Nikesh Arora joined Google's London office four years ago. In April, he was tapped to replace global sales chief and Google "business founder" Omid Kordestani, who left with $1.4 billion in net worth amid company cutbacks.

In the intervening month, we hear, quite a few Google execs have come to regard Arora with distaste, cementing his reputation for sharp elbows and a sometimes unfriendly approach — at least among many of the notoriously-pampered Googlers. (That's Arora in the picture above, seizing the "Prince of Asturias Award for Comunication and Humanities" at an event held in Spain by Google co-founder Larry Page in October 2008.)

The upshot? A dark nickname within the Google empire: "Darth Vader."

Perhaps being disagreeable to the Google rank and file is precisely the point, as far as Arora is concerned. Even those Googlers who dislike the executive are said to respect his sales acumen, we are told. Which makes sense: Overt assholes are rare in Google's culture. So Nikesh must be good at bringing in the bucks if he's nasty.

And there could hardly be a better time to trade pleasantries for cash.

(Still, we'd love to hear details of Arora's behavior — from detractors and supporters alike.)

(UPDATE: Comments enabled; they were off for several hours due to a tech glitch.)

Kordestani was Google's first moneyman, the company's so-called "business founder." He is taking the role of an advisor to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This semi-retirement is understandable; even after an expensive divorce and the decline in Google shares, he is still worth $1.4 billion, the result of his well-timed jump to Google when it was a fledgling startup.

Like any good salesman, Kordestani has a talent for following the money. Is it that same sense of timing that is leading him to leave now, while Google could still report one decent quarter of earnings?

Here's how the release puts it:

Recent Developments – After ten years of building and managing our global sales and partnership operations, Omid Kordestani has decided to hand over the reins to Nikesh Arora, currently President of International Operations, and take on a new role as Senior Advisor, Office of the CEO and Founders. Continued growth is essential to our future success and no one is better placed to advise on new revenue opportunities than Omid, the business founder of Google. In his new role as President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development, Nikesh Arora will have responsibility for all Google's revenue and customer operations, as well as marketing and partnerships. He has a proven track record at Google, having spent the last four and a half years building our European operations into a substantial business.

(Photo by John D. McHugh/AFP/Getty Images)

Iglesias — whose private-performance fee is estimated at $1 million — was only the start of the bills for the wedding, held last weekend at the Marquis Cabo San Lucas hotel.

Kordestani's ex, Bita Daryabari, and her groom, vascular surgeon Reza Malek (pictured above, at a charity event in San Francisco), stayed in a $4,000/night presidential suite. Colin Cowie, the celebrity wedding planner who's seen Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Jennifer Lopez, and others to the altar, organized the nuptials. Some of the guests took chartered planes Daryabari and Malek paid for. A tequila party on the beach ended with fireworks; the last fusillade took the form of a heart. A chef was flown in from New York to cater the affair. Paparazzi, in town to lens Jennifer Aniston, stumbled across the event — which, in a way, only added to its gaudy glamour.

It is hard to imagine a worse time to throw an extravagant wedding. But Daryabari surely had other things on her mind.

What turned Daryabari, a telecom executive turned philanthropist, into a towering Bridezilla? Her husband, Kordestani, was Google's 12th employee and its first salesman. He struck a search-licensing deal with the now-forgotten Netscape, then an Internet powerhouse where he previously worked, that made Google viable. Google's IPO made Kordestani wealthy, and as Google's shares soared, his fortune grew into the billions of dollars.

But then Kordestani fell in love with a coworker, Gisel Hiscock (right, and yes, that's really her name, poor dear). A rumored reconciliation after the revelation of his affair never happened. The couple moved to London last summer. Somewhere along the line, Daryabari and Kordestani finalized their divorce.

Which, naturally, gave her a big chunk of Kordestani's Google fortune. And what better way to rub her ex-husband's face in her happiness than by spending his money, a million dollars at a time, on the most extravagant event imaginable? If it weren't a supremely arrogant Googler, the self-crowned king of the new advertising world, getting his comeuppance, we might say her wedding was in poor taste. But is there a sweeter taste than revenge?

