Eric Schmidt used to be the CEO of Google, and now he's not. But the company just decided to reward him with $106 million—100 in stock, six in cash—as an annual bonus. That's about $80 million more than the CEO of Goldman Sachs. It's also fucked up and insane.

When we first read over superstar tech capitalist Tim Draper's "Six Californias" plan to make Silicon Valley its own state, we were a little skeptical. Was dividing California into six new states a sound idea? Maybe—let's wait and see. A new government study shows there might be some snags, like forming an arbitrary zone of extreme American poverty.

A random Verizon customer service rep admitted that the telecom giant has been using its recent net neutrality victory to limit bandwidth to Netflix and Amazon AWS services. Verizon corporate denies it: "We treat all traffic equally."

Buried in AOL's summary of its 2014 employee benefits was a tweak to its retirement policy that the Washington Post says will "make 401(k)s worse for everyone." AOL must agree because an article about the bad corporate precedent was removed from the front page of the Huffington Post yesterday, although not from the website entirely.

A pending lawsuit against Uber says the smartphone car service is partially responsible for a little girl's death by encouraging illegal distracted driving. We looked at Uber's internal training materials, and it's easy to see how it could keep your eyes off the road.

One success never guarantees another: Chad Hurley, who helped bring the world YouTube, is bombing once again. His video-sharing service MixBit is dead following legal threats by Kanye West, and the parent company, Avos, is firing almost everyone. Updated:

This morning, the world woke up to two "humbled" letters from two chief executives: Satya Nadella and Mark Zuckerberg. But you didn't need to read their words that closely because the CEOs proceeded to repeat them—almost verbatim—on camera not long after.

Hey there, I'm glad we're watching CNBC together. Don't those Silicon Valley entrepreneurs look awful young? Especially that main one ringing the NASDAQ bell, with the spiky hair and shifty eyes?

Foursquare just struck a $15 million, non-exclusive licensing deal with Microsoft to "work Foursquare's data into its products." Now if Foursquare could just get the other apps that use its data, like Instagram, to start paying, it would be in stay in business.

Just because Bitcoin is the future doesn't mean its true believers don't respect tradition. Since May, the community has been hosting a poorly-attended trading pit in Union Square as an "homage to Wall Street." Now it's moved indoors to the newly-opened Bitcoin Center on Broad Street.

Every year, a chosen cadre of investors, high profile tech luminaries, and startup folk get together at the SV Angel Summit. A tipster tells us this year's confidential confab is happening today, with an off-the-record cocktail party and mayoral meet-and-greet this evening. Such fun! Let's look at the guest list.

Makers began as a documentary about the history of women's equality developed by AOL and PBS, but seems to have morphed into a brand of its own. Next week, Makers is hosting a three-day conference where Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Schmidt, Tim Armstrong, and others plan to "reset the agenda for women in the workplace in the 21st century."

Chairman Sandberg's Great Lean Forward isn't about advancing women, it's about advancing the right women—those who want to advance corporate America in turn. Maybe this is why the ostensibly feminist foundation chose to highlight Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen?

Dell is rumored to be laying off more than 15,000 employees, or about 15 percent of its staff, this week because of reduced demands for PCs. Never have the words "management has every conference room booked" sounded so ominous.

The boy king of NASDAQ has earned $3.4 billion dollars for himself this year alone, Bloomberg, reports, owing mostly to Facebook buoyant stock prices.. It's barely February.

Historically, introducing your internet-based company to a new audience via Super Bowl airtime hasn't always worked so well. But maybe Squarespace will wind up on the E*Trade side of things, rather than Lifeminders.com and the rest of the corpses.

San Francisco magazine says all the heat surrounding Bitcoin has attracted the kind of unsavory schemers you might have once found on the trading room floor. But they're not just trying to manipulate the Bitcoin market. Their plan of attack relies on the frantic hype surrounding new varieties of "altcoins," like say Dogecoin:

Ken Kurson, editor-in-chief of the New York Observer, confirmed to Valleywag that he has hired Ryan Holiday, author of the book Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, as the editor-at-large of its tech blog, Betabeat. In a statement, printed in full below, Holiday described the website as a "client."

Ed Lee is the mayor of San Francisco by the grace of that city's deep-pocketed technologists. He continues to return the favor in both deeds and rhetoric: a new interview with Time has Lee explaining that his city's middle class isn't like yours: