GOOG shares hit $395.02 at 9:32 a.m. Pacific time today. Contrary to Eric Schmidt's claim last week that the current American financial crisis is confined to Wall Street: "The drama is in New York and not here." On Friday, Kaufman Bros. analyst Jason Avilio had cut his revenue forecast for Google's third quarter by nearly 15 percent, from $4.7 billion to $4.03 billion. Now that shares have dipped below the psychological $400 mark, it's unlikely that today's new 52-week low will be the last one.

As the seasons change and we settle into autumn, I'm reminded once more that yet another year will soon pass and that we're all getting older. Or at least, the old people are. Check out the images below, picturing tech luminaries in their youths juxtaposed with more recent photos. You might find yourself in disagreement with the English poet John Donne, who wrote: "No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face."Young Steve Jobs, Apple cofounder:

What a day! First, Eric S. Schmidt, Ph.D., has a webpage that looks like it was made with GeoCities from 1997 — and to top it off he's also using Yahoo Mail. Hey, Jerry Yang, screw that "Wear Purple" boondoggle and just hire our featured commenter, eknirb, who already has an effective ad campaign in mind:

Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn't have a blog like cofounder Sergey Brin. He has a homepage — a homepage which hasn't been updated in years. That background pattern! That ego-fluffing Wall Street Journal stippled portrait! And worst of all, that Yahoo Mail address. Designers, if you have a proposal for a more fitting Web presence for the hubristic CEO of the world's most self-righteous company, please send it ericschmidt1@yahoo.com. We suspect he's too proud to ask for help.

CEO Eric Schmidt says Google is moving at full speed with plans to place ads on its archrival Yahoo, even though the Department of Justice is just gearing up to take action on the deal. The deal, signed in June, is set to start in weeks. "You face a question as a large company trying to change things: How many initiatives do you want to take on that are unpopular or lead to criticism?" said Schmidt in a press conference. By "change things," Schmidt would have you think he's talking about saving the world. But here's something that should draw interest from antitrust cops: A Valleywag tipster says that one unpopular change Google is making is to hike the minimum bids on some ads tenfold. That kind of pricing power is usually a sign of a monopoly. And it should well lead to criticism.It's not clear how widespread the price hikes are. (If you've seen raises in your Google bids, please let us know.) But even if the price changes are narrowly targeted, they're alarming in their size and suddenness. The effect of hiking the bids, and then dropping them, says our tipster, is that many of the keyword campaigns were canceled for not meeting the temporarily raised minimums, as he says this screenshot shows:

Speaking to a klatch of invited press, Google's leadership painted a typically rosy picture of the company's prospects amid a faltering economy and chaos on Wall Street. "The company has a very large amount of cash in very, very boring and secure investments," CEO Eric Schmidt assured everyone. Schmidt also promised that the search advertising deal with Yahoo was going forward on October 11th with or without approval from federal regulators (and all signs point to "without"). VP of North American advertising Tim Armstrong repeated the company's mantra that what's bad for traditional advertising is good for Google. None of which helped the price of GOOG, which is down over two dollars so far today and over $340 so far this year. (Photo by AP/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

Reversing a long-held policy, Google will now allow Christian and other pro-life groups to buy antiabortion ads that will show against search results for search terms such as "abortion" and "abortion help." Google said it would be “creating a level playing field and enabling religious associations to place ads on abortion in a factual way." The company faced suit from the U.K.'s Christian Institute, which said the Equalities Act of 2006 made Google's ban illegal.With Google already facing suit from Viacom and potentially the Justice Department over its deal to serve ads against Yahoo search, the company probably decided it didn't need another legal headache, especially not one that would antagonize the 41 percent of Americans who call themselves pro-life. Defending the company's deal with Yahoo yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said: "You face a question as a large company trying to change things: How many initiatives do you want to take on that are unpopular or lead to criticism?"

