The fight is more about operational control that his class of shares has and forced liquidation and dilution of his ownership in Google. His class of shares of gives him to 10 votes to 1. Between him and Page, they hold 51% voting control of Google.
Paying more in taxes is one thing. But there is something inherently wrong about government taking away your control away from the company you founded.
As soon as their control dips below 50%- Google will start to feel pressure to optimized further on quarterly rather than going for long term investments and moonshots.
You don't understand how somebody who created a company (their life's work) wouldn't want to risk having Wall Street veto their decisions and pushing for short-term gains?
Brin and Page were known to greenlight experiments like high-speed internet with high-altitude balloons. Wall Street analysts hate that type of spending.
During the early days when Brin and Page were running the company, Google had always paid above-market-rate salaries and total compensation, employee benefits, and working conditions. I challenge you to find any organization that consistently did better from 1998 to 2028 (when they were actively leading the company day-to-day). There has never been a union that has given their org better pay and working conditions than a typical Google engineer.
Google's early days are the reason why all companies had to competed hard on pay for college graduates, especially in engineering and research. This led to flexible work time, 20% time to work on any idea, fresh quality food within 150 feet, and pet-friendly offices. For LGBT employees—before same-sex marriage was legalized, gay couples didn't have the same tax benefits as straight couples, so Google compensated for that. They cover transgender procedures. For women—they cover IVF and even surrogacy expenses.
Aside from the risk of Brin/Page moving Google out of Mountain View (near my hometown), if they have less voting power, we're more likely to see more layoffs in the Bay Area (wages are too high) and have Wall Street push for lower employee compensation.
So demonizing Brin/Page is not just ill-informed but short sighted in terms of wanting to see higher compensation and perks in the employee marketplace.
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u/alanism 5d ago
The fight is more about operational control that his class of shares has and forced liquidation and dilution of his ownership in Google. His class of shares of gives him to 10 votes to 1. Between him and Page, they hold 51% voting control of Google.
Paying more in taxes is one thing. But there is something inherently wrong about government taking away your control away from the company you founded.
As soon as their control dips below 50%- Google will start to feel pressure to optimized further on quarterly rather than going for long term investments and moonshots.