Food is part of the Google myth: All you can eat, three meals a day, with plenty of room for your friends and family. No more. Following the curtailment of dinner service, Google is now restricting employees to two guest meals a month. Contractors and temps will not be allowed any guests at all. Google HR chief Laszlo Bock announced this change in a memo obtained by Valleywag. Some Googlers, we've heard, treated their families to free dinner every night; others took large amounts of food home with them on Friday nights, to last the weekend. The move is consistent with Google management's war on abuse of the company's perks; cofounder Sergey Brin, especially, has complained about Googlers' sense of entitlement. Yet it's likely to spark grousing. Googlers outside engineering are often poorly paid, and sneaking food home amounts to part of their salary. Google seems caught in a vicious circle of worsening morale: Discontent sparks abuse of perks; crackdowns on perk abuse sparks discontent. Read the memo to see Google's latest schoolmarmish turn:

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:

One of our sources with Google's ready-to-boil kitchens, whom we've nicknamed "Deep Fried," tells us that the employee-coddling search giant has a much bigger food problem than cutbacks on dinner — and a much bigger labor problem than a lack of work visas for its programmers. More than half of the contract workers who prepare and serve Googler's vast quantities of free food, our source claims, lack documentation that proves they have a legal right to live and work in the United States. Are they illegal aliens? The point is that Bon Appétit, the management company which runs Google's cafes, has turned a blind eye — as has Google, until recently. A former chef tells us Google would frequently let workers who didn't have proper credentials return to work with fresh documents, under new names.Undocumented workers chop vegetables and wash dishes throughout the food industry; why would Google's cafes be any different? The hypocrisy of America's immigration rules isn't the issue, though; it's the foolishness of Google's management. Even if everybody does it, Google executives claim that it runs its business differently — and better. Claiming the moral high ground may prove harder now. Google's chief people officer, Laszlo Bock, has lobbied Congress vigorously to expand the number of H-1B visas the company gets. Getting caught with an undocumented nanny has torpedoed many political careers. The next time he appears in Washington, D.C., don't you think Bock will get pointed questions from self-righteously huffy Congressmen why he doesn't think American citizens are fit to serve his employees' meals? Google, which has been feuding with Bon Appétit over the running of its kitchens for months, may be addressing the problem. "There are rampant rumors in all the kitchens that Guggenheim [sic] will be taking over the account come December," Deep Fried tells us — actually referring to Guckenheimer, a less highfalutin' food-service competitor to Bon Appétit. "Everyone is paranoid that when [Guckenheimer] comes in all the undocumented workers will get the can." If that happens, who will serve Googlers the free meals they've become accustomed to? We suggest Larry, Sergey, and Eric don hairnets and gloves. (Photo by midom)

Google's cafeterias have become such a point of pride for the company, even if it has to close a cafe now and again, that longtime AdWords customers recently received a spiral-bound copy of the Google cookbook title "Keyword: Delicious." If anything, the cookbook proves just how much fat there is to trim at the company's cafeterias — not one, but two of the recipes call for super-rich and expensive foie gras, or fatted goose liver. Included in the gift basket was a black apron emblazoned with Google's logo. Want to pick up a copy and eat like a Googler?Tough luck. They're not available to the public, yet. And we suspect this may be a limited edition. The introduction is written by John Dickman, Google's former director of food operations, who left the company amidst controversy in January, and now works at Apple.

