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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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).

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?

[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: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..."

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.

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: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

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.

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: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.