As a former google employee, i'm not bound by that shit. Officially, I will tell you that Elliot Schrage is not being googley.

Translation: Say anything about us trying to acquire the rest of AOL and you'll be out on your ass just like those yahooligans.
Now, back on your Swiss Balls. I don't wanna see Yahoo or Microsoft in the Top 10 search results FOR ANYTHING!!!
Capiche?

Can you imagine a bigger clash of cultures?

I have contacted a few mid level management people at Yahoo who could be described as, 'Yahoo Purple Lifers". They have intimated that they will stay and work to make any cultural changes to the organization, and I quote, "as painful as possible for the new Microsoft directors and division Veeps, short of insurrection".

I'll try and write something up on this attitude that seems pervasive, on my blog, over the weekend. There has been plenty of bitterness over the layoff's already.

They are very different companies; although one could reason that this acquisition is the lawful and logical harvest of equity for Yahoo's long term investors and employees with stock. But it takes more than a mere decision to make such a gargantuan move work.

They are Very Different cultures.

Even if you're not being evil, having such a powerful propaganda arm is pretty creepy

Only reason Google would have for holding their breath on this deal is that they are praying (as I am) that it goes through.

The titanic has just set sail!

Seems like Schrage was feeling left out and looking for a way to make himself the least bit relevant to the people who are getting work done in Silicon Valley.

Are they still clinging to 'don't be evil'? In a couple years people will say 'Google's motto used to be don't be evil' the way people say 'there used to be real cocaine in Coca-Cola'.

@macbeach: Google is the Titanic, dude. 16,000 employees for a one-trick pony (yeah, I'm using Steve's words). It's the beginning of the end of for them. Unless they bring a few of their zillions of products out of beta and actually start making money with them, they will burn all that cash keeping 16,000 people on the payroll.

Ad revenue is nice money maker, but I don't see Google surviving at its current size with just ads. This week's earnings miss is just the start, and has been a long time coming. They are going to top out, if they haven't already.

Compare Google's sales and profit to Microsoft's. No comparison. Microsoft is a money making MACHINE that has been in business for over 30 years. No f'ing way they are going to go under any time soon.

I miss fuckedgoogle.com.

If each googler makes 100k a year (very low average but run with it) their annual payroll is 1,600,000,000 (1.6B).

I think Oakland is spot on. Google could easily monetize their analytics product but haven't (yet), but I think there's an overall dislike for google among webmasters because of their Pagerank and other foolishness.

Webmasters ultimately run the web, not google and google will have to learn that sooner or later.

Besides, to think that google has perfected search is rather naive.