A Coveted Landing Strip for Google's Founders

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."

Comments

That's not evil...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's just badass.

Re:That's not evil...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's pretty cool because I imagined it going like this: Google: Hey, NASA... NASA: Hello, there, Google! Google: So you're running low on cash, huh? NASA: Yea... that damned "War on Terrorism" is raping our budget. Google: So $1.3 million a year would really help you then. NASA: We could do something with that... ok I suck at this... post anonymously FTW

Re:That's not evil...

[Anonymous Coward]

I suck

+1 Insightful

Larry's had that for a while

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I had something witty and intelligent to write, but I just got an email notification that a message just arrived from Northwest Airlines. I get to fly in economy, those guys get to fly in their own plane.

The only consolation is that I get to rack up miles while they don't. Are first class accomodations and free blowjobs from hand-selected stewardii worth the loss of airline mileage?

Sadly, I don't think I'll ever know.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[JordanL]

Does anyone else remember a time in American history when people would here something like this and go "I want to try and become like them" instead of "I want what they have" or "they can't have that because I don't"?

Why have we as a society become so filled with entitlement and laziness? If you have the money, you can get it. If you don't have the money, work for it. These guys were nobody's once upon a time as well... it's not like the American dream is dead, it's the American dreamer that's dead.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[mlk]

. For $1.3 million a year To me that sounds like is not "taxpayer funded".

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[thogard]

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.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[couchslug]

They are paying for the ramp space. No way is this a loss to the taxpayer (the ramp was already there) and it makes a few bucks for NASA. That much money more than covers their few launches and recoveries.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[JordanL]

Having an idea that works in the market is luck? Getting into MIT is luck?

I think if there is one thing that is just plain hard work, it's getting into MIT.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[rolfwind]

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.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[slashdot.org]

You make a comment deriding others' entitlement and laziness... when the article is about some guys getting a taxpayer funded private parking space so that they don't have to walk as far to the front door.

Actually, the taxpayer has been paying to maintain a perfectly usable, but practically unused airstrip because of your typical Bay Area NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).

The peninsula has many resources that can't be used because certain people, and forgive my generalization, who are often paying negligible property taxes thanks to California's brilliant (NOT) Prop 13, want to keep things the way they were 50 fucking years ago. That's great when other people are paying for the facilities and infrastructure that those assholes enjoy on a daily basis.

At the same time tons of people with an otherwise considered extremely well paying job (that bring in the actual tax $$$) will only be able to rent or perhaps if they have dual income they can get a $800K condo with $400/mo HOA fees. Interestingly enough I never hear those people complain about stuff like this.

I'd like to see how people that pay tax as if their property was worth $200K would like to live in a place in California that _actually_ is worth $200K. See how much they would object to some rich dudes parking a plane somewhere if that also meant that finally electricity would come to town.

If this is the beginning of the erosion of the out of balance power of the NIMBYs, then that is excellent news. Unless of course you'd prefer the bay area to become a Route 66 (See also: Cars).

Anyways, I'm glad to see that Anna Eshoo had a healthy response to this.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[jcr]

Its because making it big is 99% luck and less than 1% hard work.

That may be true in Hollywood, but it's not the case in the business world. Every rich person I know worked like crazy for years before they made it, and most of them still work sixty hours or more a week because they got rich doing something they love to do.

These guys made their money because they were in the right place at the right time

Don't forget that they also had the crucial insight that links to a page were a more useful ranking indication than keyword hits. Google isn't a case of catching IBM's fumble like Microsoft did. They had a great idea, they implemented it, and they figured out how to get paid for it.

-jcr

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[thogard]

Somewhere I have my rejection letter from UC Berkeley. It said they had over a million applications since they filled up and they didn't even bother considering my application. That was when UCB had a better comp-sci program than MIT did. I applied the 1st day I could based on when my high school did its testing. That was just bad luck and completely out of my control. I had a better chance of getting into Stanford or MIT than most students in my state but I went to one of the best high schools in the state and both schools limited how much aid could go to people from one high school and I lost out even if my parents had enough cash to pay for either school. There is a huge amount of luck required to get into the best schools in the world.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[speaker of the truth]

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.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[speaker of the truth]

Having a good grade is often reliant upon having good parents who create an environment conducive to you giving a shit about school.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[evilviper]

If you don't have the money, work for it.

