Yes, Jennifer is one of those Siebels — her dad, Ken Siebel, is a cousin of Tom Siebel, the founder of Siebel Systems. The father of the bride is also chairman of Private Wealth Partners, which manages a $444 million fund. But Newsom might find it difficult to pry any campaign contributions from his new father-in-law, since the elder Siebel has donated only to Republicans in national elections since 2000, including George W. Bush, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani.

Newsom did at least convince the bride's family to host the wedding in Stevensville, Montana, where the groom wore a casual linen suit and the bride wore Vera Wang and rode down the aisle bareback on a white black stallion. By far the best blow-by-blow of the nuptials was from Newsom's predecessor at City Hall, Willie Brown. Siebel and Newsom plan to tour Africa on their honeymoon — no word if they intend to indulge in the hot celebrity trend of adopting a child as a souvenir.

Being in the family way might help burnish Newsom's image after an adultery scandal in 2007 and a public admission of the entrepreneurial wine salesman's drinking problem. The timing of this marriage eerily reflects that of Newsom's first in 2001, when the then-Supervisor wed Kimberly Guilfoyle months before he announced his candidacy for mayor of San Francisco.

But the couple divorced a year after he was elected amidst talk of a new "Camelot" couple rising in the Democratic Party ranks. You can expect the eternal flame of the media's love for Newsom to be rekindled along those lines, though I doubt the newlyweds will be posing in any oil-money mansions this time around.

With Newsom now fielding an exploratory committee to run for statewide office, longtime superfan and San Francisco Chronicle blogger Beth Spotswood was generous: "I give them two years, that's my wedding gift to Gavin." Which is just long enough to last until June 8, 2010, when the votes for Governor will be tallied.

Hopefully Siebel can continue to steer clear of commenting on blogs in the meantime. Siebel's first publicity challenge will be to show up California attorney general Jerry Brown's longtime partner and current wife Anne Gust in the primary, followed by Maria Shriver, wife of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Photo by Getty Images/Meg Smith)

Why is Roche rocking the boat? Its stake in Genentech already provides a large part of its earnings; owning all of Genentech would maximize Roche's take. But this could be a classic case of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Genentech's top scientists are already wealthy from stock options; loyalty to Levinson is mostly what's keeping them at the company, writes the In Vivo biotech blog. And Levinson, who has already been at the company for 28 years, is likely to walk if Roche's buyout goes through.

That could be very good for Bay Area biotech startups, and the venture capitalists who fund them. Unlike today's Web startups, which are frustratingly cheap to launch, biotech ventures require real money, which means VCs have something to offer. An exodus of talent from Genentech could turbocharge the sector.

And what of Levinson himself? He could well expand his role at Google. Both Larry Page and Sergey Brin, tellingly, are married to women with biotech backgrounds, and have a fascination with the subject. They see the human genome as just another part of the world's information, which they've made it their mission to organize. Could Levinson become part of Larry and Sergey's intellectual petting zoo — like Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet? It sounds like a better gig than sitting in an office in South San Francisco taking orders from the Swiss.

• The environment, burning enough fuel to power a car for a year in just one hour.
• Public safety: Even though private planes incur the same air-traffic control costs as commercial airliners, commercial planes pay for 95 percent of FAA air-traffic control costs in $2,015 in taxes per flight, while just accounting for 73 percent of air control capacity. Private planes only pay $236 per flight in taxes.
• Tax revenues: Private plane buyers can take a larger deduction their first year owning a new jet.
• The war on terror: The Department of Homeland Security IDs private planes as a particular risk.

Wojcicki has modest tastes in cars: She chauffeurs her kids in a Honda Odyssey minivan. But when it comes to spending Google's money, she is far less thrifty. Wojcicki, an early Google employee, was dissatisfied with Google's Kinderplex, which has been run by an outside firm, CCLC. CCLC is used by many companies in the Valley, including Cisco and Electronic Arts, but it wasn't good enough for Wojcicki, who pulled her children out, and set about designing a new Google-owned facility, with a blank check from Brin.

The Kinderplex is losing its lease this month. The Woods and the Wetlands, as Google's new child-care facilities are known, are implausibly plush — and proved hard to staff until Brin and cofounder Larry Page were dissuaded from rejecting caregivers who didn't have a 3.5 GPA from a top school.

