Taken as a whole, the Googlers' cash is one of the largest corporate donations to Obama's inaugural committee. Marissa Mayer, an early Google employee who now oversees its search engine, and David Drummond, the company's top lawyer, also donated, as did YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley and Dick Costolo, the former CEO of FeedBurner, an advertising startup acquired by Google last year,

Unlike election spending, donations to cover the expenses of an inauguration are relatively unlimited. Obama's committee has capped donations at $50,000.

It's a time-honored way to win influence. Michael Dell, CEO of the eponymous computer maker, gave $250,000 for George W. Bush's second inaugural in 2004.

That the Googlers are paying up shows the IPO-borne wealth of the company's top executives; the closeness of their ties to Obama, who has cited Google's management style as an inspiration for the structure of his campaign; and the company's maturation as a political player in Washington, D.C. Eric Schmidt's oddly late endorsement of Obama, weeks before the election, was the culmination of this process. And this injection of inaugural cash is just a down payment.

What do they want in return? One of the last acts of the Bush Administration's antitrust cops was to nix a deal for Google to sell ads on Yahoo's websites. With Google set on expanding its dominance of online search advertising into other fields, is it any surprise that its executives would welcome their new best friend to the White House?

(Yang) said 'If we do this deal with Google, Yahoo will become part of Google's pole and Microsoft,' he said, 'would not be strong enough in this market to remain a pole of its own.

Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan disputed Smith's retelling of the meeting. Google's top lawyer, David Drummond, told lawmakers that "Google and Yahoo will remain fierce competitors. This agreement will not remove a competitor from the field."

Advertisers disagree with Drummond. Ad buyers have told us that the Yahoo-Google deal will likely drive the prices they pay for search ads up by 25 percent. Yesterday, Matthew Crowley, the chief marketing officer of AT&T subsidiary Yellowpages.com, echoed the sentiment.

If [the Google Yahoo search deal] is allowed to happen, it seems obvious that some advertisers will have a diminishing ability to play Google and Yahoo against one another in a competitive marketplace. The result would be less choice and higher prices for advertisers — especially smaller-scale advertisers that do not have the heft or resources to ensure the best deal possible. The agreement poses a significant danger not only to competition for internet search advertising and to the broader internet economy, but to Yahoo's continued viability as a strong independent competitor.

BoomTown's Kara Swisher caught up with each company's legal man in D.C. in the video embedded up top. Our favorite part: Googler David Drummond's slick-as-Vaseline false modesty over Google's prospects in the brand advertising market, around the 1:30 mark.

AT&T can save the Internet from certain doom, if it's just left alone to build new fiber-optic lines for its exclusive use. If AT&T doesn't get its way in making sure laws aren't passed that mandate "network neutrality" and limit AT&T's control over Internet traffic on its network, it will pick up its cables and go home, Cicconi is more or less implying. Why don't we hear Google's top lawyer, David Drummond, going around threatening to take away our Web searches if he doesn't get his way in Washington? Because Drummond's not as good as his job.

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer — and noted Obama supporter — claims Google is "pleased to work with the Republican National Convention to give citizens around the world easy access to convention information and new ways to engage in the event." I bet. Google is so pleased, it didn't feel it necessary to issue its own press release touting the partnership.

The reality: Google is trying to beef up its GOP lobbying, and the partnership will present plenty of opportunities to do so, in the guise of touting Google products. Drummond may be dextrous enough to deliver simultaneous reacharounds to both left and right, but many of his colleagues may not have the same political skills. No wonder Google PR is staying out of this one. (Photo by AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Not many in the Silicon Valley money crowd support Hillary Clinton. The notable exception is John Doerr, who now counts former VP Al Gore as a colleague at Kleiner Perkins.

The list is lengthier for Barack Obama.

• David Anderson, managing director, Sutter Hill Ventures
  
• John Thompson, Symantec CEO
  
• Gordon Eubanks, former Symantec CEO
  
• Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse
  
• Former California gubernatorial candidate, current Steve Jurvetson pal and Tesla Motors board member Steve Westly
  
• John Roos, CEO of law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
  
• Google execs David Drummond and Marissa Mayer
  
• Google.org director Larry Brilliant
  
• YouTube founder Chad Hurley
  
• VC Doug Hickey of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
  
• VC Stewart Alsop of Alsop Louie
  
• Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitielo
  
• Sequoia Capital venture capitalist Michael Moritz
  
• Craiglist founder Craig Newmark
  
• Netscape and Ning founder Marc Andreessen (who also supports Mitt Romney)

(Photo by azrainman)

It's common knowledge that the deal between YouTube and Google was consummated at a nondescript Denny's restaurant in Redwood City. What hasn't been told is that David Drummond, pictured above, Google's head of corporate development, and Gideon Yu, then YouTube's CFO, now Facebook's, spent the night hashing out the deal in the restaurant. They then began signing the term papers in Denny's parking lot around 3 a.m.

A local police officer was patrolling the area at that same moment. The cop saw the Asian-American Yu and African-American Drummond, dressed casually in jumpsuits and baseball hats — standard uniforms for late and long negotiations — huddled over the hood of a car signing the paperwork. He pulled into the parking lot, drove towards the men, turned his spotlight on the duo and started suspiciously questioning their actions through the loudspeaker of his police cruiser. The two men, startled, had to explain to the officer that they were at the cusp of a major business deal — and not the kind of deal the officer might have first imagined.

After several minutes of interrogation, Yu and Drummond satisfied the officer that they were, indeed, top executives at Google and YouTube. He finally backed off — and Yu and Drummond proceeded to ink the deal that changed the Valley.