What hasn’t been discussed is that the company isn’t really facing up to the fact that its layers of management have resulted in a state of masterful inactivity, masked perhaps as a culture of consensus. This starts at the top - from the company’s board and senior management down to VP level where people are prone to organizing and attending twenty meetings before deciding the fate of a project.

Granted, he may be a little petulant that Yahoo wasn't well-represented at the Structure 08 conference he threw this week — even after he gave the company's open source cloud computing software Hadoop center stage at an earlier after-work presentation GigaOm hosted. He has, however, been covering Yahoo for longer than many other publications working the story have existed, and breaking his relative silence to predict doom for the company will hopefully shake up some of the executives down in Sunnyvale. (Photo by Pete Jelliffe)

Simple food, simple clothes, a simple home and simple, clear writing. Hopefully I can stick to that plan. I have incorporated physical exercise into my daily life, given up smoking, gone almost completely vegetarian and taken to wearing jeans.

Say it ain't so, Om! You were always one of the best dressed men on the scene! While I can also report that said jeans are very stylish, still, I can't imagine any doctor demanding that you dumb down your wardrobe for the sake of your health.

I'd long thought that Battelle's flip-the-bird photo, used here, was a reflection of his charmingly combative personality. As a founding editor of Wired, which set the tech world on fire in the '90s and helped inflate the bubble, Battelle failed to stack up the tall dollars. He founded The Industry Standard, which sold more pages of advertising than any other magazine in American in 2000 and then went bankrupt in 2001. Battelle, in short, has been adept at chronicling booms, but not profiting from them. Until now.

Battelle is just the latest entrepreneur to cash out before his company goes public, a practice once frowned upon in Silicon Valley. But Federated Media turned profitable last fall, we're told. Being cash-flow positive means never having to say you're sorry. And it also gives entrepreneurs leverage with investors that they never had in the '90s, when building Web companies was much more expensive.

So at last he's earned what they call in the Valley "fuck-you money" — enough money to simply walk away, should a job turn unpleasant. In fact, we hear that's what Battelle is planning to do, albeit temporarily. He's told investors in Federated that he plans to take a leave from the business to work on his next book, The Conversation.

Where Battelle's profane wealth may get him in trouble is with the bloggers he represents. Unlike him, most of them have yet to cash out, or even turn a profit. Federated Media's take of their advertising — typically 40 percent — strikes many as too high, though most have yet to try their hands at hiring and managing their own salespeople.

But they shouldn't worry. Having enriched himself, Battelle is now thinking of them. After hearing rumors that one of Federated's blogs was in merger talks, he approached the blogger and encouraged him to come talk to Federated first before taking an offer.

In other words, Battelle is now contemplating a blog rollup. Rather than see his customers picked off one by one, with their ad inventory walking out the door, Battelle may use some of the money he's raised to buy blogs himself. It only makes sense. He knows his customers' businesses well, since he organizes conferences, orchestrates redesigns, and performs other services besides for them, in addition to the mundanities of selling advertising.

Battelle likes to think of himself as more than just a business partner to his bloggers. He's their buddy. He's their pal! This bubble has everyone frothy, and the valuations may be making some of the bloggers under his care unduly giddy. While Battelle may enjoy a tipple now and then, friends don't let friends sell drunk.

The boss text-messaged me instructions to report on who was there and who wasn't, but to me all business reporters and publicists kind of look alike. I could only confirm that the lanky guy whom several partygoers mistook for Digg founder Kevin Rose, complete with bedhead and horizontal stripey-shirt, was Not Kevin.

Besides the hacks and flacks, any event south of Market Street includes a few self-styled "startup CEOs" who've yet to hire a single full-time employee. Happily, one turned out to be Kyle Shank from Uncov, the cruelly funny site that aspires to be the anti-Techcrunch. (Memo to Kyle: Trade the 1997 orange shirt for some basic black. Sorry, kid, but if you give tough love, you get tough love.)

Overheard

Your name's Melody? Wasn't she the drummer for Josie and the Pussycats?

Working at home means you can drink whenever you want.

You guys coming outside? You know, around the corner, you know? Look, we're going to smoke some weed, are you in or out?

(Above: Donna Sokolsky and my wife laugh at the boys.)

As the party wound down, I followed Om out the door in pursuit of another photo. He refused. "I don't want to be the story, I want to be the guy telling the stories," he said. "People keep trying to make me the story. It's a problem." Fact check, Om: In the also-ran media world of San Francisco, you resigned from Time Inc. to go blogging. A year later you're doing better than most of those who stayed behind. You're a story. Cope.

