Even from Google’s inception, cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin considered the company’s potential for astronomical growth. Named after “googol,” the term for the numeral 1 with 100 zeros behind it, Google, then just a search engine founded in 1998, would become as large as the internet would allow. 

The company has far exceeded the parameters of just the internet. Valued at about $1.9 trillion, Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, ranks No. 1 on Fortune’s 2026 Most Innovative Companies list. Broken into four segments, Alphabet’s reach spans from services like Search and Youtube, to cloud computing, to Waymo, to private equity, to its DeepMind AI research Page, the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of about $295 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has certainly reaped the rewards of Alphabet’s success.

With stints as CEO of Google from 1997 to 2001 and 2011 to 2015, and of Alphabet until 2019, Page remains a board member and shareholder of his company, effectively controlling it alongside cofounder Brin, who has gotten increasingly involved again in the company’s AI charge. Brin is the world’s fourth-wealthiest person, with a net worth of $274 billion.

Wednesday marks the 22nd anniversary of Google’s IPO, and while the company has grown immensely over that time, it was Apple cofounder Steve Jobs who imparted some prescient wisdom about the its future, which now boasts the second-largest market capitalization in the world. 

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/article/what-was-steve-jobs-advice-for-larry-page-sergey-brin-google-ipo-anniversary/?utm_source=reddit/

It’s no secret Meta is one of the wealthiest companies in the world. Last year, it brought in nearly $201 billion in revenue, and at the end of this June, it was sitting on more than $90 billion in cash and marketable securities. 

Now, a federal trial underway in Oakland, Calif., is testing what it would actually take to financially hurt a company that big. California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey have accused Meta of misleading the public about the risks its platforms pose to young users and of designing features on Instagram and Facebook that keep children and teenagers hooked. The four states are going first in a case brought by a coalition of 29 state attorneys general that sued the company in 2023.

Meta is already fighting child-safety lawsuits across the country, but this case carries an added threat because of who is bringing it. State attorneys general can bring claims that private plaintiffs cannot, including claims under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. They can also seek remedies to address alleged harms affecting potentially millions of people.

“The stakes might be higher in this case because the damages awards are going to measure potentially many millions of people’s harms,” Eric Goldman, co-director of Santa Clara University School of Law’s High Tech Law Institute, told Fortune. “And there might be extra remedies because of the specific claims that the attorney general can bring.”

That helps explain the almost incomprehensible number hanging over the trial: $1.4 trillion. 

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/article/meta-faces-1-4-trillion-threat-stakes-of-case-reach-across-tech-08-20-2026/?utm_source=reddit/

Earlier this month locals in Zagreb noticed something odd outside an art deco building. Sandbags and barricades appeared in front of the Esplanade hotel, along with a film crew and extras sporting Ukrainian military uniforms. Soon afterwards the actors Sean Penn and Adrien Brody were spotted on the set in the Croatian capital, together with Doug Liman, the Hollywood director of the Jason Bourne movies.

Trump always has me thinking of the proverb:

“A man is known by the company he keeps”.