The generous explanation for Schmidt's statement is that he's revolutionized his thinking since 2005, when he blacklisted CNET for publishing info about him gleaned from Google searches, including salary, neighborhood, hobbies and political donations. In that case, the married CEO must not mind all the coverage of his various reputed girlfriends; it's odd he doesn't clarify what's going on with the widely-rumored extramarital dalliances, though.

Schmidt's philosophy is clear with Bartiromo in the clip below: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." The philosophy that secrets are useful mainly to indecent people is awfully convenient for Schmidt as the CEO of a company whose value proposition revolves around info-hoarding. Convenient, that is, as long as people are smart enough not to apply the "secrets suck" philosophy to their Google passwords , credit card numbers and various other secrets they need to put money in Google's pockets.

It's enough to make one pine for the more innocent Google bursting forth in the c. 1999 group picture at the top of this post, also gleaned from CNBC's special. The hair might have been sillier — dig co-founder Sergey Brin and VP Marissa Mayers' cuts, top center — but no one was yet audacious enough to argue against the very idea of a secret.

The only non internet person on Couric's list, in fact, is FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The other people who control the media, according to the CBS Evening News anchor, are all Web heads:

• Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
  
• Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington.
  
• The founders of the women's blogging network BlogHer: Jory Des Jardins, Elisa Camahort Page and Lisa Stone. This is a big stretch but we're assuming Couric is trying to imagine the less sexist world she'd like to live in and lend some buzz to a feminist cause. Fair enough.
  
• Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder.
  
• Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.
  
• Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Couric is obviously just trying to butter up people who might be able to help her ditch the old fuddy-duddies at CBS News and expand her promising sideline in lifecasting. Which is, frankly, brilliant. We know some other people who might be able to help you Katie, call us.

Oh, and the Jewish thing? Couric is no anti-Semite, but we couldn't help but notice that her list of people who supposedly control the media does contain a majority of people of Jewish descent: Brin, Page, Newmark, Zuckerberg, Genachowski and Camahort Page.

Of course, the pace of change in Silicon Valley has a way of leveling these old-world distinctions. Page's family was non-practicing; Zuckerberg has gone atheist and Camahort Page is "a total non-religious person."

[via Bay Newser via NBC Bay Area]

Google co-founder Page and model-PhD wife Lucy Southworth's new startup would appear to be going public right on schedule. It was seven months ago that word of Southworth's pregnancy leaked in a Silicon Valley newspaper. Now the infant has apparently arrived, following in the golden-bootied footsteps of Benji Brin, billionaire baby boy of Page's co-founder Sergey Brin and wife Anne Wojcicki. Page's child has already done well for himself, entering the world more wealthy than when he was conceived: Page's wealth shot up by $3 billion to $15 billion from March to September on rising Google shares, according to Forbes (here, here). Shares have only gone up more since then.

There's no word yet on whether the new child was preceded by a weird baby shower of the sort Page threw for Brin, involving adults in diapers. In fact, we don't even have a name or sex at this point. Send us more information if you've heard anything. Google.com hasn't been any help on this one. Go figure.

UPDATE: It's a boy! So we're told.

(Pic: Page and Southworth at their December 2007 wedding on Richard Branson's island.)

Media writer Ken Auletta explored the purported arrogance of Page and co-founder Sergey Brin in his Google book. From an exceprt in the New Yorker (subscriber-only link):

Diller... recalled visiting Page and Brin in the early days of Google. Diller was disconcerted that Page, even as they talked, stared fixedly at the screen of his P.D.A. "It's one thing if you're in a room with 20 people and someone is using his P.D.A.," Diller recalled.

"I said to Larry, ‘Is this boring?' "

"No. I'm interested. I always do this," Page said.

"Well, you can't do this," Diller said. "Choose."

"I'll do this," Page said matter-of-factly, not lifting his eyes from his handheld device.
"So I talked to Sergey," Diller said. "I left thinking that more than most people they were wildly self-possessed."

Then a couple of years later, the co-founder of Twitter, who used to work at Google, straight up "laughed" at Diller, at a conference. Barry Diller gets no respect from the kids these days.

In 2005, not long after News Corp. bought MySpace, when it still seemed like a brilliant purchase... I congratulated him on the acquisition. "Now," he said, "we're in the stalking business."

Later in his Vanity Fair column, Wolff recounts how Murdoch asked the founders of Google "Why don't you read newspapers?", gave "a walleyed stare" during all conversations about Web news and tried to beat Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to death with his cane.

Kidding; even after buying MySpace, Murdoch was over the moon for Zuckerberg. He invited the founder to speak at a News Corp. executive retreat, huddled with him throughout dinner — sparking obvious jealousy in MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe — and soon declared people were "all going to Facebook at the moment" rather than MySpace. All this according to Julia Angwin's Stealing MySpace.

The point is, Rupert Murdoch has always kind of hated on MySpace, cruelly, in public.

(Pic: Murdoch and MySpace CEO DeWolfe at the opening of MySpace's San Francisco office in Oct. 2007. Getty Images.)