(Photos by James Yu and Joey Wan; used by permission)

Says Michael Arrington:

As an aside, she's also fairly hot — Webb's pictures have been in FHM and Maxim magazine, and in April she was voted the 51st sexiest woman in the world in a FHM survey.

"How many of these ghastly tech reports can anyone watch?" asks a friend of Valleywag. One, of course — the one with the hottest chick. WebbAlert is sure to do some damage — to, say, the GigaOm Show. Blogger Om Malik, with his face for radio and voice for magazines, just can't compete with the likes of Morgan Webb, even with comely cohost Joyce Kim.

To save his show, Malik should turn it over completely to Kim. And he'd better do it soon. More competition is on the way: We hear that NakedNews.com is launching NakedTechNews.com. Now that's sure to get an Arrington review.

If anything, TreeHugger's sale marks a steady downward trend from the frothy days of 2004 and 2005, when the $519 million deal Dow Jones struck to acquire MarketWatch and the $25 million sale of Jason Calacanis's Weblogs Inc. to AOL sparked hopes of pricier blog buyouts to come. But they didn't materialize.

Instead, today, blogs like TreeHugger are evaluated more like conventional media properties, based on audience size, advertising, and growth rates, not eyeballs alone. And, of course, strategic fit matters. Discovery's TV viewers are naturally drawn to green blogs. Better for Discovery to own those blogs than let its cable audience drift away to them.

(Update: Valleywag is owned by Gawker Media, and Gawker's publisher, Nick Denton, is an investor in and advisor to TreeHugger.)

How will NewTeeVee, GigaOm's news site about online video, cover Revision3? "With a disclosure," says Malik matter-of-factly. Well, sure. That's the right thing to do. But NewTeeVee already partners with Metacafe for its Pier Screenings events, and it has a host of prominent sponsors in the field it covers. Om Malik is at heart a journalist, and NewTeeVee's Liz Gannes is a sharp young reporter. But I worry, that with the welterwork of disclosures, disclaimers, and digressions they're going to have to slap on the site, that it will end up either unreadable or untrustworthy.

None of that, of course, makes "The GigaOm Show" anything less than a must-watch. So far Malik has scheduled Rob Glaser of RealNetworks, Bill Watkins of Seagate, and James Hong of HotorNot for on-screen interviews. Malik's a sharp, impatient questioner, which should make for good TV. He'd better hope so, anyway. Otherwise, things are going to get ugly at GigaOm headquarters when Gannes finds herself forced to pan him.

Peron's place, which Culver is renting, is amazing. The backyard is built like a treehouse, with hidden stairways leading to the an outbuilding that doubles as a blacklight garden and hot tub. A model of the Golden Gate bridge serves as a walkway connecting the second floor to the guesthouse. Oh, and there are full-grown pot plants everywhere you turn.

The party had the feel of a high-school kegger, as if Web 2.0 High prom king Kevin Rose had convinced his venture capitalists to go away for the weekend and leave the liquor cabinet stocked. Pownce cofounder Leah Culver danced around the kitchen lip-synching to "Lip Gloss." On a screen, Randi Jayne, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sister, debuted her latest viral video, a very clever iPhone parody. By 11 p.m., the kegs were kicked, and people stood around holding red plastic cups, hoping in vain for more liquor. Attendees included just about every boldfaced name from the San Francisco Web scene: StumbleUpon's Garrett Camp; Om Malik and Liz Gannes from GigaOm; Sarah Lane, Martin Sargent, and David Prager from Revision3; and recent New York Times profile subject David Ulevitch from OpenDNS.

And of course, there was some drama. A group of wannabe gangbangers walked into the party and, eyewitnesses say, walked out with a MacBook and at least one purse. My purse, to be exact. After I noticed that my purse was missing, three of the alleged thieves came back to the party, apparently hoping to steal more stuff. Partygoers detained one of them, who was then arrested by San Francisco police on a conspiracy charge. Good thing they didn't check out the back yard. For a glimpse of the scene, here's a gallery:

[photo by Scott Beale, Laughing Squid]

Tech people proclaim Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, but you can't get your merit assessed by those who've never met you. Getting into VIP mixers is a fast track to having your business plan read, your resume floated, your lunch calendar booked solid. That's why "How do I get into the next TechCrunch?" is a top SVUG request.

