You may not know this if you're not in the search freak industry but these Yahoo and Google guys are a bit like Roman Catholic nuns. They think they are God. At least close to him.
They never travel in groups of less than 20. I have no idea why except that everything at Google seems to require massive logistics and planning and scheduling, and a series of pre-planning meetings to discuss the later planning meetings to discuss whatever the actual meeting is. I swear the execs there can't take a dump unless it's on their calendar. It´s like with C. And before they go they have to find three other dudes to take with them. Yeah. Anyhoo.
This visit in New York was the top brass, with Page and about two dozen of his thugs and flacks and bodyguards and yes-men and shoeshine boys. They rolled up in armored SUVs and they were all wearing suits but they'd taken off their ties and stuffed them in their pockets in an attempt to be cool. (Like Christina girl dreaming of 500 million bucks for her dump). You could see the bulges.
Page had a guy with him whose job, it appeared, was simply to tell him where he was and the name of whatever guys he was meeting. When I came down the guy was whispering to Page and then Page walked toward me with this big jock smile and I saw him very quickly glance down at a little card in his hand and he said, "Hey, uh," (glance down again), "Jonathan, well, it's great to see you, and thanks so much for making time to see us."
And he gives me the big phony salestard handshake and says, "And I'm here on behalf of the Google Corporation to tell you personally how much we value your business and how much it means to us to have you as a customer." I'm looking at him like, What the frig? Getty customer of Google Image Search? Just because of 60,000 square feet sublease you think you can sound such old familiar with me?
His handler dude grabs his sleeve and they do this little huddle where the handler is whispering to Page and Page says, "Huh? Who? Where? Wait a minute, this is Jonathan Klein? Jonathan Klein of Getty Images? But what's he doing-- oh, we're at Getty? This is Getty? Right here? Oh Jesus." Then he just looks back at me as if I couldn't hear what he just said and he's like, "Well, the famous Mr. Jonathan D. Klein of Getty Images, man oh man, do I like what you're doing out here! Man, with those micro stock images. Wow! My kids love them."
Now someone got a barf bag?
My guys have arranged to take the dweebs on a dopey do-nothing tour of a fake image shoowroom that we've set up, just something to keep them busy and walking around for thirty minutes until we can get rid of them. So we get to this area where we've got our best RM product line on display and Page is looking at an image and gets all excited about these "beautiful micro stock images."
I tell him that they're not micro stock, they're high end RM. He seems kind of confused for a moment. Then he goes, "Wow, are you getting into that game too? Smart move, if you are. But the big money is in consumer space."
So right. Whatever. There's no point to any of this, it's purely a meet-and-greet. Smart ass he is he called in March and introduced himself, "Um, any smaller expenses, like tea or milk and media acquisitions Google can pay out of petty cash, eh?"
Now he stands there shaking his head and whistling, his guys over at Google have told him "stay out of that picture business though. No money there. Just a huge sink hole." And he goes, "Wow. I'm sure you'll do really well with these images, no worries." Common tactical tricks dudes like him play. I´m used to it. I play´em all the time. Hehe.
Right. So we walk along and he asks me if I ever played any football in college, I tell him no, he tells me he played college football and was a lineman and man oh man it was a different game back in the old days, different game, you didn't have the equipment that these kids have today, why the helmets were just these cheap plastic things with barely any padding, can you believe that? I start thinking "Is he dumb or just plain retarded?," so I tell him, Yes, I can believe that, for sure.
By then we're back in the lobby and he says, "Well, uh," (glances down at card in hand again) "Jonathan, thanks again for letting us come visit and thank you again for being such a great partner, and you've got to come visit us in Mountain View sometime and we'll play some golf. You play any golf? Right guys? We gotta get this guy out on the golf course! Don't we?"
Then Tom and I just stood in the lobby watching them all waddle their fat asses out to their armored SUVs, putting their ties back on as they went. You know what? Bad thing is they´ll return soon.
