In his memo, Pichai promised that Google will continue its “healthy regard for the impossible that’s been core to our culture from the beginning.” Unfortunately, it has proved impossible to do that without firing people, freaking out the survivors, and calling into question the company’s unique values.

In my 2011 book, In the Plex, I wrote about Brin and Page's reluctant move to take the company public.

Google would go public. But Larry and Sergey would do it their way. It was the values of Google squaring off against the values of Wall Street, which embodied everything its founders despised about tradition-bound, irrational corporate America …

Page and Brin drafted a personal letter to potential investors explaining in simple language why Google was special and therefore would have a different relationship with its shareholders than other companies did … “We wanted to get people to know what to expect,” says Brin …

“Google is not a conventional company,” began Page’s letter, released on April 29, 2004. “We do not intend to become one.” It was an explicit warning to potential shareholders: Fasten your seat belts!

Michael asks, “Why do people fly in private jets to talk about climate change in Davos?”

Thanks for the question, though I suspect that it is more a comment about what you perceive as hypocrisy than a mystery that’s keeping you up at night. Not being rich enough to have my own plane, or even to regularly book my way into a pricier seat on commercial aviation, I can’t answer firsthand. But from what I know of eco-conscious billionaires, I imagine that they would say that they need to fly private because of security and the value of their time. Probably they also ask themselves, What’s the point of being a billionaire if I can’t fly in my own plane? But that puts them in an awkward position when they go all Cassandra in their climate statements. In his book about the environment, Bill Gates admits that his own carbon footprint is “absurdly high” and vows to do something about it. But while he says the pandemic did cut his travel—he’s not joining Greta Thunberg in hitching a ride on a freight ship in his oceanic jaunts.