Never mind the free gourmet food orgies, company-sponsored servants, on-site massages, cash handouts, multi-million-dollar retention bonuses, posh commute coaches — Google is actually "very frugal," according to the guy who obtained a $10 million, four-year pay package from Google.

"It's a generous company but it's very frugal in many ways," chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said at a Fortune conference. All those perks are part of a "very responsible" spending pattern, you see; Google's free wifi-equipped luxury buses may run on 300 Bay Area routes, for example, but they are also "a fantastic productivity tool."

That's exactly what I say every time I buy some big ticket item, but getting your money's worth isn't the same as saving your money. And it takes some real chutzpah to call your company thrifty after it famously paid you a $500,000 signing bonus, $500,000 six month bonus, a $675,000 performance bonus, a higher salary than any of your bosses, and a four year compensation package valued at $10 million. It sounds like someone deserves a raise, for innovations in blatant corporate bullshit.

[Photo of Pichette via Silicon Beat, photo of Googleplex via Frank Gruber/Flickr]