Full disclosure: We tracked Mike down and asked him. He left us to figure it out for ourselves. We reverse-engineered not one, but three access channels to TechCrunch, GigaOm and other permanent floating riot clubs.

• Buy some ads. You can't buy press coverage. But big advertisers get asked to the parties they've paid for. The sponsor thank-you events are boring — great quarter, Josh! — but you can use them to meet players who'll invite you to the real shmoozefests.
• Spill some info. Journalists and analysts can be bribed. Not with cash or goods, but with information. Feed them tips. Serve as a background expert. Build out a blog they can plunder. You know stuff Mike doesn't, right? Out with it!
• Throw your own party. Remember First Tuesday? People who throw good parties get invited to good parties.

Once you're in, what do you do? Easy:

• Put on a jacket. You can always take it off.
• Bring a hot friend. Trust us, it's like fly fishing for moguls.
• Stop talking! Unless you're Jason Calacanis, it's boring as hell. Power players hate people who spout big ideas all night. The funding goes to those who exude quiet I-can-execute confidence.

One personal tip: Don't try to "+1" your pals onto your invitation. The host wants you, not that guy who follows you around. Hey Mike, I know this guy who writes for Valleywag, can he come too? Bad move.

Tech blogger Om Malik, for example, goes overboard in his commentary on the story, comparing Universal to the Mafia. "Any business that perceives its end customers as crooks and thieves should go the way of the a broken ice cream cone on a hot summer afternoon."

Please, Om, this is the New Wave — music companies demanding sweeter deals from more desperate media player makers. It's a Darwinian way to give good players — and by "good players" I mean "the iPod" — an advantage.

Microsoft Strikes Deal for Music [NY Times]
Microsoft, Zune & The Music Mafia [GigaOM]

Megan McCarthy: okay, basically, this conference is all about widgets [embeddable pieces of code for web pages] and gadgets and it's all kind of cool and useful in practice

Nick Douglas: This is something you can hold an entire conference on?

Megan: I'm as shocked as you
I'm learning lots of ways to pimp out my myspace page
I'll be stylin' soon

Nick: And those attendees unlucky enough to nab a press pass, they paid HOW much to learn that?

Megan: about $100?
it's all about the networking at this thing
[TechCrunch blog founder] Michael Arrington ran away from me
Nick: So how good was the networking? Who'd you see?
First Marissa, then Arrington. We'll have to start a hall of fame.

Megan: the "I'm Afraid of Valleywag" club
we can send them a button
How about this, we can create an "Afraid of Valleywag" widget and they can post it on their site

Nick: so who else was there?

Megan:[GigaOM founder] Om Malik, of course
Tara Hunt from Citizen Agency
The Feedburner guys
(The CTO of feedburner showed me how to use RSS feeds. He was very nice)

Nick: any memorable talks?

Megan: a LOT of it went over my head
Marc Canter [former Macromedia exec] was his usual bombastic self
[TailRank maker] Kevin Burton's here
Met some people from Fox Interactive in LA. They told me I need to come down there for a party

Nick: so did our readers miss anything other than a chance to meet dot-commers?

Megan: Free coffee
& good sandwiches
There was a big debate: Is the terminology called Widgets? Or is it called Gadgets?

Nick: i haven't heard a worse debate since freshman year speech club.

Megan: I think they should decide by using the Thunderdome method
Fight to the death
Two terms enter, one term leaves

GigaOM founder Om Malik threw a wine and liquor party at his office in San Fran's Pier 38 last night, a trendy gathering of Web 2.0 entrepreneurs and the writers who love them (or at least want them for their bodies). The tech blog kingpin floated about the room like royalty at court, but he did make one faux pas: He left copies of the guest list at the door for attendees to pick up and peruse.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's on the list, as well as SF mayor Gavin Newsom, Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson and Guy Kawasaki, father of evangelical marketing. You get two guesses whether any of them showed. I'm surprised no one wandered the party playing guest-list bingo. The real question is, did Om really think these bold names would come?

View page 1, page 2, and page 3 and play Bingo yourself.

Who is getting bought next? YouTube, Facebook? [GigaOM]

The basis of Web Worker Daily, GigaOM blog kingpin Om Malik's latest title, is that in an increasingly web-based, wireless world, with bloggers and web workers dispersed in diverse geographic pockets, it's becoming more difficult to mobilize the workforce. The site, which launched on Labor Day (cute timing, Om), is meant as a forum in which "2.0 users" share knowledge of technological systems and workspaces.

