Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were hoping to be throwing some massive mile-high parties by now. Instead their party plane is weighed down by lawsuits.

According to a story in today's Wall Street Journal, Page and Brin's private jet is the subject of multiple lawsuits over its renovations -- originally budgeted to take ten months and cost $10 million. Page and Brin bought the used Boeing 767 widebody, designed to carry 180 passengers, as a private jet last year and promised to use it to take lots of their friends to places like Africa.

Hey, I might like to do things like that if I was a billionaire. Don't worry, shareholders. The tab for the jet is not on Google's books. This is a private plane, technically owned by a holding company called Blue City Holdings, LLC.

The plans for the plane reportedly were to include a "lounge" for Google Chief Exec Eric Schmidt, two "state rooms" for Brin and Page, a dining room, and additional seating for passengers (near the back, of course). Apparently designer Leslie Jennings had to accommodate strange requests from Brin and Page, including having hammocks installed hanging from the plane's ceiling. I'm imagining a tropical feeling at 35,000 feet right now, maybe.

Page and Brin had reportedly had a few spats over the size of the beds in their bedrooms. Schmidt reportedly had to step in and say, "Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom."

 

The question begs regarding the enigmatic power structure behind Google: just who runs the place? Common wisdom says that it's Eric Schmidt, the former Novell and Sun Micro executive who founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin brought in to run the company some years ago. But, Google is an uncommon company and conventional wisdom sometimes takes a backseat to what comes out of the Google machine.

It's a very good thing for Google the company to have a very recognizable CEO as the frontman-face of the company. But, many bets are that Google is still "run" (read: evangelized) by founders Page and Brin, and sure: there needs to be fiscal discipline in place and standard corporate structure to keep Google from imploding on itself as its scale and growth continue to blast away. But, again -- who really runs Google? My bet is on the employees (down-up management, if you will) more than any leader dictating what Google does (up-down management). Is this a good thing for investors? A-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y.

In the annual Google shareholder's meeting last week, Sergey Brin -- co-founder of the company -- responded in a very neat and tidy way to an investor's questioning whether Google stock would soon split so that the shares could become more affordable to the everyday investor. I, for one, loved his response, although I was not surprised -- Googlefolk are generally straight-up and speak their minds about such things.

Brin's response was that Google had no plans to split the common stock -- or do away with the dual-class stock structure -- since it was in the investor's best interest to heavily research GOOG stock and then make a decision on whether to support and help own the company by buying shares. This response, which is needed more often than not in the market, is a good reminder that we all need to do our due diligence before buying stock, something that the everyday investor often fails to do.

Here was Brin's response: "We'd rather not have that shareholder who says on a whim, '$20 bucks a share seems cheap, I think I'll buy it,' " -- and then he emphasized the research one should do before owning any piece of any public company. Kudos, and excellent advice. A low share price may mean an average individual investor can purchase more shares, but in no way reflects that the stock is actually inexpensive.

Last week Microsoft's Bill Gates expressed regret about being the world's richest man. When I read this, I was reminded of the expression, "be careful what you wish for, you might get it."

Before launching into an analysis of how Gates could be toppled from his throne, it's worth noting that I've admired Microsoft and wondered whether it's lost its elbow room. I praised Microsoft's ability to adapt to change in two of my books, The Technology Leaders and Value Leadership. But in the last several years, Microsoft seems to have lost its mojo as I noted in these interviews by Red Herring and The Washington Post.

Here's a surprise. The biggest threat to Gates's top rank on the Forbes 400 comes not from the number two on the list, but from numbers 15 and 16. According to that September 2005 list, Gates's net worth totaled $51 billion. Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett came in second at $49 billion. And he was followed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen ($22.5B), Dell's Michael Dell ($18B) and Oracle's Larry Ellison ($17B). Spots six through 12 were occupied by descendants of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, and heiresses from Cox Enterprises and Fidelity.

Google continues to demonstrate its particular brand of goofy-yet-financially sound thinking, as the company indicated in a proxy filing yesterday. CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page will collect $1 in salary for 2006, just as they did for 2005. According to the filing, "Their primary compensation continues to come from returns on their ownership stakes in Google. As significant stockholders, their personal wealth is tied directly to sustained stock price appreciation and performance, which provides direct alignment with stockholder interests."

(On a multiples basis, however, they might have the highest bonuses anywhere; Brin was paid $1,723 in bonus, with Schmidt and Page collecting a tidy $1,630, over 1600 times their annual salaries!)

Google also announced that the company intends to forgo dividends to its shareholders "in the foreseeable future."