Google's Grating Silence

Heilemann took a tidbit that appeared in The New York Times a year ago -- that Intuit Chairman and Apple board member Bill Campbell was hired as a Google consultant -- and put it in perspective. Several people quoted, including Google backer Michael Moritz, considered Campbell Google's hero and savior -- a mentor to the triumvirate through a period of rapid growth. CEO Schmidt told the magazine, "Our basic strategy is to invite him to everything."

A Google spokesman confirmed that Campbell is a consultant, but declined further comment for the record.

Securities laws require companies to disclose any person who performs policymaking functions, whether a formal officer or not. Campbell was only an adviser on managing Google's growth, albeit a powerful one. So he was likely not making any policy decisions at the company. Securities attorneys interviewed said such an arrangement would probably be legal, although very unusual.

Google investors, of course, welcomed the news about Campbell's role -- he is one of the most admired tech executives around. Which raises a question for Google's triumvirate: What's so bad about full disclosure? Not as in proprietary technology or future business strategies, but as in responding to such basic investor-type questions about who's mentoring its leaders, what its financial expectations are, how individual initiatives are faring, and where it's investing the money it raised in its IPO.

Sadly, those weren't the kinds of things Google wanted to talk about at its first-ever analysts' day last month, when the company once again took glee in blowing dirt up Wall Street's nose. The CFO, George Reyes, did appear, but only as a sort of emcee for the day. Google's CFO would make no presentation, but in a clever sleight of hand, Google's chef did. Get it? That one was so funny I almost fell over into my creme fraiche. Still, a company is opening the door to some dangerous puns when it delivers a cook instead of an accountant.

In other ways, Google delivered an unconventional presentation for analysts: Lots of stuff on the history of tech companies and the Internet as extension of the brain, not too much on all that hard math. To be fair, Reyes discussed some financials on an earnings call a week earlier, but companies customarily use analysts' days to give more numbers, not fewer. Instead, investors heard vague comments from Schmidt like, "We are moving to a Google that knows more about you." Great, what about the other way around?