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A Coveted Landing Strip for Google's Founders

Posted by samzenpus on from the he-who-has-the-gold-makes-the-rules dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The NYT reports, "In the annals of perks enjoyed by America's corporate executives, the founders of Google may have set a new standard: an uncrowded, federally managed runway for their private jet that is only a few minutes' drive from their offices. For $1.3 million a year, Larry Page and Sergey Brin get to park their customized wide-body Boeing 767-200, as well as two other jets used by top Google executives, on Moffett Field, an airport run by NASA that is generally closed to private aircraft."

6 of 427 comments (clear)

  1. Party airplane by pQueue · · Score: 3, Interesting
    While being jealous of a wide-body "party airplane" landing right across the street from their office, I think this might be a good thing for NASA and Moffett Field. NASA could certainly use the money.

    I worked at the base a few years ago and the runway wasn't being used most of the time, except by the 129th rescue wing of the Air National Guard and the occasional astronaut trainer jet. The base doesn't really have any residential neighbors but that noise would carry a long distance I assume.

    If you work there and fly a private plane you can already fly to work (at least that's what I heard when I was there). But of course large commercial size jets is a different story entirely.

  2. Re:Larry's had that for a while by thogard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Its because making it big is 99% luck and less than 1% hard work. These guys made their money because they were in the right place at the right time which lead to meeting the right people (when the people with the money were willing to spend some). They also lucked out getting into a university that helped get them into the right place. Look at all the other dot com millionaires and look at how lucky they were to be in the right place at the right time. Even BillyG lucked out to have contacts into major companies like IBM thanks to his mother. With out her assistance, there would have been no way his company could have ever gotten the meetings that landed them their big contracts.

    I know plenty of people who worked harder but got no where mostly due to things out of their control.

  3. worth 4 tenths of a cent per share? by Chapter80 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a shareholder, I see this as an egregious waste of company money. Sure their time is valuable, but so is my investment.
    Let's keep this in perspective.

    Google has 312 million shares outstanding. $1.3 million dollars per year, spread over 312 million shares, is only 4 tenths of a cent per share. As a shareholder, if you are worried about that, you have taken your eye off the ball.

  4. Re:not evil? how about global warming? by Gordonjcp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, let's compare - a Boeing 767-200 burns (on average) about 5 tonnes of fuel per hour, or about 1500 gallons of Jet A-1. That would be enough to run my (not terribly fuel-efficient) car for around 50,000 miles.

  5. Re:Larry's had that for a while by rolfwind · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are lots of people who go into MIT but never hit it big. (I'm sure they were moderately successful.)

    There are a lot of people who work hard - and the majority of 1st gen. billionaires are no exception. But reading Bill Gates history, I believe there was a definite element of luck there - right place at the right time - along with some cunning to get where they are at.

    With the same skill set and drive, just with different luck, I could definitely see Gates as head of just another software company and be worth "only" $50-100 million.

    I don't think he's the exception among the billionaires. I could see a lucky break at the difference between moderately sucessful multi-millionaire businessmen no one heard of and the ultra-rich - in fact it seem to be that the once in the lifetime jackpot is what propels them to ridiculous wealth.

    The one exception to this I think would be Steve Jobs - that guy could probably make fortunes several times over starting from scratch.

  6. Re:Larry's had that for a while by shaitand · · Score: 4, Interesting

    'Well considering they probably have 10 accountants who work year after year on schemes on how to get Larry and Sergey's taxes minimized, it probably is taxpayer money. Then again I'm one of those crazy people who think you should just pay whatever your tax is without trying to do a dozen shady schemes in order to avoid it.'

    You know I hear people complaining about this crap in Fortune 500 corporations and it sounds fine and dandy. It isn't until you look at the little guy that you realize why there are so many republicans fighting for these tax breaks.

    I am a small business owner. I am incorporated because if anything were to ever go wrong it would basically end me financially ever after if I were not. Every dime I make gets taxed twice. The corporation is taxed, and then I am taxed. You bet I do everything legally possible to avoid taxation because I am paying double taxes! Forget private jets, those tax breaks impact my grocery budget.

    This problem doesn't change in a bigger company, just the number of people involved in the scale. All of the profits are paid to employees or shareholders. The employees are taxed and the shareholders are taxed, in many cases the shareholders also invested after-tax money.

    The solution is simple, abolish corporate taxes altogether since their profits are either reinvested or paid out to others who have to report them as income. Furthermore the payouts to shareholders should be taxed as income because for your average corporation the one or three shareholders are the owners.

    I also think all car expenses, utilities, rent, phone, internet, and food should be deductions on personal income tax.