Auletta describes how [Larry] Page couldn’t stop staring at his handheld device during a meeting between the founders and mogul Barry Diller. Diller told him to choose between it and their conversation. “I’ll do this,” Page replied, not raising his eyes.

Rather than take questions from analysts directly, Google has asked Wall Street’s finest to submit their questions through a service called Google Moderator, and is only responding to questions that receive the most votes from other analysts. The selected questions are then read out in a studious monotone by a moderator.

This is an interesting idea.  I don’t know a ton about the evolution of the earnings call convention, but I can imagine such a process (like most conventions) has some built-in inefficiencies and Google Moderator may be one way to ensure that the most relevant questions are asked of executives.  However, one part of the process seems highly inefficient:

There is no chance for analysts to put executives on the spot directly or – most importantly – ask follow-up questions when answers are less than complete.

In contrast, Intel bent over backwards to give analysts more time for thoughtful questions this week, by issuing its CFO’s prepared remarks before the conference call and reducing the usual scripted blather to give more time for questions and answers.

I can’t figure out what the point of trying to hone in on the best questions is if you are not going to provide ample opportunity for follow-up.

To be clear, this unwritten agreement was that Google would not go after Apple employees, and vice versa. However, employees of both companies were free to apply to the other company on their own, we’re told. That’s a small, but important difference as the practice of going after other company’s talent, also known as “poaching”, is considered to be an important component of healthy competition in the market.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was such an agreement. It need not have been verbalized (since both parties may not have wanted to fracture the relationship by having their recruiters target top talent), although it likely was. With the spat over Google Voice presumably leading to Schmidt’s exit from the board (as well as the general fact that they truly are starting to overlap in a number of areas) I would imagine the reigns might be loosened a bit when it comes to locating and recruiting major talent from both firms. Additionally, ending the talent détente would go some way towards dealing with the current Justice Department investigation into hiring practices in the tech sector.