Quelle horreur: Both Barnett and Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for cupcake-recipe spreadsheets, wore the same blue Oscar de la Renta dress with a green-leaf pattern along the hem! Also, it seems that arm-candy real-estate manager Zack Bogue is trying to tear Valleywag editor Owen Thomas's affections away from stubblicious Flickr developer Cal Henderson by sporting some ursine facial fur. Though my guess is he was just too lazy to shave — that the top button and not the middle button is buttoned on his pinstriped jacket says "sloppy."

(Photos by Drew Altizer)

It is interesting and important to point out that Google has always been a frugal company. We have always spent money in a way that made sense. We provide food to our employees largely for convenience so that they can stay closer to campus. When we were just starting the company and we were all working 120, 130 hours a week, having food on campus was something that was really convenient and fostered better culture because we all conversed over meal time. To have these perks might seem lavish on the outside, but there are usually common sense reasons why we are doing them on the inside. That said, we always want to be frugal and conscientious about money.

It's all in a refreshingly honest interview that makes no mention of "Don't be evil," and only a subtle pretension that the company is doing anything more than trying to make as much money as algorithmically possible. (Photo by Getty/Oliver Lang)

how often Mayer, Buyukokkten, and their respective boyfriends turn up at social events together.

Whatever the motivation for it, Mayer's decision to favor her friend's site turned out poorly. She's still talking about how Orkut is inexplicably big in Brazil and India — and nowhere else. Blogger development, meanwhile, remained stalled for years, wasting the site's early lead in blogging. Yes, Google's late to the social-networking game — and it's Google's own fault.

(Photo of Mayer and Buyukkokten by Damion Matthews)

Mayer is well known both for her love of cupcakes and the the "pink power" girliness of Sex and The City. I could see a commissioned installation in the trite, childish style of international art superstars Jeff Koons or Claes Oldenburg. San Francisco still doesn't have a Frank Gehry, and frankly, a giant cupcake wouldn't be half as ugly as the Experience Music Project building in Seattle sponsored by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Could be high time for Mayer, the newest member of SFMOMA's board, to make a dent on the skyline. Maybe a new storefront location for the pastry-sculpting business Mayer owns with Shinmin Li, I Dream of Cake?

And who can blame them? Google coddles engineers, but it also suffocates them. With the free food, massages, and laundry come a quirky set of in-house technologies and an increasingly bureaucratic, insider-driven culture. A favored clique of Google-IPO lottery winners rule over what's supposed to be a meritocracy. Marissa Mayer, Larry Page's ex-girlfriend, rules with an iron fist over what features see the light of day in Google's all-important search engine.

Google used to pitch startups on the notion of selling to them rather than give a stake to VCs; Chris Sacca, a former Googler expert in peddling empty promises, led this effort. Not surprising that it didn't work out. Google is now getting into the VC business itself — a tacit acknowledgement that it is no longer an attractive destination for startup founders. As an investor, Google gets a look at new technologies and talents. Entrepreneurs get to keep their freedom. Funny, freedom is exactly what Google used to promise the companies it acquired — and what it no longer has to offer.

(Cartoon by Pepper & Salt/WSJ)

Shortly thereafter, reearsh firm Hitwise ran numbers which showed that Digg would be inconsequential for Google's traffic, only the 13th largest Web property, well behind Google News. Coincidence? Perhaps, but they can't have been helpful for Digg's negotiations.

One other sign that the deal has been going nowhere: Digg has been interviewing for a head of PR. That's a position they wouldn't fill if they were close to a sale. That said, we hear Digg board member Brett Bullington, who helped sell JotSpot to Google in 2006, has been pushing to keep negotiations alive.

So are things on? Are they off? Never say never in deals. But even Digg CEO Jay Adelson acknowledged this week, at a meetup with Digg users in Chicago, that his company has been too prone to leaks during negotiations. Could he be getting a taste of the same from the Google side? That's a theory I dig.

(Photo of Rose by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us)

Jimmy Wales's open encyclopedia sits conspicuously high in Google's results for just about any search. See above: There are only two links in Google to the iffy Wikipedia page about me. Both come from other Wikipedia entries. Yet Google ranks that page higher than any of the articles from my 12-year online writing career.

