During Steve Jobs’s last years as head of Apple, the company’s deafening silence on the subject of his cancer diagnosis infuriated investors and analysts, who felt bilked out of important business information. Now, mere days after Google’s youngish CEO Larry Page called in sick to the search giant’s annual meeting on Thursday, critics say the company is following in Apple’s ill-advised footsteps. So far, all Google will say is that Page “lost his voice” and will miss two other big events in coming weeks. The Wall Street Journal reports that Page also sent an e-mail out to employees on Thursday, claiming that “there is nothing seriously wrong with me” and that he “continue[s] to run the company.” Still, though Page may not be as closely associated with Google’s recent success as Jobs was with Apple’s, acting coy about a CEO’s (possibly failing) health just seems to fan the flames all the more.