Friends said he had been planning to learn to swim. Brin posted a blog entry remembering Motwani as an accessible teacher and "good friend:"

When my interest turned to data mining, Rajeev helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. Even though I was just one of hundreds of graduate students in the department, he always made the time and effort to help. Later, when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organizational.

Motwani one of Silicon Valley's many alumni of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. He was an early investor in a number of startups, including PayPal. He is survived by his wife and two daughters.

(Picture via Sydney Morning Herald)

"Page's Law" seems destined to become a common companion term to "Moore's Law," a widely-used tech aphorism that says, roughly speaking, that computers double in speed every year or two.

Page's Law is the inverse: It says software gets twice as slow every 18 months. This helps explain why your computer seems to get slower as it ages, even though the hardware inside remains unchanged.

Brin explains the concept in the clip above. He adds that Google plans to reverse this trend and optimize its code. Whatever; the important thing is that it helps his buddy Larry get his name into the history books, in case this Google thing doesn't work out.

I still remember the day I called you up and tried to recruit you to Valleywag — only to learn that that sneaky rapscallion Nick Denton had beaten me to the punch by one whole day in offering you the night shift at Gawker. It all worked out in the end — and perhaps better than I could have imagined back in 2007. But the main lesson I take away from that is that you can get Denton to do pretty much whatever you want if you're patient enough.

Denton, who has a weakness for idle truisms, likes to say that gossip is a young man's game. But you're old enough to remember the first dotcom bubble, and how it popped. That's going to be key in the next few years. We may escape a depression, but Silicon Valley is facing a reckoning nonetheless. Too much venture capital chased too few idea for far too long — and a buoyant economy can no longer hide the startup factory's mistakes.

The biggest mistake you can make is getting too close to your Valley sources and fall for their groupthink in order to ingratiate yourself. (You know how I've scolded you for gullibly buying the hype that Twitter is an amazing source of real-time news. Okay, perhaps it was — for five seconds, before the blowhards, spammers, and self-promoters found it.) At least your schooling will help you remain an outsider: As a Berkeley grad, you'll have an instinctive dislike for the Valley's Stanford in-crowd.

At the same time, don't forget that your years living, studying, and working in the Bay Area give you a better understanding of your beat than anyone can have from 3,000 miles away. Gabriel and Nick, though well-intentioned, have the Manhattan media habit of confusing proximity with relevance. Gawker is much more than New York now — and Valleywag's unique place therein must be firmly grounded in northern California's shaky soil.

Remember: Love is far more powerful than hate. Keep a clear-eyed passion for the Valley. Most tech reporters here secretly loathe their subjects, but try to disguise it with a supine gladhandery as they beg for scoops about new startup website features. They hate themselves and the people they write about. Sad, right? By loving the Valley, you can write about it more honestly than any of them. Just prepare to have your heart broken again, and again, and again. To truly love something, you must love it with all its failings.

For example, the Valley's Alice-in-Wonderland economics — why is Twitter worth more than most startups precisely because it has no revenues to speak of? But the thing you must love most about Silicon Valley — the part of the story the local press corps always skips over in favor of buzzwords, punditry, and lazy analysis — is its people.

The Valley's story is not one of chips and code. It is not a tale of technology. It is the always-running tragicomedy of the people who make technology.

Here are a few characters to watch. I hope it helps — but I can't wait to see who you add to the list.

Marissa Mayer Valleywag's first story remains its best. The public face of Google, Mayer also runs search, the only business that matters there. The cupcake frosting of her girly image — one she assiduously advances at every opportunity — may humanize the otherwise robotic computer scientist. But it is a distraction. The real question to ask about Mayer: Does her spreadsheet-ridden management style scale to new problems beyond search? Are her strengths now turning into limitations?

Mark Zuckerberg Ignore the nerd façade. Facebook's 25-year-old CEO is headstrong and ruthless. Here's the grand irony of Zuckerberg's revolutionary venture: He claims to be all about openness and sharing. But his imperious, my-way-or-the-highway management style has created a fractious culture of dishonesty, delusion, and disillusionment at the social network. His underlings either learn to say things they don't believe, or they move on. This is why Sheryl Sandberg is exactly the wrong COO for Zuckerberg. The veteran of the Clinton Administration has forgotten her Google training and reverted to Washington-player form, where staying on message is all that counts. Facebook's best hope is that Zuckerberg learns from his mistakes — but first he has to recognize them as mistakes.

Carol Bartz Yahoo's CEO swears like a sailor. At last, a boss who has found the right language to describe Yahoo's plight! Bartz brings a refreshing frankness to Yahoo. But the already demoralized troops she inherited will need to start seeing results. Otherwise, Valleywag will continue to be a steady recipient of leaks from Sunnyvale.

Elon Musk The CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX is living the geek high life, playing with fast cars, rocket ships, and other people's money. It's wonderful that Musk has realized even a small part of his childhood fantasies. But he risks destroying his dreams by refusing to reconcile them with reality. Factcheck everything Musk says. For example, was he actually running either Zip2 or PayPal, the previous dotcom successes he likes to cite in his bio, when they were sold?

Owen Van Natta Everyone is going to give MySpace's new CEO a pass, because the so-called "social portal" is so clearly troubled. If the former Facebook executive succeeds in a turnaround, it will be viewed as an astonishing achievement; if he fails, people will say no one could save MySpace. That's not fair. Hold his feet to the fire, and judge this disturbingly tan rock-star boss like anyone else on the list.

Peter Thiel Thiel, the PayPal cofounder, likes to brag about how he recruits only the best brains from the best schools to work at Clarium Capital, his hedge fund. Oh, really? Take a look at their résumés on LinkedIn. Like so many of this outspokenly harebrained libertarian's theses, the claim sounds good on paper but doesn't stand up to inspection. Valleywag, alone in Silicon Valley, can take a keen look at Thiel's rhetoric without being dazzled by his inflated wealth.

Tim Armstrong Like Van Natta at MySpace, Armstrong, a Google golden boy now charged with running AOL, will be enjoying a honeymoon. Don't worry: There are plenty of disgruntled AOLers who will gladly help you break up the lovefest.

Jimmy Wales Remind me: What does Wikipedia's founder actually do to earn his keep, besides give speeches? In all this time, I was never able to figure that out. Maybe you can!

Eric Schmidt When did Google's CEO turn into such a raging egomaniac? When the blogosphere was the only corner of the Internet that criticized him, he dismissed it as a "cesspool." But now everyone from Hollywood to the New York Times to the Federal Trade Commission is looking askance at his online empire's practices. "Don't be evil" has turned into "don't get caught." He will, though. Be ready when he does.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin Google's wonder twins have achieved geek nirvana, creating a cloistered campus with free food, lava lamps, and exercise balls to spare. They have a fleet of jets to transport them to rocket launches or rendezvous with Richard Branson and Bono. They've even managed to get married and reproduce. Just one question: Are they still sane? Were they ever?

There are many people who will help you — many of the same people who helped me so much, I hope. They include:

• Nick Denton, for putting up with three years of playing hard to get — and then putting up with much more besides.
• Brian Lam, Choire Sicha, Noah Robischon and Lockhart Steele, for tag-teaming me into taking the job.
• Gabriel Snyder, for expertly steering Valleywag into Gawker's welcoming arms.
• All the Valleywaggers: Paul Boutin, Nick Douglas, Megan McCarthy, Tim Faulkner, Mary Jane Irwin, Jordan Golson, Nicholas Carlson, Jackson West, Melissa Gira Grant, and Tim Woolery. You guys, we've been through so much together!
• Richard Blakeley: We made sweet Photoshop magic together.
• Everyone at Gawker Media: How much do I love you? Far more than just five milligrams.
• Sarah Lacy, Kara Swisher, and Peter Kafka: My peers and fellow purveyors of Valley gossip, you constantly inspired me.
• Countless sources, tipsters, and fellow scribes: Please understand that I esteem you none the less for not naming you here. In fact, your continued anonymity is the best sign of my abiding affection.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Good luck, Ryan. I'll be reading eagerly.

Don't screw it up.

Yours,

Owen
The Valleywag

(Photos by Brian Solis and Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Took him long enough. The pair married in December 2007, with Page (net worth $18.6 billion) planting a kiss on his bride on Richard Branson's exclusive Necker Island. Co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife, Anne Wojcicki, have already popped out a billionaire baby boy. We wonder: Will the Pages go with a squad of Stanford-trained nannies, or take their child to Google's gold-plated childcare?

Page, whose home address was accidentally revealed by a pro-privacy group last year, lives in Old Palo Alto. With homes more than a century old, it's what passes for historic in Silicon Valley, at any rate.

The new, 6,000-sq. ft. house observes all the green shibboleths: organic building materials, low-volatility paint, and so forth. (Never mind that lighting and heating such a large house will inevitably have more environmental impact than a more modest dwelling.)

Records for Santa Clara County show that 111 Waverley Oaks, a property adjoining Page's current residence at 111 Waverley Oaks, was transferred in September 2008. It was most recently assessed at a value of $3.3 million.

But the real environmental impact is on the neighbors, Palo Alto Weekly reports:

Ralph Britton, a retired electronic engineer and board member of Palo Alto Stanford Heritage, was walking the neighborhood when he noticed demolitions on four separate properties in Page's block.

"I noticed a house coming down, walked and saw another, and realized they were contiguous," Britton said. He described one house as elegant with a lot of land around it, a swimming pool in back and nice landscaping — much of which is still there. Another former home around the corner he called "imposing."

Britton's description of the property matches a satellite photo of the property available on Page's own Google Maps. Britton goes on to describe heavy construction on the block:

... neighbors are also concerned with the mess of construction, as well as possible damage to streets from heavy trucks.

"There's constant noise and confusion; when one finishes, the other starts," Britton said.

But fences are already up on the Page property, including mesh around protected trees, in preparation for construction. The work cannot begin until the city approves a permit.

A spokesman for Page told the Weekly that Page would seek a permit this week. Seems a bit late, with construction already underway. But since when have billionaires had to obey the law?

More than anyone, Google popularized the notion that free websites could be supported by advertising, touching off the insane Web 2.0 boom that led self-promoting social media marketers to overrun San Francisco and drove venture capitalists into fits of expensive madness. If Google could give away its Web searches, why couldn't, say, Ploorkle monetize its users' ploonks?

