“Do you know who I am?” is never a flattering way to refer to oneself.

Twitter is like a real-time conversation! And just like many conversations, sometimes you want to cover your ears, Eric Eldon, Micki Maynard, Ellen McGirt and others teach us:

The nation is in crisis, our economy on the brink. And yet President Change is spending time with a group of technowastrels whose sole noteworthy accomplishment has been to spend other people's money.

Are you sick of your friends who can't stop talking about the inauguration? Then you're really going to hate Twitter today. A special edition of the Twitterati to catch up with this morning's chattiness:

The Wall Street Journal's Pepper ... & Salt has never been particularly cutting-edge. But a recent cartoon reads like a time capsule: An entrepreneur at startup WotsHot.com says, "Here's our timetable: launch, grow rapidly, be bought by Google." How quaint! During the lean years earlier in the decade, when Google was the only show in town, startups may have dreamt of getting bought by Google. But more recently, getting bought by Google has proven a nightmare, albeit a lucrative one. The oldtimers at YouTube are resting and vesting, watching the clocks tick. JotSpot's wiki product languished for a year before getting relaunched in barely functional form. Measure Map, a Web-traffic analysis startup, was similarly buried.And who can blame them? Google coddles engineers, but it also suffocates them. With the free food, massages, and laundry come a quirky set of in-house technologies and an increasingly bureaucratic, insider-driven culture. A favored clique of Google-IPO lottery winners rule over what's supposed to be a meritocracy. Marissa Mayer, Larry Page's ex-girlfriend, rules with an iron fist over what features see the light of day in Google's all-important search engine. Google used to pitch startups on the notion of selling to them rather than give a stake to VCs; Chris Sacca, a former Googler expert in peddling empty promises, led this effort. Not surprising that it didn't work out. Google is now getting into the VC business itself — a tacit acknowledgement that it is no longer an attractive destination for startup founders. As an investor, Google gets a look at new technologies and talents. Entrepreneurs get to keep their freedom. Funny, freedom is exactly what Google used to promise the companies it acquired — and what it no longer has to offer. (Cartoon by Pepper & Salt/WSJ)

Ionut Alex Chitu compiled a selection of farewell notes from departed Googlers. Nostalgic and longwinded, they're full of remembrances of free food and something called respect for engineers. Here's the good stuff — Googlers on why Googlers go. Four-word version: To be in charge.

Microsoft's bid for Yahoo has many eyeing the exits. But we hear that Bradley Horowitz, the VP in charge of Yahoo's advanced products group, has been plotting his escape long before Steve Ballmer's bear hug made it trendy. Since late last year, he's been interviewing at Google. It's not clear if he'll actually get the job, though. Google's hiring process is legendarily slow, but Larry and Sergey can get things moving on candidates they're keen on. If Horowitz was really wanted at the Googleplex, wouldn't he be working there by now? Or was Google just waiting to oust Chris Sacca, making room for another voluble professional conference attendee? Update: Bradley, we misunderestimated you. TechCrunch reports Horowitz is working on one of Google's most vaporous projects: its OpenSocial widget platform, alongside Excite founder Joe Kraus.

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.

A correction on that earlier Chris Sacca item: We're told by a Google insider that Sacca, the blustery big thinker who claims to have led Google's multibillion-dollar blind stampede into wireless spectrum and forced the entire industry to open up, never even made it to the director level at Google. His true title, "head of special initiatives," was a sop to make up for the fact that he never even made it into the lowest ranks of executive management.

In a long-overdue move, Chris Sacca, Google's "director head 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.

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?

Google blunderkind Chris Sacca's plans for world domination are currently on hold. EarthLink, Google's partner in building a citywide Wi-Fi network in San Francisco, has delayed city officials' vote on the project's contract, until September, if ever. EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff is earning his last name by giving San Francisco the silent treatment. Not only has it stonewalled the city's proposal for a shortened contract and improved speed and security settings, but EarthLink now wants San Francisco to foot the bill. "The Wi-Fi business as currently constituted will not provide an acceptable return," Huff told Dow Jones. "We're going to look for municipal governments to step up and become a meaningful anchor tenant." Translation: Pony up! Of course, it has to be said: San Franciscans richly deserve this. The way we're behaving, there's no way we deserve free Wi-Fi. No wonder Chris Sacca and his partners are taking their squishy exercise balls and going home.

The good news: The FCC has decided to leave some, but not all, of the wireless spectrum it's auctioning off open to multiple providers. The bad news: This means Chris Sacca can still pretend to have a job for a while longer. [Reuters]

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.

Chris Sacca, Google's do-nothing wonderboy, has updated his Facebook status: "Chris is glad his company lets him do crazy things in hopes of changing the world." Or sit around blathering in meetings and never actually accomplishing anything. Conveniently hard to tell the difference. Oh, and this from Twitter: "Learning about Architecture for Humanity over a hike and some lunch at Fish. Nonprofits can be delicious." Well, that was on a Sunday, at least. But it's nearly indistinguishable from his workday activities.

Oh, the stories we could tell you about Chris Sacca, Google's puffed-up "head of special initiatives." But we think the facts speak for themselves here. Sacca is promising $4.6 billion of his employer's money on wireless spectrum if — and only if — the FCC agrees to Google's four conditions of "openness." The conditions Google wants to impose are arguably consumer-friendly — for example, wireless subscribers would be able to use their cell phones on any network they like, not just the one run by the company that sold the phone to them. That's a frequent complaint of Apple iPhone buyers who now find themselves locked in to AT&T's network. But it's unlikely the telecom industry, with its vastly more experienced lobbyists, will let such ideas fly. Which leaves Google off the hook — and Sacca, once again, in a position to hold meetings, make big speeches, and never actually have to get something done. His favorite position, or so we hear.

Say what you want about the Google hegemony, I'd trust them before San Franciscan landlords and neighborhood overlords any day. Reader Davis Freeberg saw San Francisco nutjobs shanghai a town meeting with Google and Earthlink, meant to bring the city one step closer to city-wide free and cheap wifi plans. He reports below, and adds more at his blog.