Whether Google artificially boosts Wikipedia's rank or not is a popular drinking topic among search engine optimizers. But Google's certainly not trying to push Wikipedia down any, as they've done with sites deemed problematic in the past.

Wikipedia provides a handy reference-book-like entry among the first three results for most searches on famous people or popular topics. Great for us. But imagine if every customer clickthrough to Wikipedia could be rerouted to an AdSense-powered page from Google's own servers. Would they do that? Hell, they'd be stupid not to.

The online giant figures that Google News funnels readers over to the main Google search engine, where they do searches that do produce ads. And that’s a nice business. Think of Google News as a $100 million search referral machine.

What neither Mayer nor Fortt explained: The real reason why Google doesn't put ads on Google News. That's because it fears lawsuits from the media organizations whose headlines and text it picks up and republishes. (It's already lost a court case brought by a newspaper group in Belgium). By not running ads on Google News, Google lawyers could argue it's not profiting from their work.

Mayer just shot a $100 million hole in that argument. When she puts a number on how much money Google News makes for her employer, she gives newspapers' lawyers a big, fat, juicy reason to demand a cut of the business. Sure, the newspapers already make money from the traffic Google sends their way — but do you think, given a $100 million prize, they won't try to double-dip?

Here's a suggestion: When Google finishes calculating their legal bill, they should dock it from Mayer's pay. As an early Google employee with a net worth estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars and a penthouse apartment in the Four Seasons San Francisco, she can afford it.

But throw enough money around and you, too, can pretend to have taste! Worked for the Gap's Donald Fisher, who's opening his own ironically named Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio (or "CAMP") because he didn't want SFMOMA to meddle with his precious collection. No wonder Google chose the Gap building with its godawful Richard Serra sculpture for the company's newly opened San Francisco office. (Original photo by Steve Rhodes)

We've spoken to Google in the past about this and received a snide response telling us to look more closely at their blogs.

God save the queen from getting shot walking her corgis around Westminster! To show just how committed the revolutionaries are to privacy, VP of search products Marissa Mayer replaced a mention of "Google" on the homepage with "Privacy" and a link to the company's policy declaration. The noted populist also underscored her sacrifice by pointing out the ascetic homepage's lack of corrupting excess. Put that in your tea and sip it, limeys!

What would have happened had Rachel Marsden was left with more than just a few articles of clothing after those steamy days with Wikipedia founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales? Nothing good.

I have to admit, out of all the babies, Marissa Mayer and Zack Bogue's faux-offspring is the least horrifically ugly.

"IT Girl" Julia Allison is ostensibly dating Iminlikewithyou founder Charles Forman. But with that lack of resemblance, could Allison be covering for another lover?

Because Forman and Tumblr founder David Karp are very, very close. Looks like Allison is just the beard and Karp is the Forman baby's daddy.

What's interesting is the timing. A source familiar with the talks says Google and Digg reached an agreement last month; it's not clear whether the offer was verbal or a formal termsheet. So why the delay? One possibility: Digg may have been exploring whether it could hire a rock-star CEO and raise more money. Adelson has long been flying cross-country, twice a month, to San Francisco from his upstate New York home, and privately complains about the commute to friends. But so far, I've heard nothing about Digg raising a new venture-capital round, or Adelson making way for a higher-profile hire.

Of Digg's possible acquirers, Google is the company's most natural home — despite Digg having a multiyear advertising contract with Microsoft. Google desperately wants to get a handle on social networking; it has struggled to sell ads profitably on News Corp.'s MySpace. More importantly, Digg could help Google improve the relevancy of its search results, especially with the news articles Digg readers vote on and discuss so vociferously. That might be worth more to Google than any ads it might manage to sell on the site.

The deal may not happen. Insiders are already mystified by its lack of progress since word first started spreading last month. As Sarah Lacy revealed in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Digg has held a series of deal discussions that never came to fruition. That history makes it hard to take any new Digg-sale rumor seriously. But we hear these discussions are close enough to take seriously. Cupcakes, anyone?