Google didn't just serve as an example. It actively funded the free-everything boom with its AdSense ads, matching keyword buys from advertisers with every last blog and Web app.

The Google-spread delusion of "free" as the perfect price infected such lofty minds as Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired who penned first a cover story and now a book due out in July on the subject.

What does it mean for the freetards, then, that Google is starting to charge left and right?

The latest and most notable price hike came today on Google Checkout. The credit-card processing service for online merchants will soon match PayPal's fees, which run as high as 2.9 percent of a transaction.

When Checkout launched, it offered free processing for stores which spent heavily on Google ads, with the notion that free payments would lure vendors away from Amazon.com and eBay. Google is eliminating the AdWords discount, making Checkout just another PayPal clone.

Google has also raised prices on its once-free hosted computing services for startups which don't want to bother running their own servers.

The hikes have mostly hit Google's business customers. But how long before Google will raise prices for, say, extra Gmail storage? How long before it spackles ads on services previously kept pristine, as it's already done with Google News?

The advent of ads to Google News is notable. Just last summer, Google VP Marissa Mayer argued that Google News made $100 million a year from the Web search traffic the site generated, and therefore didn't need its own ads. Looks like she lost that battle with the green-eyeshades brigade. YouTube, too, is burying its videos in every imaginable form of advertising.

Google is widely expected to announce disastrously bad results for its first quarter. Industry trade groups have cut their forecasts for search advertising, Google's mainstay. Rumors of layoffs are sweeping Google's Mountain View campus. And even Google's Pollyanna CEO, Eric Schmidt, admits that the economic situation is dire.

Far more than a temporary belt-tightening, the cutbacks are a far-reaching change in mindset. It's no longer okay to invent something new and figure out how to pay for it later, as Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin once did. At today's Google, products must pay their own way, and with actual receipts, not business-model whiteboarding.

Who cares that that's not how Larry and Sergey did it? The billionaire founders are flying around the world somewhere on their private jets. The rest of Google has a business to run. And their paychecks don't come free.

Mayer, who runs Google's core search business, is the best known Google executive outside the search engine's CEO, Eric Schmidt, and its billionaire founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. And she's proven far more willing to pose for magazine covers and appear on morning news shows, making her the company's public face.

But she seems surprised that with such publicity comes criticism. According to Mayer, the reason why she draws negative press is because of sexism and stereotypes:

I think it's very comforting for people to put me in a box. ‘Oh, she's a fluffy girlie girl who likes clothes and cupcakes. Oh, but wait, she is spending her weekends doing hardware electronics.'

It's true that San Francisco, the last mainstream publication to profile her, focused on her most girly habits. But that has nothing to do with why so many rank-and-file Googlers outside the company's cloistered management despise Mayer.

To grasp that, it helps to understand Google's grandiose self-image: The company's spoiled engineers are led to believe they work in the most perfect meritocracy of ideas that the world has ever seen, motivated by the betterment of mankind through technology. At Google, the theory goes, who you are and who you know doesn't matter. It's only your ideas that count.

And yet, as the Times profile reveals, the real source of her power is the ability to manipulate Schmidt, Page, and Brin:

Given her longstanding relationship with Google's founders and Mr. Schmidt, she has become something of a sounding board for other managers, a number of whom routinely gravitate to her office.

At the end of a recent day, she met with two senior executives, Joe Kraus and Sundar Pichai, to discuss the company's social networking projects. Many executives at Google believe that social networking is important to its future. Ms. Mayer was meeting with Mr. Kraus and Mr. Pichai to help them prepare for a meeting the next day with Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Brin and Mr. Page to discuss how the company could leverage information-sharing among Google's many services.

"It's important you pregame Eric or it will be a disaster," Mr. Pichai tells Ms. Mayer about the pending meeting, asking her to seek Mr. Schmidt's support on their behalf.

"I know, I know," she responds. "I will call him or write an e-mail. I want them to see how complicated this will be."

Ms. Mayer e-mails Mr. Schmidt that evening. At the meeting the next day, Mr. Pichai's and Mr. Kraus's ideas are approved

The Times article does not mention a key reason why Mayer has such influence: Early in the company's history, she dated Page. (He is now married, and Mayer is engaged to Zack Bogue, a real-estate investment manager and lawyer.)

In dictating the appearance of Google's Web pages, Mayer freely admits she makes subjective decisions. In more than a decade on the job, she has not yet codified her design instinct into a written style guide. Instead, Mayer's whims, which managers under her must make a study of, are what rule.

Mayer may be talented. But her personal ties to Google's top management and her exerscise of arbitrary power are a betrayal of Google's supposedly meritocratic values — a betrayal obviously tolerated at the very top of the company. That, and not her spending time putting cupcake recipes in spreadsheets, is what exasperates her fellow Googlers.

That, and her perfectionist streak. Look at how Mayer dismisses a potential hire over a single bad grade:

One candidate got a C in macroeconomics. "That's troubling to me," Ms. Mayer says. "Good students are good at all things."

