGC Partners Inc. in Singapore. “Son’s pride has been another major issue, which pushed him to where he is now.” SoftBank lists the value of holdings in nine other public companies on its website, including Sprint and Yahoo Japan. The company calculated the total market value of those holdings as more than 8 trillion yen. 

• Big Exec Departures at Twitter: Media Head Stanton and Product Head Weil Leaving: In a major executive upheaval, two of Twitter’s top executives — media head Katie Jacobs Stanton and product head Kevin Weil — are departing the company, according to sources close to the situation. Neither has immediate plans to go to another company, added sources, but are expected to. Right now, the jobs of both Weil and Stanton will be filled with interim replacements. There have been rumblings of the changes for weeks now inside the San Francisco social communications company. Sources said Twitter is planning to announce the shuffle tomorrow, along with the hire of a prominent CMO.