Live by the fork, die by the fork. Now that Google is cutting back on its free food, where will its flacks woo journalists? Morale in Google's kitchens is rock-bottom, as leaderless workers try to keep understaffed cafes running, even as Google management insists they open new eateries. The last place Google's PR staff should want to entertain a reporter is in their cafes. The tragedy of it all: As we learn more about how the Googleplex's food operations fell apart, it sounds like Google executives' ego got in the way of thinking about the needs of employees — or the workers who keep them fed.The trouble started when Google hired John Dickman as its director of food operations. Dickman is married to Lisa McEuen, an executive at Bon Appétit. At the time, Bon Appétit and Google were two of the largest buyers of organic and sustainable food in the region; by picking up Google as a client, Bon Appétit gained considerable purchasing power. A source in Google's kitchens says that Dickman was "the reason Bon Appétit got the Google contract." But in exchange, Bon Appétit, a division of Compass Group, got a very testy client. A former Google chef who had his own ideas about how to run the cafes profitably said he tried to get founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt interested, but they didn't listen "because I didn't have a Stanford degree." Google's ethics cops have never looked askance at, say, Schmidt hiring his girlfriend for a high-profile PR gig, or Brin getting Google to invest in his wife's startup. But Dickman's marriage to a Bon Appétit executive raised eyebrows, and he left the company in January. Two top chefs followed him out the door. Josef Desimone went to Facebook, in March. Dickman himself went to Apple, and Nate Keller, a protégé of Google's first chef, Charlie Ayers, followed him there. Both Desimone and Keller took several members of the kitchen staff with them. "All management staff has quit within the last three months," says a source at Google. That may be an exaggeration, but if so, not by much. One issue that's been underplayed: The behavior of rank-and-file Googlers. "Pride is all cooks and dishwashers have," says a former Google chef. But Googlers, whose sense of self-aggrandized entitlement is already legendary in the Valley, have been taking out their frustrations on the people who dish out their food. Kitchen staffers are "invisible" to them, says a Google food worker — except when they somehow displease Googlers who expect free meals and servile deference, too. Google's cafes have always been at the heart of its PR strategy, helping to portray the company as generous to employees, dedicated to doing things differently, and caring about Mother Earth. Google PR director David Krane took on the replacement of original chef Charlie Ayers as the task he worked on in the 20-percent time Google gives employees to work on side projects. I can't remember the number of times Krane cajoled me to enjoy a free meal, courtesy of Google. He wouldn't want me there now. A Bon Appétit executive said in May that the company was planning to drop Google as a client. Arrogant, tightfisted, and argumentative, the Googlers were more trouble than the food-service contract was worth. Even so, Bon Appétit has been scrambling to patch things up. "The two founders of Bon Appétit come on site at least once a week," says a Googler. "Other representatives from Bon Appétit headquarters are on site every day — as visitors. It's a very sticky situation. The kitchen staff isn't being told anything. When dinner is cut how many jobs will be cut, too? The thing that really gets me is that the Googlers have no clue and will be asking us questions when dinner and other programs stop. They won't know the truth either." The company seems uninterested in letting Googlers know the truth. It's telling that Google PR won't go on the record to deny the cuts, though they're happy to persuade reporters on background that the cuts are limited. A spokeswoman, conveniently unnamed, told CNBC's Jim Goldman that the company had no idea where the rumor came from. Here's an idea for Google PR: Go down to a kitchen, and talk to the people who actually make the food you love to eat while chatting up reporters. They seem to be better informed than you are. (Photo by Jeromy Henry/Fortune)

Google's food cutbacks are more targeted than we'd first heard. Dinner will still be served in buildings which house engineers, according to a former Google chef who's made his own inquiries about the changes at the Googleplex cafeterias. Google's only eliminating the evening meal in cafes frequented by nontechnical employees. Somehow, this strikes us as worse for morale. If there were any doubt that Google's non-engineers were second-class citizens, consider it erased. No comp-sci degree? No dinner for you. (Photo by brettlider)

Palo Alto's architectural review board approved plans for a new three-building daycare center on San Antonio Road, just off Highway 101. The new facilities will hold 250 kids, along with another 80-kid daycare center planned for East Bayshore Road on the other side of the freeway. A report in the Palo Alto Daily News says, "A continuous driveway running from East Bayshore to San Antonio would link the planned complex to the one already approved." What I want to know: Where would that driveway cross the freeway? (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

There's no such thing as a free dinner. A worker at Google tells us the company is taking evening meals off the menu: "Google has drastically cut back their budget on the culinary program. How is it affecting campus? No more dinner. No more tea trolley. No more snack attack in the afternoon." The changes will be announced to Googlers on Monday. Workers at the Googleplex will remain amply fed, with free breakfast and lunch — dinner will be reserved for geeks only — but it's still a shocking cutback.Last year, when we aired the mildest speculation about Google cutting back on free food, commenters were outraged. Google has long milked its cafeterias for their publicity value; company executives have crowed about the company's resistance to recessions and its commitment to coddling its employees. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin even promised shareholders they'd add perks, rather than cut them. In 2004, they wrote:

This is not how the Google's story supposed to go: Google is closing offices in Dallas and Denver. The locations may well be duplicative — a Google Maps search shows three Dallas-area offices — but it doesn't fit the narrative of relentless, candy-colored expansion around the globe. What's next — overcharging employees for needlessly luxurious childcare? Oh, wait — that already happened.

