Say what you will about Google's propensity for funneling money to a tight, back-scratching coterie of friends; but co-founder Sergey Brin does right by his mother-in-law, which is more than many husbands can say. Witness his new half-million-dollar donation.

Brin just contributed $500,000 of his personal wealth to the Creative Commons, a nonprofit to encourage the sharing of copyrighted works. Creative Commons, in turn, is chaired by Esther Wojcicki, notes Peter Kafka of All Things D, and Wojcicki, a Palo Alto high school teacher, is the mother of Brin's wife, Anne Wojcicki. Brin's company previously hired his mother-in-law as an educational consultant; she in turn has promoted in her Huffington Post column both Google Docs and an airship company Google appears to be invested in. Anne Wojcicki, of course, started 23andMe, a genetics-testing company that counts Google as a landlord and repeat investor.

Which is all by way of saying, we think Brin very much has earned the drumstick at Thanksgiving this year.

Send an email to Ryan Tate, the author of this post, at ryan@gawker.com.