(Photo of Rose by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us; cupcakes by a_cooper)

I have to admit, the black-and-white dress with fringed hem she wore was downright tasteful! But Bogue, handsome as he may be, could dandy up just a bit — the dark suit, white shirt and light blue tie is pretty conservative, and looks like something well-gelled God-mayor Gavin Newsom wears nearly daily. I wouldn't recommend Bogue going over the top à la Mayer's fey friend Orkut Buyukkokten, but would it kill him to wear a pocket square to a fashion show? (Photos by Drew Altizer)

As typography geeks will be quick to point out, it's not the same typeface. Still, I doubt Google will mind the comparison terribly — mobile device Web browsing is widely touted as the Internet for the masses. And if you want to monopolize the infobahn, you'll have to reach out to country music fans eventually.

It can be any primary color except red or yellow. It must use a letter from the Google logo, but one that's closely associated with Google's services, which rules out "o," "l," and "e." Anything you want, as long as it's a blue "g"! Mayer's tyrannical design process aside, her business justifications for settling on "g" are intriguing.<./p>

The design constraints were all set around cell phones, not Web browsers. Mayer wants Google's new mini-logo to be distinctive on a wide range of cell-phone screens; blue will always show up reasonably well. The lowercase "g" has relatively thick features, which means it will hold up in low resolution. Google wants to be small — so it can have a big future in wireless.

AllThingsD's Kara Swisher also showed up with her Googler spouse, Megan Smith. "We're dressed as lesbians," said Swisher. (How was one supposed to tell the difference? Oh, right — usually Swisher's dressed like a soccer mom.)

Somewhere in the confusion, the event's producer thrust a ticket in my hand, and I walked into the screening. No sign of Marissa, though, who I'd heard was wearing a Pucci dress. Before I could spot her, the producer walked up the aisle to my seat. "Owen?" he asked? Yep, that's right — eighty-sixed again. I spotted Orkut Buyukkokten, Marissa's best gay friend, on my way out. Not that I minded getting booted, really — I hear the movie's not all that great. I was more interested in the trailer I saw for Mamma Mia — hey, Marissa, can you throw a screening for that, and invite me?

I'll leave you with one last pic of the moviegoers:

(Photo by Theresa Thompson)

While promising to protect the data of individuals, the company did say it will deliver reports on data in the aggregate — a prospect an epidemiologist might relish. According to the terms of the privacy policy, there's nothing to stop the company from divulging your medical history to authorities in the case of, say, a National Security Letter or any old subpoena from the courts. Not to mention employers snooping on you while you browse Google Health at work.

Nor has Google México ever celebrated the country's independence on September 16. Nor has the company ever celebrated the birthday of any Mexican or American of Mexican descent — such as California civil rights legend César Chávez — even though all sorts of folks have been honored with birthday logos. When will Marissa Mayer deign to honor the employees and users of Mexican heritage with their own doodle? Probably sometime after she wears her first Eduardo Lucero.

You know Orkut Buyukkokten, don't you? Yes, he's that Orkut — the Googler behind the favorite website of Brazilian pederasts, neo-Nazis and Indian teenagers. And he's fabulous in sheen.

Here's Mayer with business partner Shinmin Li, proprietor of I Dream of Cake, the North Beach pastry salon. "Cupcakes anyone?" SFLuxe ignorantly asks. Anyone who's anyone knows that Mayer calls the business "cake-sculpting."

How to have a failed career as an options trader? How to build a porn site? How to launch, inadvertently, the world's seventh most popular website and yet avoid making any money on it? How to hire a convicted felon as chief operating officer of a nonprofit? How not to build a Google-killing search engine? How to cheat on one's spouse, get a divorce, and neglect one's seven-year-old daughter? These topics would be fit additions to the sum of all human knowledge, and yet I doubt Wales will address them.

I remember I'd be babysitting and I'd be saving up money for the latest Guess? sweatshirt at the mall.

The launch of a designer-influenced iGoogle aside, is this a good time for Mayer to be bragging about her expensive wardrobe? Last we checked, Google's stock is in the tank, recession talk abounds, and ordinary people are choosing between new Wal-Mart George jeans and gasoline. Perhaps there's some countercyclical wisdom in Mayer's aspirational Web layouts: This is as close as most Google users will get to Mayer's lifestyle.

I mean, c'mon, Anne Geddes, the woman who made a name for herself by Photoshopping babies into floral patterns? I'm just surprised there's no work by Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light. It also made me pause to wonder about Marissa Mayer's self-interest. For instance, glass-blower Dale Chihuly makes an appearance, and Mayer just happens to own work by him. Seems like a great way to improve the value of her own collection by helping to popularize the artist and his work.