Another candidate looked promising with a quarterly rating from a supervisor of 3.5, out of 4, which meant she had exceeded her manager's expectations. Ms. Mayer is suspicious, however, because her rating hasn't changed in several quarters.

"She is looking for a way out," Ms. Mayer says.

Mayer complains that the media has not examined her life deeply:

Besides, Ms. Mayer says, there are some things that she hasn't previously revealed about herself and that the media have overlooked. Like her self-described athletic prowess.

"It hasn't shown up anywhere that I am really physically active," she says. "I ran the San Francisco half marathon this year. I did the Portland marathon. I went skiing just yesterday. I'm going to do the Birkebeiner, which is North America's longest cross-country ski race. That just shows you how much there are gaps."

Ah yes, the Portland Marathon, in which Mayer placed 7,074th out of 7,862 contestants. Or the Birkebeiner ski race, in which she placed dead last in the women's competition. Good students are good at all things.

Did she really mean to invite media scrutiny of her athletic career? What's really telling about it: In the handful of times where Mayer has competed on her own, without the backing of a billionaire ex-boyfriend and a pliant boss, she has proven to be an outright failure.

At the beginning of the piece, Mayer once again denies rumors of her impending departure from Google — rumors which Valleywag first reported. Perhaps she has realized that without Google, she's nothing. Can you blame her for clinging to her job?

(Photo via RacePhotos.net)

Susan Wojcicki, the millionaire sister-in-law of Brin who also holds a management role in the company, announced the job cuts in a blog post, as she laid out plans for Google to exit the business of brokering radio ads, a business it entered in 2006 when it bought dMarc Broadcasting for $102 million.

Up to 40 Googlers will lose their jobs, a small percentage of the 20,000 remaining employees at the search giant. But the real cut here is to google's ambitions.

dMarc was Google's first big move outside online advertising. It followed swiftly with announcements of forays into selling ads in newspapers, magazines, and TV. The strategy had more to do with Wall Street than with Madison Avenue, though: Google desperately needed to create the illusion for shareholders that it could tap more than just the market for Internet search ads.

Google has already pulled out of print advertising. Now radio is gone. Will TV advertising be next? Wojcicki, in her blog post, insisted that Google would keep trying to break into the TV business. The rationale: Like the clicks that give Google feedback on which ads work and which ones don't, Google can track when TV viewers change channels in the middle of a TV ad.

The feedback loop of clickstream data has made Google victorious online. The more ads it sells, the more data it has; the more data it has, the more accurate its targeting is; and the more accurate its targeting, the more money it makes for advertisers and publishers, drawing yet more ads. Microsoft and Yahoo, with a smaller base of advertisers and users, never stood a chance.

That dynamic simply doesn't exist with radio or print advertising. And the channel-switching data Google touts simply is not informative enough to shape TV-advertising campaigns.

Napoleon's rout in Russia, far from home, was followed in a few short years by defeat just outside the borders of France in Waterloo. His army was still mighty after Moscow. It was the long, cold march back home that devastated it. Could Larry and Sergey's hubris lead them to a similar defeat?

These next gods will, like their predecessors, be people whose professional and private lives, and even personal appearance, are of equal importance to hordes of obsessed nerds. They're people whose creativity and willpower are presumed to steer the course of personal technology, with legions of engineers and programmers and designers and manufacturing experts carrying out their vision. The key is putting themselves out for all the public to behold, with the hopes of becoming revered by apostles who buy anything they unveil. Seeing as we're running low on golden calves, let's check out the current options:

APPLE
Tim Cook
People say Cook is the man who makes the beautiful products turn into a beautiful pile of money, and he actually took over Apple when Jobs was recovering from his first surgery. A southern gentleman, avid cyclist, iron-fisted boss, mysterious loner, emotionless decider—man, Cook is so easy to reduce to two-word stereotypical descriptors, he's bound for godhood. Even his name comes packaged in a suave but unforgettable two syllables. The catch of course is that he can't ascend the mighty throne of Apple until the big cheese retires or bows out due to health. Cook's trod the boards at Stevenotes before, but now he's holding back—or being held back—perhaps because if he becomes big boss, he'll need a fresh start. All eyes not on Steve are on this guy. Can he fill the shoes left open and be the forceful visionary that Jobs is?
Chance of Godhood? 75% with a few variables we'd rather not think about

Phil Schiller
Schiller has helped sell Apple products since forever, but the general impression is that he's best used as a right-hand man, a Boy Wonder to the real Batman. The mullet/beer gut combo probably doesn't do wonders for his public image, either, though "death diving" from 30 feet up like he did back in '99 isn't a bad way to entertain the fanboys. It's easy to forget that Phil used to be involved in product development, including notebooks, and some even credit him for the addition of the iPod's clickwheel. We also hear that the man can kick some ass behind the scenes. He might have what it takes to be the next product don of Apple, but the current hierarchy won't make it easy for him.
Chance of Godhood? 35% assuming the Apple board is thinking like we're thinking

