Don't let the self-indulgent aircraft purchases fool you. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is in this for charity. Where there is a cause, Schmidt will find a way. Like in Nantucket, for example. A playground for the rich can be needy too. And, just last week, Schmidt and his wife spent $3.5 million to buy land with the intention of turning it into a transportation hub for the Nantucket Regional Transit Authority. The news comes a month after residents voted down the town itself taking on $1 million in debt to purchase the property for the same purpose. And you people get upset about a jailed dissident or two? (Photo by milesgehm)

• Valleywag Quiz: Googler or Muppet? Part one.
  

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia is purchasing a custom Airbus A380. The biggest passenger plane in the world — 6,000 sq. ft. — will cost more than $400 million once it is outfitted with all the accoutrements necessary to fly one of the richest men in the world. The prince already owns a custom Boeing 747, previously the biggest private plane in the world, and has a fortune worth around $20 billion. Don't count out Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, though. The Google boys are worth around $20 billion each and also have an affinity for custom jets.

If the typical Googler hired in 2003 exercised all of his options and held onto the shares, they would now be worth almost $8 million, writes Wendy Tanaka in a Forbes article on stinking-rich Googlionaires, ex-Google employees who were at the right place at the right time. And those Googlers worth $8 million? The regular, workaday ones. Add a few zeros behind that number to get to executive-level compensation. Sergey and Larry have sold more than $2 billion worth of stock. Sales head Omid Kordestani and CEO Eric Schmidt both have more than $1 billion in the bank from their Google stock sales, which should leave them enough cash to use for their extracurricular activities. And what do rank-and-file Googlers do with their extra spending money?

So this old guy brought his familiar patter to Google's Mountain View headquarters today — oh, and Tony Bennett was there, too. Bennett is just one in a series of musical entertainers brought to the Googleplex, which is a heck of a perk. It's like a free trip to Vegas without having to leave your office. No word on the set list Bennett performed. But given the proclivities of Burning Man attendee and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, might we suggest "Anything Goes"?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has apparently sold a Gulfstream V jet recently listed for sale on Aviationbusinessindex.com. Could Schmidt at last be shrinking the grotesquely conspicuous fleet he owns with Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Hardly. Sources in the private-jet industry tell Valleywag that he's buying another Gulfstream V to replace that one. And, more incredibly, he's said to be have his eye on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, possibly through the auspices of the International Lease Finance Corp. ILFC has ordered 74 hard-to-get Dreamliners for delivery starting in 2010. If Schmidt, Page, and Brin get their hands on one, they'll be flying the 787 long before some of the largest airlines in the world.

Affairs of the heart are never easy for outsiders to understand. But when they stray into the office, they, alas, become everyone's business. Which is why we asked, a while back, which Googler had put his marriage at risk over an affair with a coworker. As commenter notelling correctly guessed after we ran a blind item, it's Omid Kordestani, Google's top sales executive. Kordestani's no mere sales guy, however. For one, he's worth $2.2 billion, thanks to his Google shares. And inside the Googleplex, he's referred to as the company's "business founder," responsible for the fabulously successful money machine that is AdWords. With his stunningly beautiful and intelligent wife, Bita, shown above to the left, Kordestani might seem to have it all. But all was not enough.

Can Google build up a hard-charging, Glengarry Glen Ross-style sales team? Somehow, I doubt it. The culture clash between Google's fact-driven, soft-spoken engineers and the raw-meat eaters it needs to get Madison Avenue's dollars seems insurmountable. But nonetheless, Google's HR department seeking an Alex Baldwin type to serve as a "mini-CEO," shaking cash out of Wall Street's big investment banks as a "business relationship manager." Funny, I thought Google already had a mini-CEO. Isn't his name Eric Schmidt?

News.com's Beyond Binary blog reports that Microsoft and Facebook are close to a deal that could value Facebook as high as $15 billion. If true, it will be a heartbreaking outcome for the Google team that poured weeks into making a deal happen. But for Google itself? Not so much. We hear CEO Eric Schmidt has been a skeptic of the deal from the beginning, and he can go back to talking up Orkut, Google's big-in-Brazil social network, and Google's ad deal with MySpace. For Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who bowed and scraped in multiple meetings to make a deal happen? Well, he'll get to write a big check, and subsidize Facebook's ever-growing ad network. One outside possibility: What if Facebook got rights to sell targeted ads when Facebook users visit Microsoft-owned websites? That would be the ultimate cherry on top.

