Google's Pitch Stays Inside

Updated from 11:49 a.m. EST

So, did you get the call?

Not the call from the telemarketer trying to sneak around the "do-not-call list" by pretending to conduct a survey. Nor the recorded message from your local pharmacy telling you that your antidepressants -- you know, the ones prescribed after Google fell from $475 to $342 -- are ready to be picked up.

No, I'm talking about the call. The call that reassures you that, in a world teeming with investors utterly confused about where Google's stock is headed, the three stooges -- er, the triumvirate -- want you to feel that you are somehow special.

As Jonathan Berr reported on Thursday, "Google, after long sitting out the ritual in which companies and Wall Street court one another, is asking investors what they want to discuss at next month's meeting." That PR move seemed to be enough to drive Google's beleaguered stock up 7% Thursday.

And why not? If you suffered through long hours by the phone waiting for your incandescent high-school crush to invite you to the prom, you can avoid the adulthood equivalent by having Google's PR firm call you and whisper, "Tell us what you want to know."

However, because you're reading this story on TheStreet.com, the odds are that you are not peering into a Bloomberg-issue LCD screen. You're reading it on the Web -- the closest thing to a level playing field that the individual investor has seen since they tore down that big buttonwood tree on Wall Street.

Which means, I'm sorry to say, you didn't get the call. (Neither did anyone at TheStreet.com, if that helps. The same Google that is raking in billions in its lionhearted drive to "democratize" the Web has absolutely no interest in democratizing the conversation when it comes to asking about where the company is headed.