MICROSOFT
Steve Ballmer
The Monkey Man act may work to get attention, to rally your troops and put fear in your enemies, but it's too easy to make fun of in Photoshop. This kind of attention has taken Ballmer pretty far along the road to godhood, but the public doesn't often see the quieter, shrewder Ballmer that we know exists. The key is this: He is not a code nerd, but a Harvard-educated marketing-and-sales guy. Being able to climb inside the mind of the Average Joe, typically oriented around useful features instead of sheer software power, is what Microsoft needs to limit bloat in product design. If Windows 7 is a success, we'll see the Bruce Banner in this Hulk, but if it's not, it'll be "BALLMER SMASH!!!!" and the end of Microsoft.
Chance of Godhood? 85% assuming Windows 7 erases the terrible memory of Vista

Robbie Bach
Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices boss has Xbox, Zune, Media Center and a lot of other potentially tasty toys in his workshop, and he's rumored to be the man who would replace Ballmer. What's most important here? His group accounts for most of the Microsoft products that don't suck. Word is, though, that the limited profitability of his group, today, limits the amount of respect he gets internally. We say the rest of the company should stop and see what he's doing right. He certainly understands the art of the keynote, strutting around and working the crowd with the shoulders-forward energy of a college football coach. He may be too good at sticking to the script, though. His cautious replies may be good for stockholders, but you can't inspire the masses without a little bit o' crazy.
Chance of Godhood? 70%, higher if he is heard matter-of-factly admitting that Windows Mobile sucks

SONY
Sir Howard Stringer
Usually you get the "sir" appended to your name after you live a wild and crazy life in the public eye, but this guy is only more and more in the spotlight each year. When he talks he brings delightful controversy and charisma, but he doesn't do enough with big crowds. How come no gloaty Blu-ray victory dance party? Chilling with Charlie Rose isn't a direct path to divinity, but showing up with Tom Hanks at CES is a start. Still, Sony needs to regain gadget clout, not remind the world that it's a piracy-fearing movie maker. One thing he has done is give the Japanese firm a leader who isn't afraid to lay off when the company is bloated with employees not pulling their weight, unlike traditional Japanese CEOs. And he encourages Japanese employees to work abroad to increase their understanding of the customers of the world. But he's also been working hard to unify the company's software and hardware development not only in each division, but across product groups. Only Apple and Microsoft have done this successfully, but Sony is actually making progress here, behind the scenes.
Chance of Godhood? 45% because it might just be too late for the guy—or for Sony

GOOGLE
Larry Page/Sergey Brin
Never mind that Google keeps more products in beta than it launches or that these two are tech titans already on the web. Their first foray into hardware was received lukewarmly. But Google is here to stay, and no matter what CEO Eric Schmidt does, these two dudes' faces will be the ones people think of. The last 60 years of tech are full of dynamic duos—Woz and Jobs, Hewlett and Packard, etc.—but unless you've got the timing of Martin and Lewis, it's hard to pull off a tandem keynote. It definitely doesn't help when you show up late wearing rollerblades. We just hope that the company can give their Android division the support it needs to compete with the companies full time in the gadget game, because Android is not only disruptive, but it's the ammo that the phone makers need to compete with the all-in-one giants from Redmond and Cupertino.
Chance of Godhood? 60%, could go up if they release more products, or undergo the operation Damon and Kinnear had in Stuck On You

ASUS
Jonney Shih
Netbook-revolutionary Asus is probably the company (companEee?) doing the most with Apple's old mantra, "think different." Their stuff coming out of Taiwan is radical and fun, and Jonney Shih, little known in these parts, is the sole capitano up top. He's not afraid to rock the microphone, but he keeps doing it at other people's events. Asus also makes a lot of notebooks for competitors, and has hardware expertise to spare. But in terms of software, they're still limited by a strong dependence on Windows for their notebooks. As for their weak brand presence in the mainstream: Dude, you got some cash, time to throw bigger parties of your own, and not just ones timed with CES. And take another page from Apple: Learn how to keep products secret until they're finished and shipping.
Chance of Godhood? 40%, more if he finds a good barber and a dealer of fine turtlenecks and presentation sweaters

HTC
Cher Wang
The phone maker who first teamed with Google and launched the T-Mobile G1 is chaired by, yep, a lady! Named Cher! Cher actually got her start selling computer parts for a computer company, and helped found HTC to realize the vision of the true handheld computer. Even if the HTC brand is only a few years old to consumers, HTC has been making phones for other companies for a while: One in every six phones sold in the US this year were from her factories. They'll grow stronger now that Android is here and Windows Mobile is (hopefully) in a period of major improvement, but their branding and design is still a bit on the chunky side. From the looks of her official corporate portrait, she could probably use a queer eye or two—I know I sound like a dick here, but sadly society does judge women more harshly than men on personal appearance. My guess is that as someone who emphasizes being a "devout Christian" in her bio, she'd probably frown on the whole "tech god" thing anyway.
Chance of Godhood? 30% since Cher's probably too busy to take our advice anyway—she also runs the chipmaker VIA

PALM
Ed Colligan
Colligan's generally stormy course at Palm's helm finally reached some smooth waters: He just unveiled Pre, a fresh, attractive take on the smartphone, bolstered by healthy chunks of DNA from Apple and other new smartphone platforms via the talent they aggressively poached. He's proven he has what it takes to make big aggressive changes with this handset, and get the right talent in place, just like Steve Jobs would. And Colligan isn't afraid to make bold brash statements, a requirement of godhood. But can he go all the way? Currently, his problem is with presenting—he's not all that memorable, which might actually be good if you're the guy who introduced the world to the Palm Foleo.
Chance of Godhood? 15% cuz did I mention he believed, not long ago, that Foleo would "redefine how people work"?

