Go Chronicle! We were so pleased to see a piece of investigative local journalism on the front page of today's paper, as Verne Kopytoff digs into the relationship between Mayor Gavin Newsom and Google. Because Google's bidding on the citywide wireless project (wait, did we leave out the word "connect" somewhere in there?), some conflict of interest questions have been raised.

Well, all right, we'll spoil the article for you (don't read ahead if you love suspense!): turns out Gavin hasn't done anything ethically improper. But Google really likes him -- they invited him on their corporate retreats (he declined), offered him a flight to Switzerland for Davos (he paid them back the $1000 the ethics laws require, though the trip itself was worth about $16,000), and invited him to their Mountain View and Dublin offices (which he accepted). Google also tried to get Newsom to do them some favors (get an indie film permit (yes), and help them get approval for an office party on Pier 48 (no)). No conversations about the wireless project were seen.

It's sort of sad, though: Kopytoff turned up a bunch of emails from a Google assistant, asking "Larry [Page, founder] wanted to see if Mayor Newsom had any spare time this weekend to hang out with him. Larry currently has Mayor Newsom's cell phone number but wasn't sure if it was current." Doesn't this make Larry sound like a doof? If you guys were really friends, wouldn't you call him Gavin? Plus, even have Newsom's cell phone number (though after SFist Jackson's forays into actually calling it, we probably don't have a current one either).

Unrelated, but entertaining, picture of Gavin from 2004.

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