Acquired in October 2007, Twitter rival Jaiku still doesn't accept new users. Its current ones complain of system slowdowns and malfunctions. On May 30, 2008, founder Jyri Engeström wrote:

Contrary to some voices out there, we DO have plans for future development and we will involve our developer community as much as we can. Just to reiterate, we are working very hard to ensure you have a useful and usable service. We feel the short term pain, too.

Acquired in October 2006, JotSpot is Google Sites now, and according to longtime users, it's not what it used to be.

Purchased in 2005, it took Google six months to assign any new engineers to the project. The founders quit in 2007, and one, Dennis Crowley, will tell any entreprenuer who will listen to reject Google's siren song.

Google acquired GrandCentral, which provides a suite of telephony services, in July 2007, immediately closed it to new users and hasn't opened it since.

Google acquired Measure Map in 2006, hoping to incorporate its features into Google Analytics. "And we did that," reports Google VP David Lawee. Too bad for bloggers who missed Measure Map's blog-specific features and don't use Google's Blogger.

Meet Davie Lawee, Google's new vice president of corporate development. Once Google's vice president of marketing, Lawee's been looking for a new gig at the company ever since it poached Andy Berndt from Ogilvy & Mather and Lawee realized his job was pointless.

The new role is perversely fitting. Over the summer, we named Lawee to our list of "Toogle Many Googlers" who needed to go. Now he's the guy in charge of bloating the company even more.

(Photo by peskymac)

Berndt will work with agencies on using Google's new ad products — which now range from text links to banners, video, and radio ads — more creatively. He'll also, most importantly, work on Google's own marketing efforts. Only one problem, as I see it: He'll report to Lawee, whose job now becomes even more pointless with Berndt doing all the work. If only Google followed my Darwinian "Toogle Many Googlers" principle, which would require the axing of some Googlers — say, Lawee — to make room for new hires like Berndt.

If the new guys are so great, though, why stop hiring? Here's a radical idea: Keep on adding new employees, but start ripping out some of the dead wood that's accumulated at the world's most adjective-ridden company.

And with that, I present "Toogle Many Googlers!", a series in which I nominate Googlers who need to be given a gentle push out of the Googleplex. Read on for the first batch of names. Got a nomination? Send it in, preferably with a pic of the victim.

Chris Sacca, Google's "head of special initiatives," with an inflated title and an equally inflated ego, specializes in hot-air projects guaranteed never to go anywhere, and hence, never require any real work on his part. If it weren't for the special halo of protection draped on his shoulders by CEO Eric Schmidt, or so we hear, Sacca would have been given the sack long ago. No time like the present! Congratulations, Chris Sacca: You're the first person Valleywag nominates as one Googler toogle many!

He's already said he's got the world's easiest job. So why not just ease David Lawee right on out of it? With no real background in marketing, Lawee just parrots the same palaver as the rest of the Google gang about how its products market themselves. If they market themselves, bud, why do you have a job? And when he's not reciting those tiresome lines, he brags about how Google's so humble — so humble, he needs to tell you how humble it is five times in a single conversation! David Lawee, if you can take a break from eating humble pie in the Google cafeteria, accept our heartfelt congratulations — you're not just a Silicon Valley Tool, you're also one of Toogle Many Googlers!

It's time for Eric Schmidt to declare victory and move on. Google cofounder Larry Page still talks like a giant dork. But we hear that Page hasn't just upgraded his fashion sense — he's also grooming himself to take back his original role as Google's CEO. As Google's founders grow up, Schmidt's role as Google's so-called "adult supervision" grows increasingly pointless — witness last quarter's unsupervised hiring binge. Declaring himself a surplus Googler will let Schmidt cash out in peace and pursue his real passion: spending time with women who aren't his wife.

• The faux humility. Lawee loves talking about Google's humility. Loves loves loves. He keeps returning to the idea that Google is a "humble" company:

  [We] don't actually want to be out trumpeting ourselves and beating our chest. That actually doesn't feel comfortable for us.

  But the entire article is one big chest-thump about how Google's the humblest company in the world. When it comes to humble, Google's ready to rumble. Don't try to out-humble Google, Lawee might as well have said, or a gang of Googlers will come to your home and abase themselves on your front lawn. If Lawee really believed in Google's humility, he wouldn't talk about it so much.
• The preaching without the practice.

  We're a very innovative company, not just in terms of the products that we're creating but the way that we're organized.... You can't say you're innovative. You actually have to be innovative.

  Unless, of course, you're Google's David Lawee, giving an interview to BusinessWeek, in which case it's fine to just say it. Ad nauseam.
• The pointless job. Lawee calls himself a "brand steward." The only on-the-job activity besides meeting that he describes in the interview seems to involve giving people tours of the Googleplex. And any real work that comes his way, Lawee delegates. Google UK's logo? He outsourced that to a bunch of schoolkids. Speechwriting? He relied on a chauffeur's banter. He even admits it:

  I think I have the easiest marketing job in the world. I have unbelievable products and I have a great story to tell. So, yeah. But staying on top of everything is a huge challenge.

• The unfairness of it all. It's bad enough that Lawee has a do-nothing job. But it's not like he even needs the salary, or options on Google shares with a strike price around $300 (Google shares are currently trading around $520). Prior to joining Google in 2005, Lawee sold Xfire, an online-gaming company he cofounded, to Viacom for $110 million. If he wanted to sit around doing nothing, he could have just retired.