Scheduled to take the stage at Google's latest Zeitgeist gathering are CEO Eric Schmidt and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. The plan is to announce a partnership which "is likely to focus on adding network intelligence to the electric grid and improving capacity," according to Portfolio. The idea is to improve electricity-infrastructure efficiency through more advanced networking technology, presumably resulting in better service and lower carbon-dioxide pollution by reducing demand through conservation and therefore burning less coal. Of course, for now it just means more lobbyists in the Capitol and possibly more money for research and development. What does Google want in all this, besides good environmental press?GE owns vast rights of way for the electrical grid, which could potentially aid Google's efforts to build their own Internet backbone infrastructure — even over the transmission lines themselves. And of course, less demand for electricity combined with stable supply means cheaper juice for Google's giant datacenters. The real question is, what's in this for Immelt and GE? (Photos by AP/Phelan M. Ebenhack, Mark Lennihan)

The celebration for Google's tenth anniversary party was held in Rhodes, Greece, of all places. It doesn't get much more lavish than flying employees from offices around the world to a popular tourist destination, near the peak of the travel season. One self-proclaimed shareholder employee complained that "spending I'm guessing $1000/a head = $4,000,000 on a party in Greece for European Googlers and (no doubt) 'special' USA based employees is shameful and un-Googley." Actually, for a company whose CEO own a part of not one, not two, but three party planes, it seems pretty darn typical. Lavish expense aside, the question that's been bedeviling me — why Greece? Is there any special significance, besides the hubristic allusion to the Hellenic Golden Age of knowledge? (Photo by Ade Oshineye)

In June, Google said the U.S. Department of Justice could take three and half months to investigate its search marketing deal with Yahoo. Time is almost up, Google CEO Eric Schmidt yesterday told Bloomberg TV, saying that Google has decided the agreement will proceed by early October. "We are going to move forward,'' said Schmidt.

The brouhaha over Google's once-legendary, now troubled free-meals perk has bubbled up more charges of wrongdoing in the search engine's kitchens. An anonymous poster has taken to Craigslist to air charges against Google's former global food manager, John Dickman. (The post refers to him as "Dick," but it's obviously Dickman being discussed.) The Craigslist poster claims Dickman, left, who is married to Lisa McEuen, right, an executive at the parent company of food-service operator Bon Appétit, with leaking inside information which helped Bon Appétit win a contract to run Google's in-house meal service.The poster claims Dickman then arranged to get a kickback from Bon Appétit. Google, he goes on to write, investigated Dickman and Bon Appétit, going as far as testing fruits and vegetables, presumably to see if they met Google's high standards for organic and sustainable ingredients. The implication there: Bon Appétit had been feeding Googlers slop dressed up as fancy fare. The end of the Craigslist poster's story: Dickman was brought before Google's board and fired. All juicy gossip — but there's one thing that doesn't make sense about this whole tale. Dickman is now working at Apple, a company with close ties to Google. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple's board of directors. Apple directors Bill Campbell and Al Gore are important advisors to Schmidt. If Dickman left Google in a cloud, how could he possibly land a job at Apple? Either the poster's allegations aren't true — or something darker is going on here. One possible explanation: Google's leaders might have arranged for Dickman to get a job with their friends at Apple in exchange for buying his silence on other matters. Here are excerpts from the original post on Craigslist:

Eric Schmidt spent 18 minutes on CNBC yesterday talking to Mad Money's Jim Cramer, but per usual, the Google CEO didn't say much. Only about 60 seconds worth, we discovered after boiling the segment down to its crucial bits. Learn that Google is bad economy-proof, YouTube doesn't make money (and doesn't need to), and that shareholders should just stay quiet in the clip above.

Loudmouth Mark Cuban mockingly characterizes Google — which still can't figure out how to make money off YouTube — as the vendor who brags: "we are losing money on every sale, but we will make it up in volume."But Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn't deny the charge. On Jim Cramer's Mad Money yesterday, Schmidt said "Eventually, we'd like to make some money of out [YouTube], but even if we don't, even if ultimately its a loss leader, the fact that so many people come to YouTube means they ultimately come to Google and click on ads." The numbers back up Schmidt's claims. According to ComScore, in June 2008 YouTube pointed 2.4 million search queries through Google search — just a couple hundred thousand fewer than Yahoo search.

