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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."
...it's just badass.
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.
FanFictionRecs.net
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.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
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.
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..."
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.
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.
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.
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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.
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.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
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.
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