(Photo by Drew Altizer via SFLuxe)

A pity. In the long run, a humbling would have helped Google. Instead, CEO Eric Schmidt's trademark cockiness was on display — to the point that he lied about the progress of its search for a replacement CFO. (Schmidt said in the earnings call that no offers had been made; we've heard two candidates have turned down the job so far.)

It's hard to imagine that an advertising downturn wouldn't hurt Google. Schmidt suggested that if economic conditions turned tough, Google would simply snap up more of the advertising market. And Google's failures? Someone else's fault. Sales chief Omid Kordestani blamed sluggish-headed advertisers for not embracing YouTube's video ads. Cofounder Sergey Brin suggested slow networks and lame phones were at fault for Google's still-nascent mobile-ads business.

Google, in short, remains in a bubble. Its fate is unaffected by the outside world, unless its executives need someone else — someone technologically inept, preferably — to take the fall. Just wait for Google to have a bad quarter. Expect to hear excuses so convoluted that it took an army of PhDs to come up with them.

• Omid Kordestani, SVP, Global Business & Sales: The big winner, receiving 25,000 shares of stock valued at $11.2 million and 50,000 options valued at $6.3 million — though the company's shares are currently trading just a few points above the $448 strike price. Kordestani exercised 60,000 shares worth of options last year, worth $32.7 million.
• Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP, Product Management: $5.8 million in cash and $14 million in stock and options.
• Alan Eustace, SVP, Engineering: $5.2 million in cash and $14 million in stock and options.
• George Reyes, retiring CFO: A distant fourth at $5.1 million in cash and $10.5 million in stock and options.

This year, expect more of the same: The company will not change executive compensation programs, after comparing them to market peers. It increased pay and stock packages last year.

The one number that jumped out to me was the amount of bad debt the company wrote down. Doubtful accounts amounted to $46 million, of which the company wrote down $30 million as bad debt, which nearly doubled from 2006. That's less than 1 percent of net profit, but can't be a good trend for a company with a lot of small accounts in a recessionary economy. Google's shareholders are hurting, as are its customers. But its executives? Doing just fine, thank you.

Forbes has put together a photo gallery of splurges, from an orange Lamborghini to seed funding for new companies. The most outrageous claim? Skydiving in South Africa is claimed to be an absolute "must" for any Googlionaire, and the recommendation seems appropriate. Starting off at an amazing high and then freefalling towards rock bottom should prepare them for the rest of their career.

Kordestani's new love, as is widely known within Google, is Gisel Hiscock, a New York-based finance director for the company.

Before you commenters say it, allow me: Yes, her last name is singularly unfortunate. But since Hiscock joined Google in 2003, before its lucrative IPO, it's unlikely that she's after Kordestani for his money. One imagines she might be more interested in obtaining a new surname.

But back to business. One tipster describes Hiscock's role as "sales finance," a group that now reports to Google's CFO, not Kordestani. Hiscock, however, has been at Google since 2003, and at one point sales finance reported to Kordestani. It's not clear when the affair began, but it's possible that Hiscock was Kordestani's employee at the time. And Kordestani, given his importance to the company, holds unspoken authority within Google that reaches beyond his direct line of command.

Even then, Google's published code of conduct is silent on the propriety of romantic relationships between employees, even when there's a reporting relationship. So it's possible Kordestani and Hiscock did absolutely nothing against the rules. Except for this part:

One way to consider whether a given action, relationship, gift, etc. constitutes a conflict of interest is to imagine you are at a company meeting. Could you justify your actions in front of your peers?

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• Word is that Ballmer's gonna get fired. Guess those "big, bold bets" fucked the deck. [Ars Technica]
• Are javascript reflections the new blink tag? [Neondragon.net]
• Google's business founder, Omid Kordestani in 2004, advised an audience of businesswomen: "Measure everything." At a record-breaking 2005 compensation of $289 million, is Omid overcompensating for something? [Mercury News]
• What was Dave Winer doing in Amsterdam's red light district? [Scripting.com]
• The London Times dives deep into the life of arrested Gizmondo ex-exec Carl Freer — yes, he's so much more than the dude hanging with Ferrari-crasher Stefan Eriksson. [London Times]
• Pictured: Google Smile. [Office Pirates]