As Google's auction team — led by product manager Larry Alder — ratcheted up its billion-dollar bids to meet the reserve price, the competition stayed away. Top Google executives and the board suddenly decided to become concerned. Alder and his team were pulled into a board meeting and asked to explain again why Google was bidding against itself for spectrum it didn't want to own. "There were definitely some people at the company that had cold feet," Adler told the Times. "People had to be convinced that it was the right business decision." No wonder people on his team were getting sick.

Why? Because we hear the people working on the bid worked themselves sick trying to pull off the impossible. A tipster tells us members of the team saw nervous breakdowns and other health problems. Google's likely to throw the same people on a rush project to lobby for more airwaves. We're curious: How bad did it get for the Googlers, and are they in any shape to work on a new rush spectrum job? Tell us what you've heard. (Photo by alistairmcmillan)