At first glance, Miguel Helft’s New York Times profile of Chris Sacca, Google’s former “head of special initiatives,” reads like a puff piece. But then I realized how cutting it was. Scrounging for an actual accomplishment by Sacca, Helft can only point to Google’s piddling Wi-Fi network in Mountain View. Sacca, who plans to become an investor in startups, then downplays the one advantage he has: connections to Google. “My actual preference was to not take too much money from Googlers, as it could prevent selling some companies into Google,” says Sacca. Right. Like that’s ever stopped any Googlers before.

Paul Kedrosky, the venture capitalist, is uncharacteristically polite on the matter: “The challenge for the Google guys is to demonstrate what value they can bring, beyond making introductions to someone at Google.” That’s the only reason why any entrepreneur should want to talk to an ex-Googler. That, and the money they got from being in the right place at the right time. What else are they going to do? Give them tips on how to game AdSense?

(Photo by Librado Romero/The New York Times)

Two consumer advocacy groups say FTC chairman Deborah Platt Majoras has no place judging the merit of their privacy complaints stemming from the proposed merger of Google and DoubleClick. Majoras’s husband, John M. Majoras, works as an antitrust lawyer at Jones Day. DoubleClick is a firm client. That’s a conflict of interest, say the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.

The FTC said its ethics division will review the situation, but noted that Jones Day has so far only represented DoubleClick before the European Commission. John Majoras claims not to be involved in this case. But as a partner in the firm, won’t he profit from the case regardless of whether he works on it?

Source:Valleywag

What’s the matter, Jason? No bulldogs with you in France? Yes, our pal Jason Calacanis really called for all non-Internet people to die at the LeWeb3 conference in Paris, TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher confirms. When we called Calacanis for factchecking, the moonfaced rhymes-with-entrepreneur said, “You guys are idiots. I don’t even want to talk to you. Never call me again.” Then he hung up. Jason, baby, is it something we said? Nah: It’s something you said.

Source:Valleywag

In a long-overdue move, Chris Sacca, Google’s “director of special initiatives,” has left the company. Cleverly, though, he’s moving into a new career where he can continue to talk a lot and let others do the work: He’s becoming an angel investor, working with Evan Williams’s Obvious, the company which spun off Twitter, and Paul Graham, whose Y Combinator specializes in funding companies with utterly adorkable names. We figured Sacca’s career at Google might be foreshortened when Google listed an opening for a “director of other,” since that pretty much sounded like Sacca’s job. Doing anything other than work. Congratulations, Chris: In a Valley that unfairly discounts laziness, you’re now the ultimate value stock.

Make room for Marcy Simon! Google is expanding its offices in West Chelsea, taking space in the Chelsea Market building across the street from its current digs. [New York Observer]

Source:Valleywag

How quickly things change. In late 2005, Google’s Chris Sacca bragged to Business 2.0 about how the company was buying young startups outright, snatching them out of the hands of venture capitalists. Unsurprisingly for a Sacca-led initiative, that approach has seemingly faltered. Now, BusinessWeek writes, Google is seeking to make venture investments of its own. BusinessWeek spins it as a new rivaly for Google — but it’s actually a comedown. Once able to buy a startup in toto, and absorb its engineering talent into its ceaselessly expanding ranks, Google must now settle for a piece of the action. It’s also a sign of the expanding pool of venture-capital cash, the increasing ambitions of entrepreneurs, and the inflating value of tech stocks. Why take a Google buyout offer now, when you can entertain dreams of an IPO?

I’ve been thinking, obsessively, about the revelation Google CEO Eric Schmidt made in last week’s earnings call that his company had overhired. Even more curiously, Schmidt defended the hiring binge, expressing his delight in the quality of the people Google’s overeager recruiters had brought on board.

If the new guys are so great, though, why stop hiring? Here’s a radical idea: Keep on adding new employees, but start ripping out some of the dead wood that’s accumulated at the world’s most adjective-ridden company.

And with that, I present “Toogle Many Googlers!”, a series in which I nominate Googlers who need to be given a gentle push out of the Googleplex. Read on for the first batch of names. Got a nomination? Send it in, preferably with a pic of the victim.

Chris Sacca Google’s “head of special initiatives,” with an inflated title and an inflated ego, specializes in hot-air projects guaranteed never to go anywhere, and hence, never require any real work on his part. If it weren’t for the special halo of protection draped on his shoulders by CEO Eric Schmidt, or so we hear, Sacca would have been given the sack long ago. No time like the present! Congratulations, Chris Sacca: You’re the first person Valleywag nominates as one Googler toogle many!

He’s already said he’s got the world’s easiest job. So why not just ease David Lawee right on out of it? With no real background in marketing, Lawee just parrots the same palaver as the rest of the Google gang about how its products market themselves. If they market themselves, bud, why do you have a job? And when he’s not reciting those tiresome lines, he brags about how Google’s so humble — so humble, he needs to tell you how humble it is five times in a single conversation! David Lawee, if you can take a break from eating humble pie in the Google cafeteria, accept our heartfelt congratulations — you’re not just a Silicon Valley Tool, you’re also one of Toogle Many Googlers!

It’s time for Eric Schmidt to declare victory and move on. Google cofounder Larry Page still talks like a giant dork. But we hear that Page hasn’t just upgraded his fashion sense — he’s also grooming himself to take back his original role as Google’s CEO. As Google’s founders grow up, Schmidt’s role as Google’s so-called “adult supervision” grows increasingly pointless — witness last quarter’s unsupervised hiring binge. Declaring himself a surplus Googler will let Schmidt cash out in peace and pursue his real passion: spending time with women who aren’t his wife.