Special Fred dentons it bigtime


See his big prediction from last week that I would be announcing a huge Google partnership at the keynote yesterday. Money quote: “One announcement I’m almost sure of, however : A far reaching, cloud computing partnership with Google.” Better yet is that Fred not only dentoned it but he also scobled it, when he proclaimed, “Cloud computing is the hot new thing in the world of technology.” Then he pulls a loomis (as in Carol) by making sure he lets you know that he has special access to the world’s most powerful people: “Schmidt said in April in an interview with me …” Right. Because Eric Schmidt has never said this same thing to anyone else in the entire world. Just to you, special Fred. This technique comes from Fred’s training at Fortune, where reporters are always sitting in saunas with Andy Grove and playing ping pong with Sergey Brin and telling you all about it right at the top of their stories — just to let you know how cool and insidery and special they are, and how these important CEOs just love hanging out with Fortune writers and asking them for advice and hearing their big ideas. Guys and gals, let me give you a little hint: We’re playing you. Okay? We don’t like you. We don’t respect you. We friggin despise you. We laugh at you when you’re not around. We take you on the private jet because we know it makes you tingle like a little girl. And then you write nice things about us.

Fred, I’m starting to think our secret dossier on you wasn’t mean enough. By the way, in the spirit of “radical transparency,” how soon will see a mea culpa (that’s Portuguese for “apology”) from you on this one? We’re all sitting here holding our breath.