Yesterday on the CBC's flagship business program The Lang and O'Leary Exchange, Kevin O'Leary was commenting in reaction to leaked reports that Google was in the process of banning the installation and use of Microsoft Windows operating system because of security concerns. O'Leary disagreed with the stated reasoning. He believes Google feels threatened by Microsoft's Bing search engine and does not want to be caught supporting one of their competitors by using some of their technology in-house. If O'Leary had done proper research before making such a stupid comment, he probably would never have said it.
One of Google's chief liability problems is the possible risk of a security breach. Naturally, they do everything possible to prevent that from happening. One of the ways that a company can manage security is to only use operating system software that is naturally hardened against attack. Windows, any version, has never been successfully hardened against attack or vulnerability. In fact, no piece of Microsoft software has every been successfully secured. O'Leary is assuming that Google feels threatened by Microsoft but in their history they have never been threatened by Microsoft. This also shows his stunning lack of knowledge of IT security and the Internet industry as a whole.
His fellow host, Amanda Lang, countered his comment with a more logical scenario... that basically, Google evaluated the security of Microsoft products and found them lacking. That is a far more accurate statement than O'Leary's. Amanda Lang is the journalist of the two. In this particular case who would you want for your financial advisor? The guy who did not recognize that Google's move was a liability mitigation strategy instead of the sentiment of Oh God, Microsoft is coming after us, we are so scared, or the journalist who gave the dispassionate analysis of what the report actually meant? For technology plays, I would want Amanda Lang. At lease she thinks before she speaks, something that O'Leary doesn't do during the best of times. This does not inspire confidence in the management of O'Leary Funds. If I were a Canadian technology investor in the market for advice, Kevin O'Leary and O'Leary Funds would definitely not be my first choice. If Amanda Lang were offering investment advice I'd be more apt to listen to her as she is more cool headed and logical than he is. But she is an internationally respected business journalist so she won't be giving that advice.
The moral of the blog post is to make sure your money manager understands the industry they are selling products in or giving advice in because if they don't, you could be hit by the short end of the stick.