Part of Malik's inspiration for the blog comes from Greg Olsen, Co-Founder of Coghead Software whose fondness for expressions like "jumping the shark" and "going bedouin" when referring to start-ups that perish by way of golden temples wears a little thin at times. But we can relate to the pragmatic significance of knowing where to fill up a good cup of joe, as told by Jackson West. The Gawker Media alum and GigaOM contributor is the site's new lead writer.

WWD shows promise — unless Jackson West forces us to point a gun at his head and scream, "Say 'Bedouin' again! I double dare you, motherfucker, say 'Bedouin' one more time!"

Web Worker Daily [Official site]

— Beth Gottfried

It feels good to get someone a job. And in tech, where everyone's on their way in, their way out, or their way up, it's no wonder that every tech blog launched its own job board to capitalize on its Valley audience. So far, there are job boards at 37signals, GigaOM, TechCrunch, and paidContent, four of leading tech-pundit sites, each led by a big ego.

While happy-go-lucky papers like the Red Herring like to present this as a happy cottage industry, we hear it's a lot more rough-and-tumble behind the scenes.

TechCrunch owner Michael Arrington (pictured standing) invited both 37signals and GigaOM to join his "CrunchBoard" jobs board, but he's said that both turned him down. But word is, GigaOM's Om Malik (pictured genuflecting) was willing to talk — he just had to consult his investors.

But Mike's been telling folks that Om just can't say no, so all this investor talk was just stalling while Om launched his own thing.

Meanwhile, Jason "Let's Get Small" Fried, owner of 37signals, seems loath to hook up with Mike at all. He feels like Mike's offers of partnership are really attempts to take over the whole tech-job-posting scene.

Of course, even if these guys realize that each of them may die off unless they team up, none of them will admit the real way to fill a job in the Valley: hang out at all the monthly meetups and parties and casually ask who's looking. (For example, Mike Arrington, rather than hire through his own job board, chats up journalists and bloggers at his parties and hints that they should join him.)

Blogs start job boards [Red Herring via CrunchNotes]
37signals Jobs [37s]
GigaOM Jobs [GigaOM]
CrunchBoard [TechCrunch]
paidContent Jobs [pC]
Photo by Laughing Squid's Scott Beale [Flickr, CC]

When the little dot-coms blow up, says marketing/PR blogger Steve Rubel, the sites funded by their advertising will go under too. Rubel names social news site Digg as one potential victim. How does it stack up against other Web-2.0-supported sites? Above the fold, we analyze Digg and tech blog GigaOM. Below, GigaOM competitor TechCrunch sets off a red alert.

Digg: Low risk

• Top banner ad: A boring invention licensing company ad, served up by Google ads. It may be stupid, but it's not under the threat of a little dot-com crash.
• Side ads: Contextual Google ads related to specific stories. Yawn.
• Bottom: In-house ad for Digg merch. Safe as houses.

GigaOM: Moderate risk

• Sponsor #1: oDesk. Motto: "So 2.0 it hurts." Can you say "high risk"? I knew you could.
• Sponsor #2: A promotion for GigaOM through partner Bix, a Web 2.0 contest-creation site. Oh yeah, this one's doomed. High risk.
• Inter-entry ad #1: JotSpot, a wiki company that came on the radar this January and just may last through a crash. Risk: Moderate.
• Banner #1: Google ads. As always, no risk there.
• Banner #2: Business.com sponsored links, mostly for Voice over IP. Minor risk if eBay kills Skype or Vonage finally crashes.
• Inter-entry ad #2: More damn Google ads.

TechCrunch: High risk

• Sponsor #1: Text Link Ads, which would survive a Web 2.0 crash with minor damages.
• Sponsor #2: LogoJeez, a prime service for startups building a brand. Major bubble risk.
• Sponsor #3: Logoworks. Same thing.
• Sponsor #4: Flock, a "Web 2.0 browser" and one of the most-mocked startups, though it actually has a business plan. Moderate bubble risk.
• Sponsor #5: Adobe Flex, a platform for "rich Internet applications." Read: "We want startups as customers." Major bubble risk.
• Sponsor #6: Edgeio, the distributed classifieds site. Major bubble risk, even if loyalty to Edgeio co-founder and TechCrunch owner Michael Arrington keeps it loyal to the bitter end.
• Side banner #1: Adobe Flex again. Major risk again.
• Side banner #2: Google headhunting ad. No risk at all — Google's way outside the, um, bubblesphere.

