It has nothing to do with Eric's philandering. It has everything to do with the fact that Elliot sucks and is being run out of the company. No idea he has held on so long considering how ineffective he has been. From the inside I can affirm his team hates him. The other executives see him as impotent, reckless, and self-promoting.

Yahoo! has promised, at a minimum, a 4 month severance package to anyone who might be terminated in the event of a Microsoft takeover. So whose not evil, anyway?

And today, if Google hasn't made itself a Greenleaf-esque slave to its employees, it's at least a cruise director:

Kahney goes on:

The Mountain View campus is famous for its perks, including in-house masseuses, roller-hockey games, and a cafeteria where employees gobble gourmet vittles for free. What's more, Google's engineers have unprecedented autonomy; they choose which projects they work on and whom they work with. And they are encouraged to allot 20 percent of their work week to pursuing their own software ideas. The result? Products like Gmail and Google News, which began as personal endeavors.

Google recruiters are out of touch. This 20% project concept is a thing of the past yet they still promote it as if it exists. Recent survey (Googlegeist) shows that most people don't even have a 5% project since they're working overtime on their primary project. Nothing really innovative has come from within in the past few years. Most of the stuff is just maintenance.

There's a 70/20/10 initiative, meaning 70% of the resources are spent on ads. Not surprisingly most of the new hires work on ads. Maintenance. Bug fixes. Fun. Most of the Adwords and Adsense managers are young kids who have had little work and management experience and the code base is absolutely hideous. In fact most of the engineers from Google ads are some of the worst engineers I've ever worked with. The only reason why they're keeping their job is because Google needs them to be around. I don't even want to get into ad PMs. They are very territorial and very unpleasant to work with.

Thank God I vested and left before the implosion.

Google works fiercely to woo extremely idealistic and passionate young innovators with long self-love ballads of all the avenues for creativity and self-management available in this paragon of Doing-It-For-the-Love-Of and Freedom-Of-Thought.

They are often straight-out lies.

Young programmers willing to take on less-than-"core"-engineering jobs are nonetheless convinced (not by their own delusions but by well-trained pitches) that these tech teams promote innovation and independence. At the very least, the positions are design or programming positions.

Except then they aren't. They're just email-answering jobs.

Sure sure, "times are different" and "you're really not alone," but in the bajillion trainings done on Google campuses every day and in all its marketing to present itself as the one corporation that didn't lose its ideals when it exploded, surely they could do a better job NOT BOLDLY LYING to recruits.

All of that said, it still has havens of true engineering and brilliance, and even bitchworkers get to experience some (some) crazy perks, (some) stupendous guest speakers, and (lots of) awesome co-workers.

The perks *are* tiered based on position type, though. So they're classist, too, but at least ones that make sure everyone is well-fed.

(Photo by AP/Jens Meyer)

To all the commenters saying "stfu and stop whining": the thing you're missing is the false advertising on Google's part. Google doesn't tell you when you're going through their intense and selective recruiting process that your job is going to be crap.

Google managers like Paul Carff *specifically* make plans to dress up the job descriptions of what are essentially CSR positions, to lure top talent from top universities. Where they do mention CSR-type work, it's often called a "minor" or "infrequent" part of the job.

And regardless of the position, if you're accepting something on the order of 0.01 percent of applicants like Google is, and you're asking the kinds of quantitative+creative interview questions for which they're known, you are GOING to get a lot of intelligent, highly talented people. Lying to these people and putting them in dead-end positions is a recipe for disaster, which is why Google Support has such incredibly quick turnover.

You have to realize that high-caliber recent college grads are probably friends with lots of other high-caliber recent college grads. This means that, when they get lured across the country to the Bay and end up in a crappy CSR job they didn't sign up for, while their friends get much more appropriate roles in companies like Bain, Salesforce, and McKinsey, they aren't happy about it — and they shouldn't be.

Brad is not working on social graph problems at Google. He came here to work on technology to insert ads into web pages being viewed via Google's municipal Wi-Fi hotspots. Very hush-hush; the only thing publicly available on this is the patent applications. We've been working on it for a while and Brad is working on making it more palatable to the privacy crowd (mostly marketing, actually).

What's really funny about the Socializr offices to me (I live next door) is that they are in the building just-until-a-couple-of-months-ago occupied by Pud (who now owns AdBrite).

About 6 months ago, I was out walking my dog, and saw that there was all this AdBrite trash out front: old plaques with yellowed Wall Street Journal clippings profiling the genius who started the F*ed Company phenomenon, with little brass titles of the date of the Journal article.