Miss Google's earnings gloatfest yesterday? The company reported revenues of $4.23 billion, an increase of 57 percent over last year, and profits of $1.07 billion, up 15.6 percent increase just over the prior quarter. CEO Eric Schimdt's deep analysis? "It's obvious to us that our model works very well." Financial analysts from around the world managed to take all the obnoxious gloating in stride. Here's how they've adjusted their target share prices.

THE PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO — Thursday evening, Google cofounder Sergey Brin strode down the main hallway of this historic hotel. Pacing him step for step was Google executive Megan Smith, part of the team negotiating a fraught deal with Facebook. A Valleywag spy camera caught the pair heading into Maxfield's for dinner with an associate from Greylock closely involved in the firm's investment in Facebook. The meeting was hastily arranged only hours after Brin participated in Google's quarterly earnings call, with Brin rushing up to San Francisco. Why the hurry?

"We're not a media company." — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "I've heard that somewhere before." — Web 2.0 Summit program chair John Battelle, referring to Google CEO Eric Schmidt's denial, later recanted, that he was running a media company.

The New York Times confirms the news, first reported on Valleywag last week, that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt are buying a Boeing 757 to add to their growing fleet of jetliners. [Bits]

Recently, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was spotted purchasing "Mine's Bigger," the book about the yacht obsessions of Kleiner Perkins founder Tom Perkins. Sure, Perkins's firm invested in the search behemoth. But why would Schmidt purchase a book detailing the methods Perkins used to ensure that he had the most spectacular yacht in the world? He hardly needs lessons on oneupmanship. After all, Schmidt already owns a stake in the Google founders' party plane, believed to be the world's largest private jet. And he's likely helping Larry and Sergey add to their fleet. One can only marvel at how deep Schmidt's inferiority complex must run, if he feels he needs to take tips from Perkins. After the jump, the full nerdspotting episode:

How many planes does one man need? Or, more precisely, three men? Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin already own, with CEO Eric Schmidt, an extensively remodeled 767, pictured here in New Zealand. Schmidt, by himself, owns at least one Gulfstream V (some reports say he has two). But we now hear that the Google trio are buying a 757. While smaller than the widebody 767, the 757 is still a commercial airliner, considerably bigger than most private jets. So why would Page, Brin, and Schmidt need four planes between them?

We hear that Marcy Simon, the PR consultant briefly installed in Google's New York office, is more than a mere mistress to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The rumors are resplendent: That Schmidt funded Simon's acrimonious divorce; that he is separating from his wife Wendy; that he is buying a $25 million Manhattan apartment in which to live with Simon. But why should anyone care about such tawdry personal details? If the latter two bits of hearsay have any truth to them, then shareholders should be extremely worried.

Marcy Simon, left, the girlfriend of married Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is no longer a PR consultant at Google. So much for her reign as the Duchess of West Chelsea. The terms of separation are unclear: Simon has maintained to friends that she quit, while other insiders say Google executives Elliot Schrage and David Lawee fired her, with Schmidt stepping out of the matter. Schmidt's recusal may not be the only way in which he's staying out of Simon's affairs. Rumor is that Schmidt is now seeing Kate Bohner, right, a journalist and ex-wife of author Michael Lewis. No word on whether a Google gig is forthcoming for Bohner, though she does have a channel on the Google-owned YouTube.

We've got the answer on what Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are doing in Seville, the recent destination of their converted 767 airliner, the Google Jet. They're attending a massive company get-together, Be Connected 2007, in the Spanish city, along with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. According to this Spanish blog, more than 3,000 people are attending, including a big contingent, tipsters say, from Google's Zurich office. "The restaurants are packed with Googler," reports a besieged Sevillero. They're being entertained with free meals — no change from the ordinary, pampered life of a Googler there — as well as performance by French music group Gipsy Kings. The conference runs through tomorrow.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. I'm not sure if Euripides, the Greek playwright, had Google's management team in mind when he wrote that, but it sure fits. Google, despite the occasional lost deal, billion-dollar lawsuit, and PR black eye, continues to succeed spectacularly as a business. "Somehow they continue shitting more money than you or i could realistically comprehend," writes one Valleywag reader. Indeed. And that money is driving the people who run Google insane. CEO Eric Schmidt's cosseting of girlfriend Marcy Simon with a plum PR job is just the latest, most blatant sign of that madness.

A Google spokesperson obliquely concedes, in a follow-up item on Valleywag's scoop, that Marcy Simon, CEO Eric Schmidt's gal pal, is working as a consultant at the company. [New York Post]