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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/schmidthands_01.jpg” width=”243″ height=”288″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ /Let’s face it: Google’s every attempt to venture outside its holy circle of search and ads has been a financial nonstarter. So is it thinking about getting into the energy business? Yes. Read between the lines in CEO Eric Schmidt’s a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/technology/internet/28google.html?_r=1ref=technologyoref=slogin”statements to the emNew York Times/em/a. “Our primary mission is one of information,” he says. “As to whether we will be in these other businesses, we will see.” See? When a project is some years off, America’s CTO out-and-out lies. Remember how he denied, for years, that Google was working on a Web browser, and then presto ta-da, Google Chrome emerged fully formed from the forehead of Sergey Brin? Right. So if Schmidt is merely ditherating about the idea that Google could play in the energy business, you might as well be getting utility bills in your Gmail tomorrow./p br style=”clear: both;”/
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a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/valleywag/full?a=yiJxD77D”img src=”http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/valleywag/full?d=120″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/valleywag/full?a=tX79WX1R”img src=”http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/valleywag/full?d=41″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/valleywag/full?a=wYeEV5cz”img src=”http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/valleywag/full?i=wYeEV5cz” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/valleywag/full?a=ZMRYARMs”img src=”http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/valleywag/full?i=ZMRYARMs” border=”0″/img/a
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/6119_full_01.jpg” align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ width=”600″ height=”397″ style=”display:block;float:none;” /”A space-age structure that could be the greenest office building of all time.” “A living building that has no carbon footprint.” That’s the spin. So is this: Google spokespeople are a href=”http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=9809″telling reporters that plans are on hold/a. Charleston East, site of Google’s planned superplex, used to be a parking lot for Mountain View’s Shoreline Amphitheater, just up the road from Google’s main campus Now the lot is idle, pending a bunch of paperwork by the city. But here’s the truth: The building was planned when Google was growing by more than 100 employees per week worldwide. Last quarter, it added 500 Googlers to its ranks mdash; about 40 a week. That’s why Google has a href=”http://valleywag.com/5067504/financial-apocalypse-leads-google-to-lay-off-a-cafe”shuttered a café/a. There’s green, and then there’s green. Eric Schmidt, America’s CTO, is not thinking about the tree-hugging kind right now./p br style=”clear: both;”/
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a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/valleywag/full?a=BupaQsMn”img src=”http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/valleywag/full?d=120″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/valleywag/full?a=ERY5Fjp0″img src=”http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/valleywag/full?d=41″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/valleywag/full?a=sTGwqSze”img src=”http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/valleywag/full?i=sTGwqSze” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/valleywag/full?a=BXgTeuYi”img src=”http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/valleywag/full?i=BXgTeuYi” border=”0″/img/a
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/1_Google_Dornier_FighterJet_260w-167h.jpg” width=”260″ height=”167″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ /Larry, Sergey, and Eric a href=”http://valleywag.com/5068339/americas-cto-gets-a-fighter-jet”have a fighter jet/a, and you don’t. They also have a sweet place to park it: Moffett Field, the airstrip closest to the heart of Silicon Valley. Even Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has to get chauffeured down to San Jose to board his private plane. Remind us, how did the Googlers get such a sweet deal?/p pLast year, Google struck a $144 million deal to lease land from Nasa’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, for future office space. Separately, but not coincidentally, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt, through a company called H211 LLC, struck a deal with Nasa to lease a hangar at Moffett Field for their growing fleet of private jets./p pWhy on earth, or in space, did the Googlers get parking privileges at Moffett? Nasa and Google came up with a great spin: The jets would be available to fly scientific missions. Larry and Sergey got to geek out, thinking their party plans served a higher purpose mdash; while saving hours commuting to and from SJC or SFO./p pOne small hitch, Miguel Helft a href=”http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/google-founders-fighter-jet-to-fly-nasa-missions/”reports in Bits/a: Using the party planes for scientific missions required tinkering with their electronics. And changing anything about the planes required new FAA certifications./p pThis may explain why Larry and Sergey a href=”http://valleywag.com/5059497/larry-and-sergey-yanked-party-plane-from-space-mission”pulled their party plane/a from a recent Nasa mission. We know it wasn’t out for repairs mdash; around the same time, they used it to ferry guests to and from Gavin Newsom’s wedding. /p pHence the a href=”http://www.itexaminer.com/google-has-a-fighter-jet.aspx”Dornier fighter jet/a, which is deemed an “experimental” plane, and which will now satisfy H211’s space-mission duties. But that leaves the Googlers and Nasa in a rather unsatisfying position. When the Googlejets were flying for Nasa, they had a reasonable excuse for parking them at Moffett Field. But the purchase of a special plane to run space missions leaves Larry and Sergey’s party-plane fleet used solely for civilian purposes. What are they doing at the field? Why, satisfying a quid pro quo, like they always were. This latest twist on Larry and Sergey’s lease just makes it more obvious./p br style=”clear: both;”/
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CEO Eric Schmidt botched Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube. Under his misguided traffic-first strategy, the online-video site has seen off would-be rivals, but failed to grow a business. When he decided, rather late, to make revenue a priority, he wasted time looking for a magical new ad format. (The one result of this effort, YouTube’s InVideo ads, which are overlaid over a video as it plays, seems to be a complete failure.) Now, YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley admits there is no “silver bullet.” YouTube has abandoned one of its shibboleths — that viewers are turned off by “preroll” ads which play before a clip — and is experimenting with a number of moneymaking schemes.