And I thought I was joking about Robot Steve Jobs — Google is already developing the Cylon army that eventually attempts to destroy humanity. Can you suggest a better headline? Do so in the comments. The best one will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner: "Yeah? Is this Yahoo HQ? I heard you are running low on people." by G2GdoB2B. (Photo by Marcin Wichary)

Back in 2005, when I first made inquiries into the high-tech Japanese bidets now well-known to be installed around the Googleplex, the company was using the Toto Washlet S300. Now? The E200. What's the difference? $230 less in luxury, with the S300 selling for $749.99 at Faucet Depot and the E200 selling for a mere $519.99. [San Francisco Citizen] (Photo by Jim Herd)

Google no longer advertises subsidized daycare as a benefit to its employees. So why is the company building luxuriously unaffordable child-care centers at the behest of Susan Wojcicki, the sister-in-law of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and closing down Kinderplex, a more affordable center operated by an experienced Silicon Valley daycare provider, CCLC? If you can answer that one, you're probably clever enough at solving puzzles to qualify for a job at the Googleplex. According to internal memos obtained by Valleywag, Google executives promised in May that its new centers would not see a price hike of 75 percent. Instead, Google management hiked rates 68.34 percent — at the cost of reducing hours and increasing the ratio of children to teachers. Google is phasing in the hikes for currently enrolled children, and offering a scholarship program for the least well-off, writes Laszlo Bock, Google's top HR executive. What Bock never addresses: Why is Google spending shareholder money on a perk that it is now so ashamed of that it doesn't market it to its potential recruits as a reason to work at Google? The memos:

Life inside the Googleplex already resembles a daycare center, with its primary colors, bouncy exercise balls, and free food. But if you're a parent working at Google, daycare has become a nightmare. As recently as last July, Google advertised its Kinderplex child-care center as a perk, though the rates it charged weren't much below the market price. The reality: Googlers haven't been able to get their kids into the Kinderplex, thanks to a long waiting list, and the facility is now closing, being replaced by overpriced facilities designed at the behest of Susan Wojcicki, the multimillionaire sister-in-law of Google cofounder Sergey Brin and mother of four. Google employee-parents are up in arms — not over the price hike itself, but over the way the decision came down from on high.

Google's announcement today of a massive campus expansion was inevitable. Having taken over every last scrap of office park around it not occupied by neighbor Intuit, Google is expanding the Mountain View Googleplex to the west — and, more controversially, to the east, on land owned but poorly used by Nasa. Ignore the happy talk about Google and Nasa's scientific partnerships; those are an obvious fig leaf to cover the use of public land by a private entity. (Let's not even get started on Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt's sweetheart deal to park their party plane on Nasa grounds.) Google has grown to be a powerful employer in the Bay Area, and its wealthy executives donate freely to local politicians, so we should hardly expect the powers that be to stop it. What's good for Google is good for America, or so we'll be told.

Google's developer conference in San Francisco, Google I/O, is a temporary geek paradise, a replication of the Googleplex's lavish perks. Flight of the Conchords played last night. Google also provided puzzles. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington noticed that a binary code sequence on Google's T-shirt for the event spells "GOOGLE KO". A mistake? Or a test to see if readers are clever enough to notice that the top half of a "K" looks like an "I" and a slash?

Intrepid Jennifer 8. Lee has defied Google's blackout on photographs of the lego sculptures at its offices in New York's Chelsea. The New York Times reporter, stymied by Google's publicists, obtained images from a brave insider-who will no doubt soon be sweeping the floors at one of the internet monolith's server farms.

With a parking space at the giant hangar on Moffett Field run by NASA, Airship Ventures plans to buy a blimp and run pleasure cruises from the Googleplex's back yard to Napa Valley's wine country. To that end, the startup has secured $8 million in funding from wealthy sorts, including lead investor Esther Dyson. Airship Ventures can surely count on the legions of local steampunk fetishists to keep the waiting list for seats well padded, not to mention corporate-expensed junkets from Valley tech companies. After the jump, video of a Tokyo flyover in one of the Zeppelin NT airships the startup will use. (Illustration by Martin Luechinger)

Google

We listed the Googleplex as on of the top 10 workspaces in tech because of its amenities. But with its kindergarten campus color scheme, lava lamps, scooters, and ball pool, Google's headquarters often seem designed to to hide its most prevalent feature: gray cubicles. Anything to keep the drones from remembering that they're just one out of the corporation's 16,800 employees, we suppose. (Photos by titaniumdreads, emerce, tantek, revdancatt and yoz)

"I think maybe Google is the Hefner mansion of the 21st century. It too rises from a fantasy - what if you had all the information in the universe at your fingertips? - and it too has sensual amenities to ease the workload." — John Carroll, fearing for the future of the human race. [San Francisco Chronicle]

The recruiters at Binc interviewed current and former Googlers to compile a list of five reason to stay at the company and five reasons to go. At 1,054 words, a Googler would use up all of his 20 percent time reading it. Here's the 100-word version.