Larry Page Once Was Mark Zuckerberg

"I’m CEO, bitch." That’s reportedly what Facebook CEO, Marck Zuckerberg, had printed on his initial business cards.

Immature? Certainly. Arrogant? Absolutely. Plausible? Given Zuckerberg’s penchant for wearing sandals to meetings, yes.

Yet the same charges apparently can be leveled at another tech founder, Larry Page of Google, whose fawning press clips have been the opposite of Zuckerberg's. As reported by Ken Auletta in last week's New Yorker, Page not only flouted common courtesy in a meeting with media mogul Barry Diller; his co-founder, Sergey Brin, seems not to have minded a whiff. (In fact, in a 2003 meeting with Viacom COO, Mel Karmazin, Brin “arrived late and rollerbladed into the room, out of breath and wearing a T-shirt and gym shorts.”)

Here’s the Diller anecdote:

Barry Diller, the C.E.O. of I.A.C., a diverse collection of Internet sites, including Ask.com and Match.com, recalled visiting Page and Brin in the early days of Google. Diller was disconcerted that Page, even as they talked, stared fixedly at the screen of his P.D.A. “It’s one thing if you’re in a room with 20 people and someone is using his P.D.A.,” Diller recalled. “I said to Larry, ‘Is this boring?’”

“No. I’m interested. I always do this,” Page said.

“Well, you can’t do this,” Diller said. “Choose."

“I’ll do this,” Page said matter-of-factly, not lifting his eyes from his handheld device.

“So I talked to Sergey,” Diller said. “I left thinking that more than most people they were wildly self-possessed.”

Indeed. Were I in Diller’s shoes, I think I would have pulled a Johnny Drama (see above video), said “I’ll do this,” and walked out the door. Rudeness is not Googley, I don’t care who you are.

What’s more, in Google's early days, Page was nobody. For comparison, can you imagine the President of the United States, an avid BlackBerrier himself, thumbing away on his PDA during a meeting with another head of state?

It would never, and should never, happen. Rude is rude.