How closely are founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page involved?
They are leading the effort for the company. The whole idea behind this was their vision. They laid it out in their original founder’s letter prior to our public offering, and they are the driving forces behind this for the company. Some shareholders have criticized Google because they say it isn’t the role of a public company to give away shareholders’ dollars. How do you respond? The important thing for our shareholders is that before any of them became shareholders, this was announced as part of what we filed to the public and before the IPO. When we were raising funds and giving people the opportunity to become shareholders, Larry and Sergey said very clearly to the world, we are going to take 1% of our equity and profits, and we are going to do philanthropic work with it. This is part of the DNA of Google, and it’s part of what you are investing in. So shareholders should have known they were investing partially in philanthropy? They did know they were investing in this. We think