The price is likewise out of sight. One of the new centers has 18,500 square feet for 80 children — or 230 sq. ft. per child. Minimum licensing requirements are 35 sq. ft. of usable floor space per child; a more generous recommendation is 50 sq. ft. per child. Even allowing for some space for other uses, that seems extravagant. Brin told employees that the new centers cost $40,000 a year per child to operate — more than the roughly $30,000 a year Google planned to charge employees, but also far above market rates.

That number was also a 75 percent increase over Kinderplex's near-market fees, and the figure sent Googlers, ever driven by data, into a frenzy of mathematical modeling. Detailed proposals for reducing the cost of the centers came out — and were ignored.

Google's chief child-care officer sent an email out a few weeks ago promising that prices wouldn't be raised 75 percent. Sure enough, they weren't. Instead, Google's head of HR, Laszlo Bock, told employees earlier this week that prices would be raised a mere ... 70 percent.

The monthly fee for a preschooler is rising from $1,070 to $1,710; for an infant, it's rising from $1,470 to $2,390. At those prices, one parent says, if you had two kids, you could afford to just hire a nanny instead.

For the likes of Wojcicki, a top Google executive and an IPO lottery winner, those costs are inconsequential; having a luxurious child-care center near the Google campus is more important. But for workaday Googlers, especially those who didn't join the company before the IPO, those prices are out of sight. Even Bock, Google's chief people officer who was saddled with the unfortunate task of explaining Wojcicki's decisions, has told fellow Googlers he will take his children elsewhere rather than pay the new rates.

We hear that one top Google lawyer has quit over the price hike — not because she couldn't afford it, but because the way Brin's inner circle decided it, without consulting the data. (This departure may come back to haunt the company.)

Google used to be a place where rank didn't matter: If the numbers showed you were right, Larry and Sergey could be persuaded. That Brin let his sister-in-law's wealthy whims rule over the interests of hundreds, if not thousands, of working Googlers shows that Google is becoming yet another big company, with an insular clique at its heart. What it proves is that at Google today, it's not what you know. It's who you know.

How lucky for Wojcicki's kids that her mother has friends in high places. How unfortunate that other parents don't. One can't fault Wojcicki for wanting good things for her children. But doing so with Google's money, creating a luxury service affordable only to top executives and IPO lottery winners? That's inexcusable.

What ought to stop this search-engine sprawl: Googlers' own consciences, if they are still guided by the "Don't be evil" slogan. Developing new offices on the very fringe of Bay Area's suburbs, on areas that used to be wetlands, or neighbor the fragile ecosystems, is unconscionable. Despite the perk of free shuttle buses, most Googlers still drive carbon-emitting cars to work.

The Bay Area's infrastructure allowed Google to blossom. The region has asked far too little of it in return. Google should commit now to funding the extension of Santa Clara County's light-rail system through its new campus and its old one. It should also expand in cities like San Francisco, already served by public transit, rather than shuttle its workers 40 miles each way. Eliminating energy expended in transportation is far more productive than finding clever ways to achieve marginal efficiencies.

The environmental impact is one thing. But the business impact is another. Google's executives should also ask themselves: What kind of company do they want to be? Do they want to remain cloistered from the world, or engaged in it? Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg chose to place his company in downtown Palo Alto, with all the difficulties that poses; his choice meant that his workers rub shoulders daily with Stanford students, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists — and, shockingly, people not involved in the tech industry. On the Googleplex, Googlers live in a world of sameness, with people who never challenge their technology-über-alles worldview.

Larry and Sergey have built themselves a candy-colored bubble on the outskirts of Mountain View. By inflating it, as they've chosen to do, they only increase the risk that a competitor more in touch with the real world will pop it.

[But] Larry and Sergey are now adult leaders of a god knows how many billion-dollar valuation company and have done it for a long time.

Jimmy and Rachel plot a weekend getaway at a D.C. hotel:

Jimmy says he has to work on his "Google killer" so he can buy a jet:

OK, we know that Larry and Sergey own a heavily retrofitted 767. Schmidt owned one — or two — Gulfstream V's. Then we reported that Page, Brin and Schmidt might be buying another commercial jet, a Boeing 757 widebody.

The NBC report linked above specifically mentions that a Gulfstream V ran this mission. Perhaps this confirms our report that Schmidt bought a new Gulfstream V to replace the one he sold earlier this year. Either way, that's a lot of planes.

