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.

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."