This sporting matchup may well be the one area where Microsoft is beating Google.

Mayer, 33, (top photo) complained to the Times:

"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."

Contrast that to Melinda French Gates, 44, (bottom photo) the former product manager who married billionaire cofounder Bill Gates and now helps run the couple's gigantic charity, who is far more modest, according to a profile in the March issue of Vogue:

Gates is a trim, athletic woman with luminous chestnut hair that falls freely to her shoulders. She has run marathons and climbed mountains, but one senses she considers such achievements too frivolous to dwell on.

Mayer placed in the bottom 10 percent of the Portland Marathon, and dead last in the Birkebeiner women's ski competition. Gates ran one leg of a three-leg relay marathon in 1:23:40.1, a respectable showing which placed her 37th out of 102 contestants.

Not to mention this: Mayer also dated her company's cofounder. But unlike Mrs. Gates, she didn't get him to put a ring on it.

"Good students are good at all things," Mayer said in front of a Times reporter. Silicon Valley's elite is still collectively howling with laughter over that line. It makes you wonder: In the school of life, which other classes is Mayer flunking?

(Photo of Mayer via Action Sports International; Gates via Vogue)

"If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers, most of whom are women," Gates said.

Anyway, there is an abiding school of thought — and I am for once going to admit that I have not read nearly enough to know how true this is — that it's all the influence of his wonderful wife Melinda, who rejected him on grounds of lack of spontaneity the first time he asked her out for "two weeks from Friday." From a recent Fortune profile, Melinda sounds kind of like Michelle Obama, in the sense that she sounds AWESOME, and also in the sense that she not only made her husband a better person but that in that process, she became a better person herself. (Isn't that sweet? Don't you wish that happened more often?) There are all sorts of things we learn, such as the fact that Bono thinks she's the coolheaded rational counterpart to Bill, and that it was her idea to eradicate malaria. But this is the part you'll find really poignant if you're that type. It's from her high school valedictory speech, given in 1982:

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

Bill Gates' New Project: Farming [CNN]

Melinda Gates Goes Public [Fortune]

• Gates Foundation money creates demand for specially trained clinicians, creating a "brain drain" from basic care
• The focus on AIDS, measles and malaria leaves basic needs such as nutrition and transportation unmet
• Gates-funded vaccines instruct patients not to discuss ailments the vaccines cannot cure

You had it right with the burger-joint panhandler, Bill: Giving money away is a thankless affair.

(Photo by AP/Seth Wenig)

The problem first started when Jennifer — my daughter, she's 12 — made a lipstick print on the bathroom mirror. I was plucking my eyebrows and the lipstick was where my mouth was, and I realized I look like Cher. Not young Cher, now Cher. A reanimated corpse.

Lately I'd felt...unrelatable. You know the uncanny valley? How people respond poorly to something that looks almost human, but not enough, like Frankenstein or zombies or Polar Express? That's how I feel.

Whom do I want to feel like? Well, until recently I thought being me was okay. But last week was Job Day at Rory's school, and the night before, Rory comes up to me and says "Dad, I want the other kids to think you're cool. So can you tell them you're Fake Steve Jobs?"

Well that's sort of rude. No, not your iPhone, just that you answered it in the middle of our session.

Is that an Xbox over there? What's your Halo name? Ha, Headshot, no that's funny. My son used to have an Xbox. Well I caught him trying to hack it, so I called the cops.

Yes, I guess my kids are one of my biggest stress creators. But who in my life isn't? Steve Ballmer? Ha! You've seen the videos of him screaming? You should see him when Warren Buffett calls shotgun. And then he kicks the back of my seat the whole ride to Seattle. He's the reason Richard Branson put barriers between all the seats on his planes. Virgin America is all Ballmer.

Yes, Warren's more relaxing to hang out with, but he's no fun since he's such a cheapskate. That DNA test he got with Jimmy Buffett to see if they're related — guess which one paid for that? It makes it aggravating to go out with him. He won't even supersize so he always eats half my fries too. Then there's the whole death thing again. I wanted to get into chess in my old age, but it's always bridge. At the old folks' home. And between you and me, Buffett looks kind of nerdy.

I thought retirement would be soothing. Lounge around at home, walls playing some nice music, table reading me a story, kitchen making a snack. Instead Bono keeps dropping in, telling me about this rad party at Clinton's or Steve's or some other hippie pad, and bugging me to read his poetry. Honestly I thought the guy died in a skiiing accident years ago.

Oh, already? All right, see you next week. Should I pay at the front desk? Jeez, that much?

Couldn't I just help defrag your hard drive?

"Looks great, doesn't he?" says Melinda Gates. "I left him alone at Bath and Body Works, and he picked himself a moisturizer."

Damn it, if Walt Mossberg hears one more story about that stinking John Markoff, he's switching to hard liquor.

Jean Louis Gassee: "I worked at Apple for nine years, and honestly, Steve's feet are this huge."

Martha's only smiling because she thinks that's Daler Mehndi.

After the jump, Mr. High Fidelity looks for a cooler conversationalist.

ZDNet king Eric Hippeau to serial entrepreneur Josh Felser: "Oh, my unbuttoned shirt is no accident, Josh. Let's dump this dump and go...share some war stories."

Lotus founder Mitch Kapor tells Answers.com founder Bob Rosenschein: "There's the 98-pound Dictionary.com guy. Let's go throw wine in his face."

Martha Stewart and her boyfriend, the man who built Word and Excel, Charles Simonyi. (They really are dating.)

The crowd was delighted as Walt and Kara performed a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire. "Listen, baby, when we first met - you and me - you thought I was common. Well, how right you was. I was common as dirt."

"Walt. WALT. Put down the Jack Daniel's and let's stop the 'I'll kill that ass Markoff' talk."

AOL exec Jason Calacanis pulls the Kawaii Anime Girl sign we all know and love. Meanwhile, the extinguished body of VC Yossi Vardi slumps in its chair.

"And we'll have a farm...with ethanol-fueled vehicles...and I can pet the rabbits! Tell me about the rabbits, Vinod!"

Dan's schwag. That damn Long Tail gets EVERYWHERE.

John Cusak pulls the over-the-shoulder glance, made easier because Kara Swisher is half his height.

Photos: D Conference [Dan Farber on Flickr]