Steve Ballmer: Would like to "kill" Google and its "pussy" CEO Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer loses it all the time, but nothing beats the story of when former Microsoft engineer Mark Lucovsky went into Ballmer's office to say he'd been poached by Google. After Google hired away Microsoft executive Kai Fu-Lee, Microsoft sued and eventually, Lucovsky ended up telling the story under oath. A telling excerpt:

We always wondered what, exactly, Wendy Schmidt saw in her husband Eric, the billionaire CEO of Google who sometimes prefers the company of other women. A review of the couple's charitable ventures makes things clearer. The Schmidt Family Foundation, which reported $84 million in assets in December 2006, has handed out some grants since its formation two years ago. But its biggest charitable project seems to be Wendy Schmidt herself.The foundation's two main programs are the 11th Hour Project, an organization which publishes links to information it deems "scientific" about global warming, and Greenhound LLC, a bus operator on Nantucket Island. Schmidt is the founder of the 11th Hour Project, and a longtime summer resident of Nantucket, where she is also an investor in downtown real estate. Both superficially good causes. But if Eric wanted to give Wendy, who has a master's in journalism from Berkeley, a job writing environmental press releases, why didn't he just hire her at Google, as he did with ex-girlfriend Marcy Simon? And if the Schmidts want to boost the value of their Nantucket real estate with bus service, why don't they just pay for it themselves, rather than with the help of a tax-exempt charitable foundation? Eric Schmidt complains about the lack of investigative journalism today. This seems like a good place to start. Compared to Bill and Melinda Gates, whose charity reaches around the globe, the Schmidts don't just come across as small-hearted. They look downright unimaginative.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt stopped by Advertising Age's Madison and Vine conference last week, and proceeded to weep incredibly expensive tears over the fate of investigative journalism after Google helped eviscerate newspapers' business. "It's a tragedy for America," Schmidt declares before noting how few resources are going into reporting on the war in Iraq. "We'd spend a little more money to cover it, but our economic system doesn't justify that." Meanwhile, across the pond, Google hired away veteran BBC newsman Peter Barron of Newsnight for the company's public relations machine. Maybe Google will open a new PR bureau in Baghdad and send flacks to the front lines to cover the war. Would certainly be one way to improve Google News.

In a response to Google's recent assertion that "complete privacy does not exist," the National Legal and Policy Center released a step-by-step guide [PDF] to finding an unnamed "senior executive" from the company. While it doesn't reveal the home address, it does show a number of intersections where one might lie in wait to assault or kidnap said executive. Using Google Search, Maps and Street View, naturally.

Career crank Nicholas Carr's cover story for The Atlantic asks, "Is Google making us stupid?" Oh come on, Google chief Eric Schmidt told an AdAge-sponsored conference in New York. They said that about color TV forty years ago. You can watch Schmidt here, or you can pull up your pants and read Carr's 4,000-word feature. But more likely you'd prefer my 100-word excerpt:

Google reported revenues of $5.4 billion for 2008's second quarter, which after payments to Web publishers which carry Google-sold ads, comes to $3.9 billion, just $30 million ahead of Wall Street's expectations. Second-quarter revenues grew 39 percent over the same period last year and increased 3 percent from the first quarter of 2008. Google earned $1.25 billion in profits in the quarter, down from $1.31 billion in the first. In statement, CEO Eric Schmidt said "Strong international growth as well as sustained traffic increases on Google's web properties propelled us to another strong quarter, despite a more challenging economic environment." Wait — we thought Google was immune to such paltry outside influences. Guess not: Google operating expenses in the second quarter of 2008 included $810 million in payroll-related and facilities expenses, compared to $809 million in the first quarter of 2008, which means the company's made sure to clamp down on expenses. Live coverage of Google's second quarter 2008 earnings call, below.

Lately, there's been a downturn in the ad market. Even online advertising isn't growing as fast as it used to. But don't expect these macroeconomic trends to effect Google's second-quarter earnings report today. Google isn't a bellwether for the economy, CEO Eric Schmidt told reporters in Idaho last week. "We make our own weather," he said. With those remarks in mind, we'll let analysts like Citi's Mark Mahaney — who created the useful cheat sheet above — tell you what kind of numbers to expect today. Our forecast for today's earning's call instead? A downpour of arrogance and gutters full of gloating.