Nobody works their way to becoming multi-billionaires... There's absolutely nothing one man could do that could possibly be worth that kind of compensation.

They, like many others, hit the stock-market lottery. There's enough stupid people that will buy stocks for millions of times what they're actually worth, that early buyers can become billionaires just because they happen to be there.

No amount of (legal) work can guarantee you that level of riches. You can only hope to be in the right place, at the right time. You'd do just as well to buy a $1 "Power-Ball" lottery ticket as to invest many thousands of dollars (of cash, or your time/service) in some start-up, hopping it'll be the next ridiculously overhyped and unbelievably overpriced stock-market darling.

it's not like the American dream is dead, it's the American dreamer that's dead.

That's crap. There are more American entrepreneurs making themselves rich right now than there ever have been before. Few or none are naive enough to believe they can work enough to make themselves billionaires on merit.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[thogard]

All the very rich people I know worked about as hard as most of my successful friends. Thats based on a small sample sizes (no billionaires but a handful of those who got 9 digit checks). They all were very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. I know lots of others others who worked hard and had it all destroyed by bad luck.

Google making money out of the idea was a result in being able to talk to the right people at the right time. They didn't have any magic technology at hand but they were unique compared to their competition in that they had enough resources to demo their early work. They could pull that off because they had been in the right place at the right time a bit before they where in the right place earlier. Most what is now considered their innovation was all discussed on usenet news groups long before their research was done. You can even look it up in google groups if you want.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[smittyoneeach]

If we're going to throw around implications of "theft wrapped in a perfectly legal prophylactic", let's also consider the amount of economic value they inject into the economy via their products and services, not to mention jobs they bring to strange places by dropping big data centers in the hinterland.
Google is a an economic driver, not a load.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[Guppy06]

"Every rich person I know worked like crazy for years before they made it,"

Original poster didn't deny this, but simply pointed out that, for every rich person that "worked like crazy for years before they made it," there's 99 people who worked just as hard for just as long (if not moreso) that didn't.

It's not that they don't work hard, but that working hard isn't the deciding factor.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[GeckoX]

Just to note: There is approx. one billionaire per 4.5 million people in the US.

Lots of people dream that dream, but know it's just that, a dream. The chances of attaining that are insane. And living your life out striving to attain that...well, lets just say you're in for a lot of disappointment.

Besides, for a lot of people anymore, that's not the dream they want to attain. There are other worthy dreams that don't center around becoming one of the richest people on the block.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think Google's accountants are crooked?

I doubt it, at least for now, considering the scrutiny applied to corporate books these days. If you assume they aren't then they wouldn't be doing their jobs if they didn't take advantage of every possible avenue to minimize Google's taxes. So whether they have 10 tax accountants or 10,000 they are likely paying all the tax they are legally required to pay in the face of 'breaks' specifically designed to enourage business.

It is also notable that corporate taxes are little more than proxy taxes on individuals. They are part of the cost of doing business, like the price of landing strips, and are passed on to customers through the price of goods and services.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[Reality Master 101]

All the very rich people I know worked about as hard as most of my successful friends.

A ditch digger works hard. It's not just about working "hard", it's about working on the right things.

They didn't have any magic technology at hand but they were unique compared to their competition in that they had enough resources to demo their early work.

Almost everything looks obvious after the fact. The wheel is "obvious", yet very few cultures actually invented it.

The fact that Google is *still* the best search engine ought to tell you something about the difficulty.

Most what is now considered their innovation was all discussed on usenet news groups long before their research was done.

Talk is cheap, and ideas are cheaper. The devil is in the details.

I know lots of others others who worked hard and had it all destroyed by bad luck.

There's no such thing as bad luck. *Everybody* encounters bad luck. There is only lack of preparation for disaster and lack for foresight for consequences.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[UbuntuDupe]

Yes, people *should* pay the taxes they are required to (or *publicly* withhold their taxes as a protest, so as to show they're not merely trying to stiff other taxpayers), but as long as the tax structure encourages that, all the wishing in the world isn't going to change the creative use of accountants.

That's part of why I've come to the conclusion that a land tax would be the best tax of all. Basically, you can't avoid it because a) you can't hide land, and b) any "accountant trickery" would be publicly visible (hey -- why is Globocorp's HQ appraised at $0? Then I'll buy it!). It also means you don't have to monitor each and every (easily concealable) economic transaction for tax purposes.