If it weren't for the fact that they were likely already peed on by various dogs and homeless people, I totally would have taken them home.

After the jump, the four honorable mentions.

Makethelogobigger finds his own favorite Steve Jobs edition.

Going with a write-in candidate here: Noah Wyle as Jobs in his Tucker Carlson phase.

Kyle Bunch broke the Internet.

Sorry everybody, my fault. I accidentally tripped over a cord.

Blackjack loves Baidu's martial-arts play but knows revenge is inevitable.

Bad. Ass. But will we see a Google ad that continues this one by turning the swordsman into a pincushion like Jet Li's character in "Hero"?

dljfs wants Marissa Mayer to croak "Koyaanisqatsi."

"Larry used the scanner, and she flipped the pages of a book to the rhythm of a metronome. They managed to get through a 300-page thick book in little over 35 minutes."

Google is starting a band! Sounds sorta Phillip Glass-y. I bet the light show will be AWESOME.

Have a snappy comeback? E-mail it in and win a Valleywag comment account.

openwag only gives dictation to doctors:

Just a BA/BS? No Ph.D required to schedule meetings and pick up dry cleaning? Shocking.

Adam Michela knows what Google will do with the new stock income:

Facebook.

Blackjack has voyeur pics of Paul Otellini:

I'm "imagining" it will be more likely the geeks in charge will embed tiny functional wireless cameras in the stars, make the footage available by subscription at SiliconValleyUpskirt.xxx, and send all the profits to their bank in Belize.

Now that'll be "embarrassing last-year technology" once it's discovered.

openwag is pre-ordering on Amazon right now:

It's what I've suspected all along — Larry and Sergey are getting a record deal. Soon we'll be rapping along with the Google Guys on such hits as "Flex My 'Plex" and "Sweet Marissa". Larry, of course, will bring oulandish Hawaiian-print shirts back into fashion, while Sergey will make it rufus to wear tight-ish black sweatpants, white socks, and dorky white sneakers. Sergey's hair will be out of control, as usual.

Yeah, this will be when they crash and burn.

Veronica prefers multiple-choice quizzes:

First of all, this is way too much math. We have computers to do math now.

Second, how many points do you get for joining Friendster, quitting Friendster in protest, and then re-joining to find estranged family members?

PARose calls out Larry Ellison the hipster:

Oh Gawd! His collar is actually up?

Kyle Bunch puts two and two together when Calacanis becomes "Calacnis":

He's trying for the Esthr Dyson thing; dropping an 'a' in your name is the new dropping the 'e'.

valleyvoyeur pours gas on the Winer fire:

Who in Silicon Valley HASN'T gotten into a flamewar with Dave?!?!

Adam Michela prefers his Web 2.0 logos to be sad marsupials:

This whole thing is bizarre. All the way down from the vague announcement at Under the Radar to the cagey smirk on that ugly little blue kangaroo.

Blackjack figures that's how SketchUp got split up:

Let me guess, Google kept the engineers and ditched a bunch of the non-engineers. I'll put on my shocked face now.

Anonymous wants Bruce Sterling to be a spime:

If Sterling's so cutting edge, why didn't he liveblog himself?

To which Spastic Colon says:

liveblogging is for sissies. when you're cutting edge, someone else liveblogs it for you.

Join the party. Write something witty to tips@valleywag.com, earn a comments pass.

Nathan Tyler's hotness is like a force of perpetual motion, and this causes him to be difficult to photograph. One time Nathan Tyler's hotness made Richard Avedon's light meter explode. He's that hot.

Openwag earns a promotion in Marissa Mayer's not-so-open office:

She works her ass off despite the multiple hundy millions and still remains very accessible. The person moaning above sounds like they just got a crappy annual review.

Kyle Bunch swears he only makes deals at T.G.I.F.'s in Om Malik blows up SF's best cafes:

Chili's is the new golf course. It's where business happens.

— Small Businessman Magazine

Nathan Weinberg crushes our hopes in Niniane the Google blogger:

Actually, she's got a long-term boyfriend. Starting dating him when he was a Google intern. Its all in the blog.

Stowe Boyd scares us all in Tech pundits getting naked: a worrisome trend:

I am willing to strip down. For a price. A big price.

And Spastic Colon scares the homeless in the same entry:

Shel's bear suit could warm quite a few homeless in San Francisco.

For your own shot at 15 seconds of fame, e-mail tips@valleywag.com for a comment invite.