Valleywag: Doomed

• Since no one directly advertises with Valleywag now, why would they later?

The Web 2.0 Economic Conundrum [Steve Rubel]
Photo by Jeff Kubina [Flickr]

• Captain's LiveJournal 060817: Detecting peanuts-for-brains life form over at Planet Google's holodeck where a semblance of a joke is being made. Must inquire more about this blog structure and why humans look so self-satisfied after hitting "publish." [Google Blog]
• Marketing blogger Seth Godin lists the top 900 or so Web 2.0 "It" Companies. We suppose, judging by their ranking, that MySpace will now endorse the shameless self-promoter too. [Web 2.0 Traffic Watch]
• The good people at Kiko do a post-mortem on their little calendar company and conclude what the rest of us already knew: Nobody does Ajax calendars better than them except Google, 30boxes, Calendar hub, and nearly a dozen other companies. [Jkanstyle]
• Not to be outdone by Om Malik, Michael Arrington's blog TechCrunch is hosting another shindig tomorrow nite. Invites are so hot (or lame) they are being auctioned off on Ebay. Nothing is Paris-Hilton-hotter than us raising the odds that nudity will transpire. Let's just hope none of the party-goers have to bear witness to an Arrington full frontal. [SF Tech Chronicles]

— Intern Gottfried

[Update: Since we wrote this, the curtain's been torn down and Da Blunt appears to be open for business.]

See it here, folks, 'cause it's password-protected now. This is the pre-launch edition of Om Malik's new blog, Da Blunt, which was live and public until late last evening. The Web 2.0 wise guys at the Supr.c.ilio.us blog spotted an incoming link from dablunt.com and followed it to this remarkably unprotected site. I snapped a pic before Om and his team hid it under a password.

The writer for this new extension of the GigaOM network is, as the screencap shows, Jackson West, blogger extraordinaire and former contributor to Valleywag's big androgynous sibling Fleshbot. He's a man of many talents, able to draw clever connections between literary references, name-dropping of the San Fran hoi polloi, and allusions to Saturday morning cartoons.

As for answering the $5-million-in-venture-capital question, Da Blunt is about pop culture, high culture, and all those things the "You Don't Know Jack" game claimed to be.

And as for the design, don't worry, Om assures me Da Blunt will look prettier than this when it really goes live.

Da Blunt [now password protected]
What's GigaOm Smoking? [Supr.c.ilio.us]

First up, Stirr, the monthly show-and-tell for startups (photos by Hot From Silicon Valley):

"Hey, you know the organizer Sean Ness? I hear he isn't wearing any panties."

"Guys, I know the party around us is loud, but if we keep our heads down, we can still finish this business proposal tonight."

Caught in the holy light, this man converted to the Holy Church of Web 2.0. He was later seen handing out poppies at the Oakland Airport.

"Please God, just one more button."

"Hmm, who on the balcony looks pitchable?"

"Look at me, I'm a woman at Stirr! How did I even get in here?"

Meanwhile, at San Francisco's Mighty club, blogger Om Malik held the second re-launch party for his blog GigaOM, sponsored by Sharpcast. Four people asked me that night, "What does Sharpcast do?" Who knows, and who cares? They bought the drinks, and they were hiring. They supplied the band too, for which we hate them. Zooomr evangelist Thomas Hawk snapped shots:

In the center, Thor Muller of Rubyred Labs and Valleyschwag, the man who will one day make millions selling elixir from a brightly painted wagon.

GigaOM blogger Jackson West eschewed collar and sleeves, instantly becoming the best-dressed gent at the party.

Note the white rabbit, a nod to the party's Alice in Wonderland theme. The heavy references to a magical world where things grow big when they shouldn't, words mean whatever one wants them to mean, and impossible creatures give drug-induced speeches while celebrating nonexistent holidays, made a better point about the tech boom than I ever could.

The man of the hour, getting some affection from Citizen Agency consultant Tara Hunt. Further photo series analysis reveals: Om only posed with women (who were, as all women, gorgeous).

Technorati engineer Kevin Marks makes a "help me" face.

Little known fact: Laughing Squid founder Scott Beale is rarely seen in photos not because he is usually behind the camera, but because he stands at a 60-degree angle.

STIRR Mixer 5 [Hot From Silicon Valley on Flickr]
Go GigaOm Go [Thomas Hawk]

What do you do when you turn your personal blog into a media empire? You don't leave your name on it (unless you're Matt Drudge, and thank god you're not). That's why the tech & business blog GigaOM will soon be part of Giga Omni Media.

