Who's Saying 'Fly Me' to Eric Schmidt?
How does Eric Schmidt do it? The computer nerd runs Google, has Obama's ear, parks his jet fleet in a NASA hangar, and has a rocking girlfriend. Is she the reason he flies so much?
Googlers' Pilots Are Real Boobs
The Google Jet really is a party plane. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin travel the world on a Boeing 767 they bought and tricked out. But who flies it for them? A wild bunch.
Why Larry and Sergey bought a fighter jet
Larry, Sergey, and Eric have a fighter jet, and you don't. They also have a sweet place to park it: Moffett Field, the airstrip closest to the heart of Silicon Valley. Even Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has to get chauffeured down to San Jose to board his private plane. Remind us, how did the Googlers get such a sweet…
Larry and Sergey yanked party plane from space mission
Nasa may be regretting a sweetheart deal it cut with Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In exchange for a 90-year lease on land at Nasa's Ames Research Center adjacent to Google's headquarters, the space agency made a side agreement with Page and Brin to let them park their fleet of private jets at Nasa's…
Google party plane watches spaceship go down in flames
It's good to be the Googlers. Part of Larry Page and Sergey Brin's sweetheart deal to park their fleet of private jets at Nasa's Ames Research Center involves letting the space agency use their Gulfstream V for so-called "scientific experiments." What that really means: Getting a front-row seat for some really…
Larry and Sergey brought wives to watch Google satellite launch
Google helped pay for this weekend's launch of a satellite which will take high-resolution imagery for its Google Earth service, and founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were on hand to watch the rocket lift off at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Serious business, right? Not when you see our spy photos of the…
Bill "Bubba" Clinton breaks Google party plane
Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin graciously lent their plush Boeing 767, otherwise known as the Google party plane (photographed in Newark last week), to former president Bill Clinton for a media tour of Africa. However, on a runway in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, en route to Rwanda, the takeoff was…
Google thanks NASA for allowing them to use Moffett Field
It's the 50th anniversary of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, and Google's rolled out a commemorative logo. The graphic features the Voyager spacecraft, Mars and moon landing vehicles and the Mercury rocket. Not featured? Any of the aircraft in Larry and Sergey's party-plane…
Don't want to be evil? Better get rid of the Google plane
Lefty think tanks Essential Action and the Institute for Policy Studies have a new study out titled “High Flyers: How Private Jet Travel is Straining the System, Warming the Planet and Costing You Money." It implies some not-so-nice things about jet owners and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin — even if…
Details on Google's new campus at Nasa's Ames base
Google finally announced details of its plans to build a new campus on property owned by Nasa at the space agency's Ames Research Center. The ongoing partnership with Nasa was first announced three years ago. The initial terms of the forty-year lease peg rent at $3.66 million a year, with adjustments to the rate…
Three questions for the Google party plane posse
We know TechCrunch's Michael Arrington didn't make it onto the Google jet back from Davos, but who did? Arrington claims that Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and tech publisher Tim O'Reilly made it onto the flight but doesn't serve us up with a passenger manifest.
Google Jet boldly goes where no jet has gone before
The Google founders' Gulfstream V party plane — quick plane-spotting tip: the Gulfstream V has six windows; the IV only has five — took off on a scientific mission to study the Quadrantid meteor shower Thursday. Larry, Sergey and Eric, you may remember, got permission to park their jets at NASA's Moffett Field for…
Saudi Prince buys world's biggest plane — are Google boys next?
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia is purchasing a custom Airbus A380. The biggest passenger plane in the world — 6,000 sq. ft. — will cost more than $400 million once it is outfitted with all the accoutrements necessary to fly one of the richest men in the world. The prince already owns a custom Boeing 747,…
Google CEO sells a jet — and eyes two more
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has apparently sold a Gulfstream V jet recently listed for sale on Aviationbusinessindex.com. Could Schmidt at last be shrinking the grotesquely conspicuous fleet he owns with Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Hardly. Sources in the private-jet industry tell Valleywag that he's…
The New York Times confirms the news, first reported on Valleywag last week, that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt are buying a Boeing 757 to add to their growing fleet of jetliners. [Bits]
Eric Schmidt's outsized reading habits
Recently, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was spotted purchasing "Mine's Bigger," the book about the yacht obsessions of Kleiner Perkins founder Tom Perkins. Sure, Perkins's firm invested in the search behemoth. But why would Schmidt purchase a book detailing the methods Perkins used to ensure that he had the most spectacular…
"Eat your heart out Larry and Sergey." — Reporter Mary Anne Ostrom, describing the Airbus A380 which landed earlier today at San Francisco International Airport. The humongous jet can carry as many as 800 people — 16 times the passenger capacity of the Google founders' party plane. [San Jose Mercury News]
Google guys get yet another jet
How many planes does one man need? Or, more precisely, three men? Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin already own, with CEO Eric Schmidt, an extensively remodeled 767, pictured here in New Zealand. Schmidt, by himself, owns at least one Gulfstream V (some reports say he has two). But we now hear that the…