(Photo by Drewski2112)

Well, Chancellor might have his facts a bit wrong, but his point is taken. Page, Brin and Google CEO Eric Schmidt own four commercial-sized jets between them, but it's for practical, money-saving reasons. And, yes, though Schmidt is eyeing another jet for his fleet, it must be said that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is more environmentally friendly than older planes. (Photo by Boeing via AP)

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who has plenty of money of his own, recently sold a Gulfstream V and Valleywag reported that he was looking at a brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Perhaps Larry, Sergey and Eric — the three Musketeers of Silicon Valley jet ownership — will pick up one of the A380s to add to their growing collection. Googlers always aim high, don't they?

And the A380? Custom designs could include a movie theatre, a gym, jacuzzi, multiple bedrooms, a very large dining area and more. What mogul doesn't need their own flying palace with more square feet than most houses?

(Photo by AP/Christof Stache)

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.

Sean and Larry were in their office, trying to think up a good name — something that related to the indexing of an immense amount of data. Sean verbally suggested the word "googolplex," and Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, "googol." Sean was seated at his computer terminal, so he executed a search of the Internet domain name registry database to see if the newly suggested name was still available for registration and use. Sean is not an infallible speller, and he made the mistake of searching for the name spelled as "google.com," which he found to be available.

Battelle asks Doerr why Kleiner didn't invest in Facebook. "Out of loyalty," says Doerr, citing his firm's investment in Friendster. Oops. Doerr goes on to note that Friendster is big in Malaysia, drawing derisive laughter from the audience. He sounds equally ridiculous when Battelle asks him if Kleiner missed this generation of Web startups. Doerr cites Google and Amazon.com as Web 2.0 startups, and says that his firm has backed 20 new Web startups in the past year. (We should put this on the drinking game next time.)

Doerr and Battelle talk politics a bit. "You can't just fly in there when you have an idea," says Doerr. Sounds like verbatim advice he's given to Larry and Sergey, doesn't it?

Battelle asks Doerr to talk about the environment. Finally, the first drink! Oh, and he also mentions Moore's Law. (No drink, but it should be.) He mentions his daughter. Another drink!

One odd moment: Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos's name comes up. "He doesn't pick up the phone for me," says Doerr, who's on Amazon's board. Bezos doesn't take Doerr's phone calls? What does that mean?

Okay, not really. But the fact that someone took the time to customize a video of Larry and Sergey dancing to the Scissor Sisters amuses me. Are these two extremely fortunate geeks really rock stars?

Well, with four planes, there's no risk that one won't be available when the Google boys are ready to fly. But there's also this bean-counting theory: Google's insurers may now be insisting that the founders and CEO travel separately, to lessen the risk that all three might die in a single, tragic plane accident. Which would be the height of irony: Larry and Sergey could cast this bout of aerial extravagance as a sensible financial measure, lowering their insurance bills even as it raises their wealthy posteriors ever higher into the sky.

While we've got some room to talk here, I forgot some details in the last post on this piece. Larry and Sergey, for example, fought so hard over Sergey's king-size that CEO Eric Schmidt had to step in. Eric's words of peace, according to the fired plane designer, were "Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom. Let's move on."

And, of course, there's Larry's request to hang hammock from the ceiling. Turbulence is fun again!

Lawsuits Fly Over Google Founders' Big Private Plane [WSJ, no sub]
Earlier: Sergey's an officer in the mile-high club

This is the scoop: Tribe's struggled long enough for a breakthrough. The investors don't see any buyout coming to recoup their cash, and according to a tipster, they might give up on the whole operation very soon.

But the tipster says that Tribe's owners might woo back co-founder and former CEO Mark Pincus (pictured). Will he remarry this bride now that she's old and gray?

Twas the year before Google, and all through the web
A click was worth nothing, not even a cent.
The groundwork was laid, the market a bear
In hopes that a savior soon would be there.

The VC's embarrassed, all hung their heads
Still waiting for WebVan so the could be fed.
And me with my links and Larry with his math
Felt smart at Stanford; a prestigous path.

When out on the campus there arose such a chatter
Our idea was Gold, making money didn't matter.
Away to Sandhill we flew like a flash,
Hoping some sap would give us some cash.

The six letters on the homepage sure had a glow
Innocent and Friendly, not evil...you know?
When what to my wandering eyes should appear
But ads and ads and money, no fear!

Then came an old man so calm and so quick
We were much to young to manage this ship
More rapid than MySpace the users they came
And they clicked and they clicked...boy it was insane!

Hamsters and Drugs and Paris Hilton
Golf and Wine and Subserviant chickens
Click the top, click the sides, just click them all
Wall Street is waiting our options can't fall.