Of course, people like making corporations work through hundreds of thousands of pages of tax law instead...

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[emaname]

First off, I don't think that the airstrip nearby is an extreme of self-indulgence. I imagine they calculated what it cost at other airstrips, travel time between HQ and the airstrip plus other costs incurred, etc. That whole cost-analysis thing. And NASA could use the extra revenue.

But I think what people are reacting to is the excess seen in executive compensation. When the execs are getting obscene bonuses even after being only marginally effect or worse (Home Depot comes to mind), people have a right to be upset. The reason for their frustration is that more costs are being transferred to the employees while the execs get bigger perks. Most employees are contributing to a company's success every day, yet they are getting less and less by comparison. This is bad form.

Another component of the 'American Dream' is the idea of sharing success. Everyone that contributes should benefit in some way. And NOT the old 'you're lucky you still got a job' garbage.

A company cannot exist for the success of a few. It must exist for the success of all employed by that company. Otherwise, it's just another Enron, Tyco, GE, etc. These organizations or morally bankrupt (if not literally bankrupt) [Note re GE: It sounds like Immelt is trying to change that if the board doesn't jerk him around.]

The REAL question to be asked is, "How much money do you need to live comfortably?" At some point the pursuit of money is all about greed. It is not a positive, constructive effort. The more one person gets, the less someone else can have. Instead of taking huge bonuses, the execs should be plowing that money back into the organization to offset increases in medical insurance, etc. Take care of the employees and the company will have long-term success.

Don't misunderstand me. I detest the entitlement attitude as much as you. Maybe even more. That attitude is every bit as destructive as greed. But my experience as a manager has been that most people make a sincere effort at contributing to the success of an organization. They should share in it, too.

But again, without knowing more details, this airstrip thing doesn't sound that bad to me.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[Speare]

Nobody works their way to becoming multi-billionaires... There's absolutely nothing one man could do that could possibly be worth that kind of compensation.

They, like many others, hit the stock-market lottery. There's enough stupid people that will buy stocks for millions of times what they're actually worth, that early buyers can become billionaires just because they happen to be there.

The jetstream is always moving fast, but you can't catch the jetstream if you don't fill the balloon and cut the tethers.

Brin and Page did "hit the stock-market lottery." I agree with that. But they would not have been able to get there without actually doing some interesting stuff and telling people about it. Yes, there are a lot of people who are doing interesting stuff and telling people about it, yet don't hit the stock-market lottery. But the fact that all this interesting stuff gets done is what advances society.

I think that's what the other posters were referring by the "American Dreamer is dead" sentiment. A dream without action is a fantasy of entitlement and resentment. A dream with action is a goal.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[phoenix.bam!]

It's amazing how all the luckiest people I know are also the hardest working. I wonder why that is.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[Tom]

Why have we as a society become so filled with entitlement and laziness? If you have the money, you can get it. If you don't have the money, work for it. These guys were nobody's once upon a time as well... it's not like the American dream is dead, it's the American dreamer that's dead. The "American Dream" is, and always has been, a scam. The actual number of people who really worked their way up from dishwasher to millionaire are smaller than the number of people who became millionaires through the lottery, and we all learned the chances of that in highschool.

So in short, we stopped following the dream when we realized it's just a dream, and the waking world is run by different rules.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[bannerman]

There are different ways of working hard. I know smart people that work their head off all day at a dead end job when I know they're capable of landing a much better job, but they're too lazy to make the move. No motivation.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[DerekLyons]

The "American Dream" is, and always has been, a scam. The actual number of people who really worked their way up from dishwasher to millionaire are smaller than the number of people who became millionaires through the lottery, and we all learned the chances of that in highschool.

Purely anecdotal evidence but... I know _three_ millionaires who did the equivalent of working up from being a dishwasher - and no lottery winners. My best friend from high school run an advertising/media company he built from scratch over the last five years and after five years is now pssing into the low six figures in revenue. (With no college education and no starting capital beyond his final unemployment check.)
 
The American Dream is alive and well. But the trick, as always, is to work like hell. Sitting and whining on Slashdot doesn't cut it. (The high school friend I spoke of? He took his first vacation when I flew across the continent, marched into his office, and physically drug him out of it.)

