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Accuracy in Reporting At The Guardian

This is good from Alexander Chancellor:

 

So it is with Google, the latest wealth-spewing monster of the internet. Its two young founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – are each worth around $20bn, much the same as Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is ranked by Forbes magazine as the 13th richest person in the world. But unlike him, they don\’t have private jets, Rolls-Royces, yachts or any of the other pointless accoutrements of the super-rich. The Prince has just bought a new A389 superjumbo, the world\’s biggest passenger aircraft (list price $319m), as his own private plane, which he will convert into a flying luxury hotel and use to carry his fleet of limousines with him around the world. Page and Brin each own nothing more flashy than a modest Toyota Prius, the environmentally virtuous hybrid car.

Really?

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the low-key co-founders of Google Inc., set tongues wagging last year when they bought a used Boeing 767 widebody as an unusually large private jet. The 767-200 typically carries 180 passengers and is three times as heavy as a conventional executive plane. Mr. Page said last year that he and Mr. Brin would use it for personal travel, including taking "large numbers of people to places such as Africa." He said it would hold about 50 passengers when refurbished, but declined to comment on other details of the plane, which has been kept ultra secret.

4 thoughts on “Accuracy in Reporting At The Guardian”

  1. I think I object to the poverty tourism of “taking large numbers to places such as Africa” (how many places are there like Africa and are we talking the whole of Africa?) even more than to Bryn and Page’s hypocrisy or Chancellor’s ignorance. But it’s a tough call.

  2. He didn’t say “places like Africa” (which would invite the question “Like Africa in what way?”), he said “places such as Africa” indicating that Africa would be one of the places. He’s probably not talking about the whole of Africa, just as when you go to Tesco you don’t necessarily go to every square inch of it.

  3. I understand that their Googlitudes have also struck a deal with NASA over landing rights at Moffett Field, alongside 101. They pay $1.3m pa, NASA gets to do a bit of hitching on Google jets. Modest and unassuming stuff, quite clearly.

    This is pretty exclusive, as Moffett isn’t ordinarily open to private traffic, but it’s very handy for the office.

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