Page was granted the deed on the property on February 18, 2005 after the historic building had been on the market for years with an asking price of $7.95 million. The rich are always cheap: Page managed to get about $1 million knocked off the price, as the next year the property was assessed at just under $7 million. By this year, the assessment was back up to $7,216,214, with the nearly 3/4-acre property alone assessed at $5.1 million. How much are the taxes on the property? $78,550.96 over the last year.

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.

Lucy, a willowy blonde, used to work as a model. "The summer after my freshman year, I was home from school and my sister's car broke down, so I drove her to the Elite modeling agency," Carrie, a television actress, told Soapnet. How did the New York Post miss this? At any rate, a modeling career combined with a Ph.D. makes two things Lucy has accomplished that Larry, even with his newly trendy hair, never will.

"Another important factor that nobody talks about is teachers' salaries," Brin said. "Teachers are among the lowest-paid professionals. At Google, we've been paying our teachers 25 per cent more, but even with that, they're among the lowest-paid employees. I think it's really important to have a living wage for teachers."

Schools, of course, cost money. Google doesn't actually run a school, so Brin must be talking about the workers at his company's wildly overpriced childcare centers. On the Google model, even with teachers at the bottom rung on the payroll ladder, Brin's answer was to demand more money from parents.

Yet I haven't exactly seen Brin standing in solidarity with the teacher unions in California when they've lobbied for salary increases and smaller class sizes. Nor has Brin come out against Prop 13, the bill which froze property taxes in California, permanently hobbling education spending. But then it's been typical of Google to think they can have their gourmet, organic, locally-sourced cake and eat it, too.(Photo by AP/Douglas C. Pizac)

• 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.

Google's wireless dreams have been thwarted at every turn, from the botched Wi-Fi effort with Earthlink to Verizon reneging on open-access provisions after the spectrum auction. I doubt Page's blatant desire to line his own pockets will win the FCC over. Perhaps he should refine his pitch and mention the possibility of 10 percent more campaign donations. (Photo by Danny Sullivan)

Baba's teachings include the precept that showing kindness to others is the highest form of devotion to God, and writings compiled by noted mystic Ram Dass in the book Miracle of Love. It's an opportunity for Zuckerberg to appear deep when discoursing on management philosophy. More importantly, he can now share the experience with other tech titans as a sort of rite of passage in the tightknit world of the Valley's ultrarich. (Photo by Ken Wieland)

Previously:

• A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg


• B is for Botha, who sold YouTube big


• F is for Fitzpatrick, and "hookers and blow"


• L is for Levchin, who never goes slow

You also need some leadership skills. You don't want to be Tesla. He was one of the greatest inventors, but it's a sad, sad story. He couldn't commercialize anything, he could barely fund his own research. You'd want to be more like Edison. If you invent something, that doesn't necessarily help anybody. You've got to actually get it into the world; you've got to produce, make money doing it so you can fund it.

Page points out how many engineers have been hired by Big Oil to find every last drop of crude, calling it "disproportionate to the return that they could get elsewhere." A big proponent of geothermal and solar, he further describes how cleantech investment that has focused on the move from fossil fuels to electricity doesn't solve the root problem of our grid being powered mostly by coal. And in his view, venture capitalists are ten years too late in funding green initiatives:

Look at VC investment in clean energy. What caused that to happen was two things: the price of oil going up and global warming. It's mostly the price of oil going up.

I think it's everybody who cares about making progress in the world. Let's say there are 10,000 people working on these things. If we make that 100,000, we'll probably get 10 times the progress.

They'd read a lot of research around how to form the best companies and a lot of studies show that if you fall below 20 percent of the workforce being women, things become really imbalanced and unhealthy inside the corporate culture.

1:30 p.m. Pacific: Waiting for the call to start. I note that Eric Schmidt's promise to rein in hiring hasn't had much effect. Aside from the DoubleClick acquisition, which added 1,500 employees, Google itself hired 851 employees. Google's employee count, continues to expand at roughly 5 percent a quarter. As of the end of March, before laying off roughly 150 DoubleClickers, Google had 19,156 employees. At that rate, Google will have 27,000 employees by the end of 2009.

1:35 p.m.: The usual crew: CEO Eric Schmidt, Larry and Sergey, outgoing CFO George Reyes, and top executives Jonathan Rosenberg and Omid Kordestani. Sergey must have hightailed it back from Tahiti, where he was recently spotted consorting with blog mogul Arianna Huffington and Wendi Deng, wife of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch.

1:37 p.m.: Schmidt says that Google is performing well "regardless of the business environment" and that its strategy is "transformative." See what I meant by "chest-thumping glee"? He addresses concern about Google's paid clicks, saying growth was "higher than third parties had speculated."

1:39 p.m.: Schmidt talks about its Web-based apps business, saying "all the pieces are coming together." He cites a partnership with Salesforce.com, but doesn't give any numbers. In other words, it's not a real business yet.