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[demi]

Almost everything looks obvious after the fact. The wheel is "obvious", yet very few cultures actually invented it. The fact that Google is *still* the best search engine ought to tell you something about the difficulty.

I think Google's done a great job, but this is entirely the wrong impression. Search engines were not only obvious, they were old hat, the battles already fought and decided, when Google appeared on the scene. And Google has never, by any standard measure, been the best search engine, except for being fast. And it's not the best now, in fact it's worse than when it started.

Google's "breakthrough" was being fast through distributed search, which is something that all the search engines were working on for some time. Google won this by being latecomers to the search game, that is, not having any customers to lose by risking a different back-end architecture; and by being fortunate that the big Internet portals at the time made poor decisions (Yahoo thought directories were better and never committed to search, Excite was consumed by the monumentally misguided @Home). There's no sense in which their founders were smarter or worked harder than the founders of any other technology company at the time.

Now, lots of those founders are or were doing "just fine"--a lot better than me. Hard, smart work definitely counts for something. But the difference between "quite successful" and "super-rich" is luck, not hard work. The google founders weren't smarter or harder-working than a hundred other people. I know a very successful and famous Internet celebrity and multimillionaire, who, quite frankly, isn't smarter than anybody.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[Jeremy Erwin]

NASA's got enough planes

NASA doesn't have all that many planes

Alabama:1
California: 17
Florida:5
Ohio: 6
Texas: 41
Virginia: 8

Many of those are small fighter jets, so if NASA needs a way to transport dozens of scientists at a time to high altitude, its options are somewhat limited. The Gulfstream V can transport 14-19 people to 51,000 feet, the Boeing 767 presumably can carry a few more, albeit to a lower altitude. I wonder if either aircraft is configured to allow for a substantial scientific payload, though.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[Reality Master 101]

Search engines were not only obvious, they were old hat, the battles already fought and decided, when Google appeared on the scene.

Indeed... which makes their success and utter domination all the more remarkable.

Google's "breakthrough" was being fast through distributed search, which is something that all the search engines were working on for some time.

What? I used a lot of search engines prior to Google, in fact, I still have them bookmarked: AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, MSN, Northern Light, Yahoo, etc. I used to search a variety of them because each one seemed to do better at various results. After Google appeared, I gradually stopped using them all, because Google consistently gave better results.

I don't recall Google being any faster than any of them. They all gave pretty much instantaneous results.

But the difference between "quite successful" and "super-rich" is luck, not hard work.

I might agree that the difference between "rich" and "super-rich" is mostly luck. And certainly some people get rich by attaching themselves to the right people (e.g., become one of the first 10 employees of an eventually huge IPO). But by and large, to be rich, you have to want to be rich and dedicate your thinking to that goal, and take the appropriate risks, and try again when you fail.

The google founders weren't smarter or harder-working than a hundred other people.

The issue isn't necessarily raw intelligence or level of hard work. Take 100 smart people and put them in the same situation as the Google guys. Would they fall into the same riches? I'd say "no". Technology isn't everything! You have to be able to work with people, give up control where necessary, take control when necessary, on and on. For example, Theo de Raadt is a smart, hard-working guy. Assuming he was motivated to do it, could he have created Google? Not just the search engine, the whole enchilada. Not a chance in hell, because he's an abrasive psycho.

Creating a successful company takes a lot of broad skills. There's a reason that 90% of start-ups fail.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[shaitand]

'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.

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[kestasjk]

The one exception to this I think would be Steve Jobs - that guy could probably make fortunes several times over starting from scratch. Jobs ran into Woz, Woz made excellent computers very economically using very few chips and Jobs marketed them.

Gates surrounded himself with guys like Allen who were excellent coders and geeks, but Gates was always the one with the vision. He was an expert coder and involved himself with everything from writing legal documents to writing bootstraps and Altair emulators, and later on to giving taxing interviews to all the big project leaders to ensure they knew what they were doing as well as he knew what they were doing.
Gates saw the first computer come out and decided to get out of school and into the PC industry, the very moment it was created.

If Jobs hadn't run into Woz you can be sure we would never have heard of Jobs. Gates depended far less on chance bumping into others; he was far more determined and aggressive (for better or for worse) in carving out Microsoft's niche, and he played much more than the marketing&managerial role that Jobs has played.

