California weighs a ballot initiative<\/a> that would impose a one-time 5% tax on residents worth more than $1 billion, a proposal backed by a powerful health care union that would apply retroactively to anyone living in the state as of Jan. 1. It would give affected taxpayers five years to pay.<\/p>\nGoogle was founded in 1998 by Page and Brin \u2014 two Stanford University PhD candidates who developed a new approach to internet search.<\/p>\n
Working out of a dorm room and later a friend\u2019s garage in Menlo Park, Calif., the pair built a search engine that ranked web pages based on links pointing to them \u2014 an idea that became the backbone of Google\u2019s PageRank algorithm.<\/p>\n
![\"Google\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ae24d29ba5a45471cb1e5e2db1d77bd1.jpeg\"\/)
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Google\u2019s headquarters in Silicon Valley, California. Sundry Photography \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n
The company, incorporated that September after securing an initial $100,000 check from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, quickly outperformed rivals and helped turn Google into one of the defining forces of Silicon Valley\u2019s internet boom.<\/p>\n
What began as an academic research project grew into a global tech giant now worth nearly $4 trillion, cementing Page and Brin as two of the most influential \u2014 and wealthiest \u2014 figures in modern business.<\/p>\n
The duo rank among the richest people on the planet. Page sits at No. 2 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with an estimated net worth of $279 billion, while Brin ranks No. 4 at $259 billion, according to Bloomberg\u2019s latest tally.<\/p>\n
Their combined fortune \u2014 roughly $538 billion \u2014 places them in a league of their own and makes them two of the single biggest potential targets of California\u2019s proposed billionaire wealth tax.<\/p>\n
![\"Larry](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/b69eab7da5f29af8fbdb90b95ff9b320.jpeg\"\/)
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Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded search database Google. Corbis via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Other prominent billionaires have already relocated or openly weighed exits as the proposal has gained traction.<\/p>\n
Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder, has expanded his presence in Florida, opening a Miami office for his investment firm. Billionaire venture capitalist David Sacks relocated from San Francisco to Austin, Texas, late last year.<\/p>\n
Tech investor Chamath Palihapitiya has publicly said he is giving \u201cserious consideration\u201d to moving to Texas, and advisers to the ultra-rich say the list may keep growing.<\/p>\n
Wealth manager Divesh Makan told Bloomberg News earlier this week that as many as 15 to 20 additional billionaire families could leave California if the tax is approved.<\/p>\n
That would take a significant chunk out of the tax base for the Golden State, home to roughly 200 billionaires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sergey Brin is reportedly pulling back from California, joining Google co-founder Larry Page and other billionaires in paring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[815,544,812,3420,816,614,996,3973],"class_list":{"0":"post-11068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-larry-page","8":"tag-bloomberg-billionaires-index","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-google","11":"tag-google-ceo","12":"tag-larry-page","13":"tag-sergey-brin","14":"tag-silicon-valley","15":"tag-wealth-tax"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116353086412056292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/30054ed627f612040c9d7b7964c12991.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Sergey](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8e06d8819011c126c52dcbe4014a30ef.jpeg\"\/)
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