Blogger Jeremy Wright discovered the domain www.gigaomnimedia.com hidden in some related HTML coding. That domain is registered to GigaOM founder Om Malik (pictured), who bought it in June.

Jeremy concludes that this is the new parent company for GigaOM, and a source confirmed this to me.

"Giga Omni Media." Has a flair to it, no?

Om Malik: Giga Omni Media [Ensight.org]

• Om Malik hires Red Herring writer Liz Gannes (pictured) to write for his tech blog, GigaOM. The move means Liz will finally get a byline. [Weblogs Work, photo by Brian Oberkirch]
• The makers of social news site Reddit give an interview, in which they reveal they own the domain breadpig.com. [Juxtaviews]
• The Weblogs, Inc. music blog thoroughly explains filesharing lawsuits (for anyone who needs a refresher). Takeaway: the RIAA is sketchy as hell. [Digital Music Weblog]
• And in podcast news, the latest episode of This Week in Tech starts with Digg founder Kevin Rose explaining that he's not a multi-millionaire, not even a "thousand-aire," and that he can't afford a couch. [TWiT]

Frankly, this post just exists so we can say "sex" a lot. But one of Om Malik's bloggers at the tech site GigaOM discovered a great way to illustrate his anti-booth-babe article about the E3 gaming conference.

Yep, even if you're decrying the domination of scantily clad women, it doesn't hurt to use them to sell your article.

Three Thoughts on Losing E3 [GigaOM]

Friday Night
Two googletards meet for Battlestar Galactica marathon on UPN but end up calculating their worth as the weekend stock price hovers around $415; after two epicurean Mike's Hard Lemonades, a message is sent to an internal developer list with an idea for (a) Google Base or (b) an old Yahoo/Microsoft product with a new AJAX interface.

Saturday Night/Sunday Morning
Senior VP Marissa Mayer returns to her email client from a night of weeping in front of a vanity mirror, costumed in lingerie and stilettos no one knows she owns; realizes (a) Google Base or (b) an old Yahoo/Microsoft product with a new AJAX interface is exactly what the company needs.

Monday Morning
CEO Eric Schmidt receives idea at a weekly staff meeting; pretends to understand it; in a halfhearted attempt to save face, makes offhand remark about how processors are much faster than when he was in grad school at Berkeley.

Two Weeks Later
Upstart, 20-something business development and/or marketing Googlies learn about it at the Googleplex cafeteria; confuse it with a competitor for Oracle's database solution and/or a product that will take down Boeing. Spread it casually at Marina bars to all their other dotcom friends.

45 Days Later
Om Malik receives phone call; does investigation; dispells rumors that an aircraft is involved but still poses question: is this an Ebay-Killer??

46 Days Later
Michael Arrington publishes "exclusive" screenshots on TechCrunch; says it lacks features which his Web 2.0 company Edgeio has; provides an irrelevant recommendation for Zooomr or Skobee.

47 Days Later
Zawodny blogs; laments that Yahoo had this idea in 1999; considers quitting; instead posts excel spread sheets cataloging (a) his weight loss (b) his Cessna's mileage.

48 Days Later
Chaos ensues at Microsoft, Yahoo, and/or Ebay; Fox buys Myspace anyway; Steve Ballmer throws a chair.

49 Days Later
John Battelle's intern discovers rumor, "breaks" story; Schmidt denies rumors to the New York Times; says Google is not out to displace any other company.

2 Months Later
Google blog announces a product which will displace some other company; Google engineers realize this is actually (a) Google Base or (b) an old Yahoo/Microsoft product with a new AJAX interface. Lose heart; but add it to their del.icio.us pages anyway.

2 Months and 1 week Later
Wall Street clods doubt Google after much inquiry; stock drops to $385; panic at the plex.

2 Months and 2 weeks later
Mayer holds damage control press event; research director Peter Norvig shows pictures of caseless servers last used in 1999; claims computers without cases are much more efficient; "70/20/10" is bandied about along with shrimp cocktail.

2 Months and 3 weeks later
CFO Reyes figures out math to make Google meet quarterly expectations; considers the follical implant surgery but in a late, lonely night at the office, rediscovers appreciation for the Jean Luc-Picard look.

3 months later
The math works; on a Friday the stock balloons to $415 in after hours; coincindentally, two googletards meet for another Battlestar Galactica marathon on UPN...