Jon Rubinstein
The "executive chairman" to Colligan's "president and CEO," it's hard to tell if Rubinstein is sitting on the throne or next to it. He has our vote. The man in charge of bringing about Palm's would-be salvation, the Pre, previously at Apple led development of the frickin' iPod (maybe you've heard of it), and has actually out Apple'd Apple with the UI in this new handset. And Rubinstein's team is one of the only in the world that is capable of revolutionizing cellphone operating systems. He keeps it cool on stage, reminding us a little of Nintendo's amiable US boss, Reggie Fils-Aime. And his more than passing resemblance to Jeff Goldblum is a plus, too. One limitation in Palm that both Rubinstein and Colligan have to face: Palm will never build an end to end personal tech environment the way Apple and Microsoft can, even if they are on par in terms of making interfaces from the future.
Chance of Godhood? 55%, but sky's the limit if he can shoo Colligan away

AMAZON
Jeff Bezos
Bezos already was a god—a dotcom god. Many of those other former household names are now mercifully forgotten, but Bezos still shows up on magazine covers. He recently heralded in the eradication of DRM from online music retailers to the applause of paying music customers. But what really surprised us, and earned him a place on this list was that he had such a grand vision of what the ebook should be—the replacement of the book—and the funding and drive to make it happen. But he should do more live appearances to drum up more mainstream excitement over software initiatives like the DRM-free MP3 store and video on demand. And he needs to keep Kindles in stock long enough for people to buy them. Most importantly, he's finally learning that tech gods are only as good as their next products. Just because Bezos understands books on a deep level doesn't mean he'll ever be able to do any other type of gadget besides E-Ink tablets. That's ultimately limiting when it comes to building next-generation personal tech ecosystems. In the meantime, where's my Kindle 2?
Chance of Godhood? 30% if he does more bragging in person, though that braying laugh of his could be a liability

DEKA/SEGWAY
Dean Kamen
Back in 2001, the rumor mill leading up to the launch of the Segway rivaled any Apple buzz. Before the product was even seen, people wrote about it being civilization-changing, and as important as the internet. Kamen's been on a roll (get it?) since then, not just developing the police Segway, the golf Segway and some kind of Segway footstool, but also perfecting a water purifying technology and a truly robotic prosthetic arm, all while greening up his own private island. He's did it all with few mainstream public appearances: Showing up at All Things D with a video of the robot arm—not the real thing—was a misstep in our minds, but appearing on Colbert with a working water purifier was definitely a sign of publicity (and worship) to come. If he can invent something for the gadget lovers of the world that is as bright and thoughtful and life changing as his humanitarian tech, he'd become the Jobs that Jobs wishes he was.
Chance of Godhood? A tragic 45%, seriously, this guy is Q, MacGyver and Hank Scorpio rolled into one—why isn't he a god already?

FACEBOOK
Mark Zuckerberg
The sad fact is that our whole world is shifting over from hardware to software. Sure, Kamens are still needed to make sure there's progress in mechanical devices, but our toys are less and less mechanical. Facebook is probably the best example of an internet platform that has stolen thunder from the gadget world. Trouble with Facebook is that it's big and amorphous, and the charming Zuckerberg needs a second act to propel him into the heavens. Still, he's like 13, with his whole life and a lot of money ahead. He'll think of something. But to be a Gadget God, he'll have to always depend on the hardware of others. At least until we have browsers in our brains with which we can access our social networks with.
Chance of Godhood? 95% even if it doesn't happen in my lifetime

These are all strong candidates, but the assumption is that there will, in fact, be new gadget gods. Maybe, like the ancient gods themselves, our new era doesn't have as much use for them. Maybe it's not just the transition to software, but the shift from bright ideas to massive team efforts. Or maybe Jobs and Gates are the kinds of guys that only come along once a century, and we're gonna have to wait a little longer for something that divine.

We have scant details, but a tipster sent in this picture of the Googlers' flight crew at a party in Auckland, New Zealand. (Another planespotter recently sent us a sighting of the Google Jet down under (right) in late December, so the location seems to check out.) The woman on the left, we're told, is named Colleen, and chose to expose herself in front of the camera. A bit nippy, though, considering the nearby ice sculptures.

It's hardly a surprise Google's dynamic duo, known for attending the sex-infused Burning Man festival in Nevada, picked a racy bunch to steer the plane. Page was famously photographed canoodling aloft with his future wife, Lucy Southworth. And Brin demanded that his private bedroom in the sky be fitted with a king-size bed. Colleen seems like the type who wouldn't blink at mile-high-club antics.

Does anyone recognize the rest of Larry and Sergey's aeronautical servants? Please let us know.

