Falco and Grant were almost instantly hated when they arrived at AOL's Dulles campus — partly because Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes badly mishandled the exit of former CEO Jonathan Miller. (Miller is now a venture capitalist, and both his name and Armstrong's came up as candidates in Yahoo's CEO search.)

Armstrong, head of Google's North American ad sales, seems like the best possible man for the job — and with Google's shares hovering around $323, down more than 50 percent from their peak, and AOL at the nadir of its tumultuous existence, it seems like a good time for him to prove what he can do.

He benefits from an easy comparison: Falco's reign at AOL, where the company's notional value sank from $20 billion to a fraction of that, will go down in history as one of the worst reigns as CEO at any company, anywhere.

But what is Armstrong going to do? He'd never have left his cozy perch at Google to oversee AOL's further decline. Let's assume that's not in the cards.

The best indicator of Armstrong's preferred strategy is not the one he pursued at Google. Based primarily in New York, Armstrong oversaw an agenda set by the geeks in Mountain View. To keep him on board, Google's top managers allowed Armstrong use his Google-IPO wealth to make several startup investments on the side, even when they posed a conflict of interest.

One company, Associated Content, run by Armstrong's college roommate Luke Beatty, lets amateur publishers post content on the Web and get paid a share of the advertising revenues. Another, Patch, is building local news sites with real journalists behind them, in competition with the New York Times.

It's not clear if Time Warner, which is stricter about this kind of thing, will let Armstrong stay involved with his side gigs. But what they spell out is a guy who's itching to be a media kingpin, not the boss of an army of programmers.

What that likely means: The future of AOL will rest in its blog-heavy MediaGlow division, while Armstrong works his Madison Avenue connections to rebuild AOL's slouching ad sales. If he makes it work, it will be a triumph over his old bosses at Google — the ones who believe in the alchemy of algorithms over the hard work of creating content that attracts an audience.

• Former Fox Interactive boss Ross Levinsohn and AOL CEO Jon Miller, now partners at Velocity Interactive, seem to come as a pair. Levinsohn is best known for acquiring MySpace for Fox Interactive and quitting the company after it wouldn't buy Digg. But Levinsohn is also known for bullying entrepreneurs — once, so badly that renowned angel investor Ron Conway reportedly "flew off the handle" at him. In some quarters and in Jason Calacanis's heart, Miller gets credit turning around AOL. But like any exec, Miller has his detractors at AOL and they came out of the woodwork when he was fired last year. One described him as
  

  An executive over 4 years that put more incompetent people in high-places (e.g., McKinley) while firing (Govern) and letting reams of talented folks (e.g., Kotay, list-o-long) leave that were passionate and—at least—somewhat competent, and were actually trying to foster some core innovation and synergy.

• OpenTable’s CEO Jeff Jordan is on Yahoo shareholders and board members' wishlist, just like he was on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's list to become COO of that company before it settled on Sheryl Sandberg. An eBay veteran, Jordan was thought to be in line for Meg Whitman's job until he took over as OpenTable's CEO in 2007. His reputation as a "product Nazi" led Valleywag to endorse him for Yahoo's top job way back in November 2006.
• Tim Armstrong heads up Google's ad sales force and the unit is perhaps respectably profitable enough for Yahoo shareholders and board members to include him on their list. We wonder, however, if the board knows about Armstrong's involvement with sketchy search engine spam company Associated Content.
• Why wouldn't Yahoo's board and shareholders want Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson for the company's top job? Ever since Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced a bid to acquire the company on February 1, no one's given more thought to running Yahoo. Johnson's even written several memos on the topic — showing great ability to include exclamation marks after the company's name while still respecting the need for capital letters.

When Google went public, it set up a two-class system of shares, ensuring that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, not Wall Street, would rule the company. Intended to shield the company from short-term pressures to goose earnings at the expense of long-term growth, this structure has encouraged a tendency to insular thinking that, in turn, has lead to arrogance. Or, to use a fine Greek word, hubris.

Hubris is what leads Schmidt to think he can pad Google's payroll with a girlfriend's consulting fees. Hubris is what leads sales chief Tim Armstrong to think he can run a sideline business, Associated Content, which is designed to profit from Google's advertisers in unseemly ways. Hubris is what leads Brin to loan his wife, Anne Wojcicki, $2.6 million for her biotech startup, 23andMe — and then turn around and have Google repay his loan and more with a $3.9 million investment in her company.

The costs of these behaviors, of course, amount to pocket change compared to Google's immense profits. But the precedents they set, the carelessness they encourage, the hypocrisy they foster, could have implications down the road. When Google shares are going up, investors are unlikely to complain that Google management is running the company like a feudal kingdom. But when things take an inevitable turn for the worse, they'll be under the microscope.

In the meantime, such corruption will leave an indelible mark on the behaviors and attitudes of Google employees. If it's okay for the boss to cheat the company, they'll reason, why can't I? And before you know it, "Don't be evil" will be replaced as a slogan with "Get away with whatever you can."

A recent report by Penn State researchers suggests that narcissism among CEOs makes a company's stock more volatile. May we suggest Eric Schmidt as an excellent subject for a follow-up study?

I didn't come here at this point in my career to manage a cynical enterprise whose sole purpose is to exploit the intricacies of AdSense to make a few bucks. Nor could we create value for our shareholders by merely gaming AdSense.