If you're not familiar with the story of Gates' success I recommend "Hard Drive", which documents it (it's independent of Microsoft and Gates).

Re:Larry's had that for a while

[heinousjay]

A company can only push its taxes onto its customers. Where else would they get the money?

not evil? how about global warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

they dont seem to care about their carbon footprint, i dont see that going hand in hand with being not evil.

Re:not evil? how about global warming?

[wwwrench]

Yeah, I agree. Even a singleeconomy ticket on a transatlantic flight uses about a ton of CO2, which is far far more than you should be using all year for all your needs. Once the effects of high altitute emmission of the CO2 is taken into effect, the airline industry contributes 13% of our emmissions here in the U.K. and it is the fastest growing source of emmissions, effectively cancelling out all our other efforts. What is more, the airline industry is heavily subsidised, and jet fuel is not taxed. Emmissions from airlines are not even included in our EU limits here. We just had a Camp for Climate Action here at Heathrow protesting the expansion of the airport. Private jet flyers and short haul flights should just be stopped completely, there is absolutely no reason for them, and it will kill people, plain and simple.

Re:not evil? how about global warming?

[Gordonjcp]

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.

Re:not evil? how about global warming?

[UbuntuDupe]

Actually, it doesn't matter how much CO2 you emit, as long as you sink out a sufficient amount that your *net* CO2 emissions are sufficiently low. So really, instead of trying to come up with a laundry list of things people can't do because it's (in your opinion) wasteful, all that's really needed is a carbon tax sufficient to pay for the costs of sinking the emitted CO2.

Wait -- that's under the assumption that you're actually interested in protecting the earth, and not merely coming up with the most plausible pretense for banning behaviors you don't like.

Re:not evil? how about global warming?

[UbuntuDupe]

Not to defend an environmentalist talking point, but...

I think the above claim *really* means to say that the exhaust contains one ton of CO2 per person. But its exhaust doesn't merely come from what's on the airplane. In its combustion process, it takes O2 from the atmosphere, and combines it with the C in the fuel. (C + O2 -> CO2) So that figure includes not just stuff in the fuel tank, but also O2 that was taken from the atmosphere and then returned in the form of CO2. The fact that the fuel tank can't carry that mass, doesn't mean it can't emit that much CO2.

Question

[eclectro]

So the experiments they are gonna do for NASA, are they with the nurses or on the nurses??

Re:Question

[martin-boundary]

Technically, here's no "up" or "down" in space... Uhm, never mind, it seems that sex in NASA vehicles is an urban myth... But now I have a mental picture of Adam and Jamie strapping in the next shuttle to test it :(

Re:Money! Money! Money!

[Silver Sloth]

Well usually money gains access to stuff when you spend them. Not if you have enough of it. Not only does money always fall on the biggest pile but the super rich have always enjoyed freebees that us mere mortals can only (wet) dream of.

As an example from history, when Queen Elizabeth the 1st of England went on her travels it was expected that the local gentry would provide accomadation for free. This was a double edged sword for the provider - staying in the queen's good books was important but putting her up could cost as much as six month's worth of the typical income for the provider. So the queen, the richest person in the land, was getting freebee board and lodge, and at the highest posible level.

Nice one, NASA!

[Aladrin]

I expected to see a ton of 'that's not fair!' posts here, but maybe those people don't wake up this early.

Anyhow, good on NASA for earning another $1.3mil per year using something that they already had. I'm sure they have all kinds of stuff in the contract that prohibits Google execs from using the strip when NASA projects are actively going on, which probably happens pretty seldom. I'm sure someone will say 'drop in the bucket', but that's $1.3mil that didn't come from taxes... And that's a lot of taxes.

No Ad link

[jsse]

Click here for no ad link.

BTW, even Bush could find this link in the article easily, so please don't mod.

Party airplane

[pQueue]

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.

It's collecting information

[simong]

So it's still doing Google stuff. And it's going to have a portable Googleplex built in.

*incredibly loud jet sound*
*knock on door*
"Hi, I'm Larry, and this is Sergei, we heard that you were having a party. We brought, well, er, the contents of the local Walmart's liquor counter."
"Well, that's very nice... say, how did you find out about the party?"
*shifty look*
"You sent out invites through gmail..."