1:40 p.m.: Reyes, who resigned as CFO last August but still hasn't been replaced, recites the figures found in the press release. Is his sole remaining duty sparing Schmidt from having to utter a sentence with a number in it during this call? He's stumbling over simple phrases as he reads from a script.

1:44 p.m.: "Approximately 15 percent of the DoubleClick U.S. workforce" — another 200 or so — "are expected to leave in the near term," says Reyes, because they are in "transitional" roles.

1:46 p.m.: Sergey Brin takes the mic. He starts by talking about "almost 100 search improvements" made in the quarter. A lot of those, he says, are international — in other words, nothing that U.S. users will see. Google is increasingly showing non-website results, like books, images, and videos, in its search results. He claims mobile growth, but doesn't give any numbers.

1:52 p.m.: Larry Page starts talking about ads. He says Google has introduced demographic targeting for social networks, using gender and age information. The lack of this up until the recent quarter might explain why Google's social-network ads have performed so poorly. Until now, instead of fessing up to this basic technological shortcoming, Google has been blaming partners like MySpace for lower-than-expected revenues.

1:54 p.m.: Page says Google is "really excited" about YouTube ads. As he is about the acquisition of DoubleClick. As he is about the Salesforce.com partnership. Is there anything he's bored by? In a typical nerd mistake, he throws out terms like "wikis" and "cloud applications" without defining them for the Wall Street analysts who are listening, but not particularly caring.

1:57 p.m.: Schmidt wraps up quickly and goes to questions.

1:58 p.m.: Question on the search for a new chief financial officer. "We're very pleased George has remained," says Schmidt. "We have not made any offers yet." That, according to insiders familiar with the search, is simply a lie: Google has made two offers to prospective CFOs, both of whom have declined.

2:00 p.m.: Sales chief Omid Kordestani says that Toyota and Dunkin' Donuts, among others, have signed up as YouTube advertisers.

2:02 p.m.: Sergey Brin, who declared his hatred of Web banners years ago when Google launched its simple text ads, fields a question about putting banners on Google-owned sites. He notes that YouTube already carries banners, and other sites like Google Images and social network Orkut might also add them.

2:05 p.m.: Schmidt says the company hasn't seen any problems from the larger economy, batting away suggestions the U.S. is heading into an advertising recession. He says that in internal conversations, Google executives have concluded that it would do well even if a recession came, because its ads are so targeted.

2:10 p.m.: Brin fields a question about mobile ads. He says in markets where the devices and networks work well — "basically, Japan" — the ads perform well.

2:14 p.m.: Jonathan Rosenberg, who normally handles product management, is fielding a simple question about seasonality by offering a baroque explanation involving Easter's and a leap year. I suppose Google Calendar does fall under his purview.

2:17 p.m.: Talking about the failure of Google's ads to perform well on social networks, Larry Page turns to upspeak: "It's an area where we've applied a lot of new technologies?" He goes on to say that Google is "optimistic" and getting advertisers to embrace new tools "takes some time." In other words: Not our fault, and technology will fix everything once the Luddites die off.

2:20 p.m.: Kordestani admits that in retail, in the first quarter, Google has seen some "postponements" of budgets, but that other industries have made up for the shortfalls. As he flails, Jonathan Rosenberg, who's not actually in charge of advertising, jumps in. Schmidt finally cuts the answer short and goes to the next question.

2:28 p.m.: Kordestani fumbles another question about "integrated advertising" — campaigns which use search adds, display, and YouTube — with a rambling nonanswer.

2:34 p.m.: An analyst asks if U.S. revenues were flat quarter-over-quarter, not counting DoubleClick's contribution. Schmidt: "We know that it's not macroeconomic. It can have as much to do with the timing of deals." The classic excuse of enterprise-software companies, which Schmidt learneda t Sun and Novell: Blame laggard customers. And with that, Schmidt wraps up the call.

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(Kevin Rose photo by Sara Morishige)

It may well be. Aflame, too, are the sentiments of Wikipedia's volunteers, many of whom are already enraged by Wales's jetsetting ways. For Wales, the gathering had an added attraction: After lunch, Branson took a party by catamaran to Mosquito, where women in bikini danced on the beach. "Normally the girls would be naked, but the prime minister is here," said Branson.

(Image via Wikimedia Commons)

[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.

For a couple reasons. It's a meritocracy. People really care about ideas here. None of the old school where'd-you-come-from stuff applies in Silicon Valley and I think that helps women.

• Google
• The Clinton White House
• Harvard College
• Harvard Business School

• Bill Gates is out $6 billion since the beginning of the year and $3 billion since Microsoft bid on Yahoo
• Steve Ballmer's net worth is down $3 billion since 2007
• Apple CEO Steve Jobs has lost $400 million in six weeks.
• Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are both down $5 billion so far this year.
• Google CEO Eric Schmidt lost $2 billion this year.