Taken as a whole, the Googlers' cash is one of the largest corporate donations to Obama's inaugural committee. Marissa Mayer, an early Google employee who now oversees its search engine, and David Drummond, the company's top lawyer, also donated, as did YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley and Dick Costolo, the former CEO of FeedBurner, an advertising startup acquired by Google last year,

Unlike election spending, donations to cover the expenses of an inauguration are relatively unlimited. Obama's committee has capped donations at $50,000.

It's a time-honored way to win influence. Michael Dell, CEO of the eponymous computer maker, gave $250,000 for George W. Bush's second inaugural in 2004.

That the Googlers are paying up shows the IPO-borne wealth of the company's top executives; the closeness of their ties to Obama, who has cited Google's management style as an inspiration for the structure of his campaign; and the company's maturation as a political player in Washington, D.C. Eric Schmidt's oddly late endorsement of Obama, weeks before the election, was the culmination of this process. And this injection of inaugural cash is just a down payment.

What do they want in return? One of the last acts of the Bush Administration's antitrust cops was to nix a deal for Google to sell ads on Yahoo's websites. With Google set on expanding its dominance of online search advertising into other fields, is it any surprise that its executives would welcome their new best friend to the White House?

The billions gushing in from Google's search monopoly don't make for a good story. Whenever Google's PR executives have looked to drum up press, they've led with the candy-colored offices, the free food, and the copious free time. All of those are now on the chopping block — which leaves not much to talk about at Google except the profits.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at Google's new push for cost cuts. As others have reported, Google is curtailing service at its cafeterias, reducing hours and restricting guests. A third of Google's 30,000 workers are contractors — and many of those jobs will disappear. (Conveniently, when a contract ends, it's not deemed a layoff.) And superfluous offices are being shut.

More importantly, Google's employees no longer have free rein to pursue their own ideas. Google's engineers can spend 20 percent of time on side projects. That freedom remains, in theory, but the progress a lone engineer can make on a new website without hardware and additional personnel is limited. The new message: Fiddle all you want, but don't expect any money from Google to back your creation.

When Google went public in 2004, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin told shareholders to get ready to be taken for a ride. Not in so many words, of course. But in the company's IPO prospectus, they defended the company's already-lavish perks, and said that investors should expect spending to go up, not down.

But Larry and Sergey have grown tired of coddling their employees. Far from being grateful, the perks have made employees feel entitled. Brin in particular has complained about workers taking bowls of M&Ms and free bottled water for granted.

Why should Google's founders care, really? They seem increasingly detached from Google's core business, preferring to spend time on rockets and electric sports cars rather than optimizing AdWords. They increasingly deal with a small core of early Google employees, all IPO lottery winners, who are similarly insulated from the economic reality of living in one of the most expensive areas in the U.S.

A famous example of their cluelessness: Brin allowed his sister-in-law, Susan Wojcicki, also a Google executive, to spend millions of Google's money on a new child-care center which dramatically raised its costs. Rather than revise plans to make child-care more affordable, Google started charging employees nearly twice the market rate.

Investors will be unbothered by Larry and Sergey's change of heart. And employees, after they get done grumbling, will likely content themselves with the reality that they still have jobs.

No, the people hit hardest by this will be Google's flacks — and the servile journalists who so eagerly celebrated Google's lava-lamp culture. What stories will they tell now? How Google is cutting corners on the organic foie-gras hamburgers in its cafes?

What to wear: Khaki jacket and black turtleneck
Who you are: Rick Astley
How to play the part: Memorize "Never Gonna Give You Up." You'll be singing it all night.

What to wear: Shower cap, towel, iPhone
Who you are: "Naked Conversations" author Robert Scoble
How to play the part: Engage everyone in conversation. Ask them if they want to get naked. Hope they don't take you up on it.

What to wear: Three-piece suit
Who you are: Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore
How to play the part: Make sure you have a girl on each arm. Tell everyone you're a blogger. Refuse to explain what you actually do.

What to wear: Jumpsuits and aviator glasses for two
Who you are: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
How to play it: Maverick and Goose? So old media. With a fighter jet parked at Moffett Field, Larry and Sergey are the Valley's new Top Guns.

Why, with the Google founders' fleet of party planes, which are also parked at Moffett Field, with the excuse that they sometimes fly scientific missions. (In fact, the Google founders' jets proved impractical for Nasa's science needs; Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt bought a fighter jet to fly those missions instead.)

One of Airship Ventures' backers is an entity called Amphitheatre Holdings. Amphitheatre is incorporated in Delaware under the address of INV Tax Group, which Google may have purchased in a real-estate transaction two years ago. Google's headquarters is at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, Calif.

This hardly seems like coincidence. Dyson is an investor in 23andMe, the Google-backed startup of Anne Wojcicki, wife of founder Sergey Brin. Has Dyson taken Google's shareholders for a ride, by having them take a hidden stake in a blimp startup?

Why, Google did, according to Davos party correspondent Meghan Asha, the sometimes girlfriend of TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, who got her in. Google's affair included Norman Jay, a British house-music DJ. There you have it: Larry and Sergey are at fault for distracting the world's best and brightest from preventing the meltdown we now face. If Schwab is serious about keeping thing's serious at the next WEF, we recommend disinviting Page and Brin. And Arrington and Asha.