Re:It's collecting information

[orkysoft]

My guess is the GP lives in the UK (look at his homepage fqdn), where the supermarkets actually carry liquor.

Or maybe the joke is that they're very stingy, and brought nothing :-P

Yeah! You kick em out!

[Colin Smith]

Get someone in who can extract more shareholder value from the company.

Of course, this is exactly how visionary market creating companies turn into, well, HP. I suppose it's inevitable, they decided to float on the markets, you have to expect those results.

worth 4 tenths of a cent per share?

[Chapter80]

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.

Re:worth 4 tenths of a cent per share?

[kjndev]

Well, it is a symptom of a corporate culture where money is waisted. In the same manner they will be waisting tens or even hundreds of times the same ammount on other stuff. That quickly ads up.

Not really a special deal.

[lancejjj]

For those who are not familiar with the operations of Moffett Field:

Moffett has fairly extensive facilities that are not nearly as heavily utilized as they were during the cold war and WW2, and it is in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Moffett is no longer a military base, but a federal facility that is used for many purposes - mostly but not exclusively centered around technology.

For perhaps a decade, NASA has been leasing out commercial space to private enterprises at Moffett for not only NASA-related research operations, but for general, business operations of private institutions. In additional, there are private educational institutions at Moffett.

not really the first

[djupedal]

John Travolta gets to pull his jets right up to his house in Florida. One is a big 250,000lb, 1964 Boeing 707-138B airliner, and the other is a Gulf Stream. The garden is actually a heliport.

The actor, according to a local newspaper, "can walk out his door, under a canopied walkway and into the cockpit [of his Boeing], open the long mechanized gate [giving on to the runway] and be airborne in minutes."

Re:not really the first

[frank_adrian314159]

John Travolta gets to pull his jets right up to his house in Florida.

Yes. But then John Travolta adds so
much to our economy, both cultural and monetary...

private airstrip

[MindKata]

"just open it up to any commercial flights"

You can't open it up to commercial flights. Everyone who's seen a bond film knows the bad guys need their own private airstrip.

Re:As a shareholder...

[jcr]

This expense is most likely not being paid out of their personal pockets, but by Google.

They bought the plane out of their own pockets. Why would you assume that Google is picking up the ramp fees?

Thanks for designing a great search engine, you've been well rewarded, you are irresponsible, and there's the door.

Hey, you want to fire them, all you have to do is buy 51% of the shares. That will run you about eighty-one billion dollars. Let us know when you're ready to put your money where your mouth is.

-jcr

Where's the problem?

[palemantle]

"Two private aviation industry executives said that parking two Gulfstream Vs at San Francisco or San Jose airports would cost $240,000 to $360,000 a year, or more"

They get to park the Gulfstreams AND the wide-body Boeing 767-200 right next door for an extra million or so. NASA makes a nice pile and gets to run some experiments. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Re:Money! Money! Money!

[_Shad0w_]

Actually, historically speaking, English monarchs typically weren't all that rich, or at least didn't have much in the way of what we would call disposable income. Everything they needed to pay for came out of the royal treasury - that included paying for things like ships and armies, as well as their own personal expenses.

The state of Pennsylvania exists because Charles II needed to pay back a large debt owed to William Penn's father (Admiral Penn) - the only way he could pay for it was by forking over a huge amount of land. He'd never be able to raise the money to pay it back.

Elizabeth II, on the other hand, is loaded. Mostly because of the amount of land she privately holds (as opposed to holds by right of being the crown).

How nice,,,,

[apodyopsis]

How nice it is to see ordinary, good people who can manage the responsibility of having vast sums of money without it going to their heads...

Re:misuse of a public resource

[Nimey]

Yeah, I've never understood fuckwits who move next to something loud, smelly, or otherwise obnoxious and then start complaining about the thing they *chose* to live next to.

Some people are a waste of oxygen.

Re:Used to live near there

[Saint Stephen]

I love to be honest, when I thought of "coveted landing strip" the first thing I thought of was not a runway! ahem ahem ahem

Ridiculous.

[mattgreen]

I love the implication that the American dream is all it is cracked up to be:

"Oh boy! Look at us! We have a private runway we can land on because we are *so* important and special!"

