Google's First Employee Departs

redletterdave writes "Craig Silverstein, the first employee hired by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, will leave the search giant for Khan Academy, an online education portal based in Mountain View, Calif. Silverstein had been with Google shortly after it first launched in the garage of Susan Wojcicki, a friend of both Page and Brin, in September 1998. He had helped Brin and Page develop infrastructure when Google was just a Stanford grad school project, but when he officially joined the company, Silverstein became its technology director. The Khan Academy, where Silverstein is heading next, is a not-for-profit organization that aspires to change the education industry by providing free 'world-class education to anyone anywhere.' Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is an enormous fan of the service, telling CNN that he uses it with his kids."

Comments

Re:Education industry

[rec9140]

"free and so is K-12 education in America."

Wrong, K-12 education is NOT FREE.

You pay a school district tax of some sort, period. Kids or no kids every one has to unjustly pay for something they get no benefit from, and for those that choose to use private and parochial schools they get the privlege to PAY TWICE. Their school tax and tuition. Should be one or the other.

US education should be soley tuition based. you have a rug rat YOU pay when they sign up, when they graduate HS, you quit paying the school tax.

No need to reply about a how the education system where every one pays benefits soceity as whole, yadda, yadda, yahdda. I've heard this before, disagree. Thanks.

Sending kids to school who don't want to be there and disrupt classes requiring they be separated out, expelled, "alternative schools" is just a waste of money.