And in the quiet period before the stock was a buy
We chatted with Playboy, cause we're cool guys
So all over the papers the bad news it flew
But I kept my cool, and Larry did too.

And then like magic I heard on the Tube
Cramer go crazy for GOOG GOOG GOOG GOOG.
Before I could sell or turn around
Bill and Steve were staring us down.

They were armed with chairs and spoke loud and clear
"You're trying to be rockstars your doom is near."
So we drew up a plan and hired a crew
Cause MSN sucks, what else could we do?

Then we brought on Marissa to fend of the press
She's a nerd like us but terrible at chess
Her pretty blonde hair would distract them all
While we counted our billions for the earnings call

The stage has been set for the grandest of battles
We even built a fort outside of Seattle
Vista we hear, is what the attack will be called
I assume it will launch by the time I go bald!

Your constant delays inspire us to work
Making free stuff for all, to drive you berserk
Remember each time your finger hits the mouse
Your clicks are just dollars for our bigger house!

Best. Sergey. Ever.

Dilbert [Official site]

Which Google founder belongs to the hyper-exclusive LA-based $1200-per-month party club? Need another hint? He took home a pleasant young stoner girl after a club event three weeks ago and quickly found that, despite her sweet demeanor and low-paying job, she's celibate.

Gee, is it the one who used Usenet to troubleshoot his humidifier, or the one who made a printer from Legos? File this under "I wish" — or e-mail Valleywag with evidence.

Riya marketer Tara Hunt found this brilliant juxtaposition in the photo-recognition startup's collection:

Larry, Sergey, Shirts and Whatshispickle [Miss Rogue on Flickr]
Earlier: Gavin who? [Valleywag]

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?

And the best part? It's a temp job. So if anyone wants to join Google, gather dirt, quit and spill it to the world, Valleywag will cheer you on — all the way to your NDA-violation trial.

Executive Administrator for the Co-Founders of Google (Temporary) - Mountain View [Google Jobs]

So it's not at whisper-in-the-Graduate's-ear level yet, but ethanol frenzy earned the requisite New York Times trend story. And yes, there are some pretty big Valley names involved.

Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun and a former Kleiner Perkins VC, is in on the game. (And his SUV photo op screams, "Ethanol fuel justifies driving this behemoth!") So is honorary Valley mogul Bill Gates. And Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin checked out an ethanol factory when they visited those crazy Orkut-lovers in Brazil.

Which means it has to succeed. Techie investments in transportation always do. Ethanol! They'll build cities around it!

On the Ethanol Bandwagon, Big Names and Big Risks [NY Times]
Brazil has head start on ethanol production [CMI Brasil]

Monday
Google in space — and in Houston: Google plans a Houston office. No moon base yet.
(Another) Valleywag writer wanted: One Valleywagger means a boom, two means a bubble.
Guest story: Netscape fallout laid out: The post that made Jeremy Liew a hero.

Tuesday
Caption this: Michael Arrington and Bill Gates, sweater buddies: Hands to yourself, Bill.
Liveblogging Tom Cruise: Arms were wrestled. Couches were trod upon.

Wednesday
Google Finance doesn't care about black people: Screen-scraping never get old!
The Junglee man's back with Webaroo: I just like how the words sound.

Thursday
MSN Meltdown: Kevin Johnson shuffles PSD, round one: Buh-bye, David Cole.
The new Microsoft hegemony: Kevin Johnson's reorg rundown: I, for one, welcome our new Live overlords.
Larry and Sergey — a bond that can't be broken: Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Friday
Bill Gates's fighting technique is unstoppable: You think that's badass, you should see Steve Ballmer in a cage match.
ConFonz at GDC: Will Wright's sloppy like Poppy: Employees must wash hands before playing Halo.
Gavin Newsom is friends with the Google guys! Honest!: No seriously guys, they send me e-mails!

In addition to Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the jet's passengers included former Vice President Al Gore, who serves as an adviser to the company, and actor Chris Tucker, who starred in the "Rush Hour" series of films with Jackie Chan.

Halfway through that line, did you get whiplash too?

By the way, d'you think Chris took that Larry-Lucy makeout pic? He totally did, didn't he.

S.F. mayor's friendship with Google's founders [SF Chron]
Earlier: Gavin Newsom is friends with the Google guys! Honest! [Valleywag]
Ages ago: Larry and Lucy flying high [Valleywag]