It is far more impressive to see people who don't take themselves so seriously. Obviously, this s a rare trait, given the human condition of thinking oneself is at the center of the universe.

Re:Ridiculous.

[tlacuache]

Amen to that. I don't really see the appeal. I live with my wife and 2 kids in Idaho in a 1500 square foot house on 2 acres of ground. I work as a software engineer and make around sixty grand. I've got access to outdoors activities (skiing, hiking, hunting, fishing, golf), play guitar in a jazz combo, and commute about 7 minutes to work on non-crowded roads. My house payment is about a third of what a friend of mine living in California pays on his apartment lease. I work hard at a challenging and rewarding job where my skills and ideas are valued. You can keep your millions and private jet. I'm living my American dream.

So what's next?

[Chemisor]

Air Force, this is Google-one, requesting fighter escort...
Sorry Google-one, all our fighters are currently in Iraq.
Air Force, would 13.4 million dollars help?
Your fighters are on the way, Google-one.

Re:So what's next?

[MS-06FZ]

Fighter escort, please shoot down Microsoft private aircraft in our flightpath...
Gonna cost ya, Google One...

Re:Government Runway?

[muellerr1]

$1,300,000 / 300 million Americans = a refund check of about .0043 cents. Printing and administrative costs for 300 million refund checks? Well over 1.3 million dollars. That's why you're not getting a refund.

Re:misuse of a public resource

[Sparky McGruff]

For those of you not familiar with the politics, a few years back, San Jose wanted to close Reid-Hillview airport, a small general aviation airstrip, because of "safety concerns" and complaints by the neighbors. Part of the plan was to free up space at SJC by annexing Moffett field and moving the air freight operations there. A great deal for SJC, they get to run air cargo planes in the middle of the night. A great deal for San Jose, because they'd get to collect the tax revenue, and the noise wouldn't bother any San Jose residents. A bad deal for the residents of Mountain View and Sunnyvale, because they get all of the noise, and they'd have absolutely no say in the operation (as it would be owned by San Jose). Strangely enough, the residents of Mountain View and Sunnyvale thought it would be a bad deal.

I don't want know.

[Oktober Sunset]

As much as I love Brazilian bikini waxes, I don't think this will suit them.

I worked at NASA Ames - I think it's a good idea.

[jCaT]

Lest anyone think they are taking up valuable government resources that could be used for something else- Moffett has been essentially idle for the last twenty years. It was decomissioned some time ago, and now the only use that the runways get is the occasional research plane for NASA and AWACS flights.

I worked at NASA Ames (which has basically taken over the whole Moffett campus, since they're all together.) We did tours of the different areas there, and I think the most fun was touring "Hangar 1" and talking to the guys in the tower for the airstrip. They basically sat around all day drinking coffee, waiting for the one or two planes per day they had taking off or landing. The only excitement they ever got was the occasional presidential flight- when chelsea was going to Stanford, clinton would fly in to Moffett.

I think it's a great idea, and they should do more of it- lots of land developers are salivating at the huge chunk of real estate that moffett has there. On top of that, they're trying to demolish Hangar 1, since it's full of toxic substances, the upkeep on it is really expensive, and it's not doing anything (well, except being a stage for a recent Lexus commercial.)

Re:That's not evil... except if you are a sharehol

[davetd02]

This is BAD for Google shareholders

Last I heard, Larry and Sergey bought the plane with their own personal money and the AP story, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gbqVOej9Cr2S_GYOFg6m6_PUn4jw makes it sound like they are paying for parking out of their own personal money as well. Therefore there's no direct impact to Google shareholders -- Google is not paying for the parking or the jet. If Larry and Sergey want to buy nice toys (and a place to put their toys) with their fortune then that's all up to them.

this is about where american science is headed

[ezhihaVtumane]

I don't understand why this is all about "is this fair or not?" or "other execs turning green with envy" or "residents not wanting expanded airport at their doorstep" or "american dream"??? This is a completely different and bigger issue in my opinion. I guess it's because most people don't realize that NASA is in a deep hole right now and needs money badly. People in US were snickering when Russia space agency went for space tourism to cover costs, feeling all superior that we have more money here - well this is exactly the same!!!! How sad is it that NASA has to turn to private planes to run its scientific missions and private money to upkeep a runway?? Why isn't anyone worried about where this country is placing its priorities which are not on science these days apparently...