There’s more than a hint of desperation around YouTube’s scramble. And that’s as it should be. Google, in its early days, scrambled around for a business model; at one point, it thought it might do enterprise software, which is how it ended up with Schmidt, a former computer scientist, as a CEO.

Mistakes happen.

And that’s the point: YouTube needs to make mistakes, lots of them, fast. Google’s advertising business is, for now, gushing cash, giving YouTube some room to maneuver. But shareholders are not infinitely patient. The more ways YouTube tries to make money, the better the odds it will happen on something that works. It needs to carefully measure what’s working, and tweak its efforts. This kind of mind-numbing lather-rinse-repeat gruntwork is actually something Google is good at; feed its engineers data, and they’ll come up with an algorithm for success. What Google can’t afford to do is waste time chasing some impossibly elegant solution which springs, full-grown, like Minerva from the skull of Google god-king Eric Schmidt.

“Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool,” Eric Schmidt told an audience of magazine publishers assembled at Google yesterday. Wait, what happened to the magic Google algorithm that reverse-engineers our reputations? Does it now rank pages by brand, too? I hope so, because when I Google myself at midnight all I see is Valleywag, Valleywag, Valleywag. I’d like to believe Google knows something my agent doesn’t. (Photo by AP/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

YouTube will now run a post-roll commercial after you watch a clip if you don’t click on the overlay advertisement that pops-up on partner videos. It’s the kind of exciting, innovative thinking from re-hire Ben Ling, who was brought back into the Google mothership to figure out how to turn YouTube’s revenue deficit frown upside down. It’s also the kind of thinking that YouTube once attempted to scientifically prove users didn’t like, but not the kind of thinking that Eric Schmidt has been telling anyone who will listen. The news also comes on the heels of YouTube’s release of “hot spot” tracking — so you can better craft your narrative to make sure people stick around long enough for the commercial to play. (Image via NewTeeVee)

Last week’s opening gala for the new Renzo Piano-designed California Academy of Sciences building in Golden Gate Park was graced by Google CEO Eric Schmidt actually with wife Wendy Schmidt and Shawn Byers with Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers VC hubby Brook Byers. The Byers even had accessories crafted from the San Francisco Chronicle’s funny pages. Care to craft a better headline? Leave it in the comments and we’ll judge the entries harshly, promise. Yesterday “BoothRank == 0″ from Athletic Supporter v0.42beta evaluated to true. (Photo by Catherine Bigelow/7×7)

What a day! First, Eric S. Schmidt, Ph.D., has a webpage that looks like it was made with GeoCities from 1997 — and to top it off he’s also using Yahoo Mail. Hey, Jerry Yang, screw that “Wear Purple” boondoggle and just hire our featured commenter, eknirb, who already has an effective ad campaign in mind:

Wait. Doesn’t Yahoo delete an account if it doesn’t get used for a certain period of time? So this means his account his still active? Google CEO uses Yahoo Mail. Boy, if I’m Yahoo’s creative department; I’ve had a full-page banner ad just HANDED to me. No work needed! Ad should read: “I use the web’s best email” — E. Schmidt, CEO, Google.