The letter has been signed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Andressen Horowitz c-founder Marc Andreessen, Mozilla Firefox co-founder Mitchell Baker, Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey, Flickr and Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake, Yahoo co-founder David Filo, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, Internet Archive founder and Alexa Internet co-founder Brewster Kahle, PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Twitter and Obvious co-founder Biz Stone, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation founder Jimmy Wales, Blogger and Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.

Sergey Brin took to Google+ to share some further commentary on the whole thing. In an update, he wrote:

In just two decades, the world wide web has transformed and democratized access to information all around the world. I am proud of the role Google has played alongside many others such as Yahoo, Wikipedia, and Twitter. Whether you are a student in an internet cafe in the developing world or a head of state of a wealthy nation, the knowledge of the world is at your fingertips.

Thus, imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none other but the United States. Two bills currently making their way through congress — SOPA and PIPA — give the US government and copyright holders extraordinary powers including the ability to hijack DNS and censor search results (and this is even without so much as a proper court trial). While I support their goal of reducing copyright infringement (which I don’t believe these acts would accomplish), I am shocked that our lawmakers would contemplate such measures that would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.

There are some interesting comments on his post as well. Fore example, Tom Rolfson says, “Thank you. As a founding member of EFF and other online associations, I love seeing others joining the fight we started 20+ years ago.”

Ethan Madison says, “Can someone contact Mr. Berners-Lee and maybe some ICANN people to help us out here? I think their arguments would have weight, considering they control the Internet.”

Rolfson responds, “Many of them are already involved. This is ultimately up to all of us to contact our representatives. I am putting serious pressure on Cong. Paul Ryan who I believe is still supporting it.”

Many of the comments are simply thanking Brin for speaking out.

The letter itself reads:

We’ve all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.

We urge Congress to think hard before changing the regulation that underpins the Internet. Let’s not deny the next generation of entrepreneurs and founders the same opportunities that we all had.

Any other names you’d like to see signed onto that letter?

The chart, which comes courtesy of The Understatement, is concise and awfully revealing. Not only that, but it begs another question, if Google’s leaders aren’t using it, why on earth would normal folks want to switch over? You’ll notice Randi Zuckerberg, even though she’s moved on from her brother’s creation, still uses Facebook. A great deal, in fact.

So why don’t the majority of Google’s management team not use Google+? Obviously, unless you’re hearing it from the horse’s mouth, speculation reigns. But after you look at the chart in question, it does make one wonder:

2. “The board/top management shouldn’t be expected to use Google+”
Yes, they should – maybe not every member extensively, but not even a single post by a single non-executive member of the board? Can you imagine Fred Wilson not publicly using the major new product of one of his companies?

3. “Steve Jobs was really active on Ping?”
Ok, fair enough. But a music social network isn’t even remotely fundamental to Apple’s future whereas clearly Google thinks Google+ is central to its future.

With that in mind, would Google+’s future be brighter if Schmidt, Page and Brin posted more? I’m not so sure that’s accurate either. That being said, seeing a higher level of interest from the group that dominates search would probably only help their social networking venture.

Auletta, who claims to have conducted 11 interviews with Schmidt for the book, writes:

According to close advisors, the Google C.E.O. was upset a year ago when co-founder Larry Page sided with his founding partner, Sergey Brin, to withdraw censored searches from China. Schmidt did not hide his belief that Google should stay in the world’s largest consumer marketplace. It was an indication of the nature of the relationship Schmidt had with the founders that he—as Brian Cashman of the Yankees did this week—acknowledged that the decision was made above his head. He often joked that he provided "adult supervision," and was never shy about interrupting the founders at meetings to crystallize a point. 

Schmidt, according to associates, lost some energy and focus after losing the China decision. At the same time, Google was becoming defensive. All of their social-network efforts had faltered. Facebook had replaced them as the hot tech company, the place vital engineers wanted to work. Complaints about Google bureaucracy intensified. Governments around the world were lobbing grenades at Google over privacy, copyright, and size issues. The "don’t be evil" brand was getting tarnished, and the founders were restive. Schmidt started to think of departing. Nudged by a board-member friend and an outside advisor that he had to re-energize himself, he decided after Labor Day that he could reboot.

According to Auletta, an advisor said that Schmidt was considering staying around for a year as Executive Chairman and then moving onto something else. This is interesting considering that Sergey Brin said yesterday that he was looking forward to working with Schmidt (and Page) for decades. 

Schmidt has indicated that he will be much more involved in the external dealings of the company as opposed to the internal dealings (day-to-day operations). We’ll see how long this actually lasts. I guess it won’t come as a complete surprise, should Schmidt end up leaving the company at some point, but for now, it seems he’s still got a job to do (see above tweet for starters). 

It’s important to keep rumors in perspective, and consider that Google has made no indication whatsoever that Schmidt is going anywhere.

To address one possible concern: This is no way signals that Brin and Page are abandoning Google.  Even after the 10 million shares are sold, the pair will still own 47.7 million shares between them, so it’s not like they’re cutting all ties and going home.

Also, even though their voting stake will be reduced from 59 percent to 48 percent due to this move, Eric Schmidt controls another 10 percent, so there’s no danger of the three Google execs getting overthrown.

Still, the development is a big deal.  Miguel Helft calculated, "The sales, if completed, would provide each of the founders $2.75 billion based on Friday’s closing price of $550.01."

Google’s stock is down 1.15 percent so far this morning.  The Dow and Nasdaq are up 0.71 percent and 0.58 percent, respectively.

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Wojcicki is the cofounder of 23andMe and Brin’s wife.  And Brin, of course, is the cofounder and president of Google.  One interesting question is exactly whose checkbook the donation issued from; a post on the Creative Commons blog always puts Wojcicki’s name first when naming the pair.

A relevant point is that Fortune pegged Brin’s net worth at $12 billion in mid-March.

But anyway, Melissa Reeder, a development manager at Creative Commons, responded to their donation by writing, "We are delighted that the couple recognizes the importance of Creative Commons and has decided to invest in our work to support sharing, collaboration, and the spread of knowledge and creativity."

Reeder then continued, "This gift – made in addition to the financial support that Google offers CC annually – will be used to support Creative Commons generally, with a focus on developing our Science Commons project, which Wojcicki and Brin are particularly excited about."

Let’s start with real-time search.  Twitter’s search engine can show users things that were published just a minute or two ago.  Google Blog Search and Google News operate more in increments of quarter- or half-hours.  This seemed to allow for the possibility that Google might turn to Twitter for its expertise, or even that Twitter would dominate this one niche more or less unchallenged.

Over the weekend, though, Alex Chitu discovered a statement hidden away on a Google site that read, "This is the MicroBlogsearch Universal result group header text.  A Microblog is a blog with very short entries.  Twitter is the popular service associated with this format."  So Google appears to have an offering of its own in the works.

As for the Bing matter, James Doran reported, "Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft’s rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service . . . .  Brin, according to sources inside the tech behemoth, is himself leading the team . . ."

And although it’s well known that Brin isn’t the type of exec who sits in an office tending to paperwork all day, this sounds a bit unusual.  It looks like recent events are moving Google away from any semblance of complacency.

"Since 2004, when Google began to have annual reports, Larry and I have taken turns writing an annual letter," the letter begins. "I never imagined I would be writing one in the midst of an economic crisis unlike any we have seen in decades. As I write this, search queries are reflecting economic hardship, the major market indexes are one half of what they were less than 18 months ago, and unemployment is at record levels."

The letter discusses the company’s past as well as the future. It specifically discusses search, YouTube, Books, Geo, Ads, Apps, Chrome, Android, and AI. Here are just a few interesting nuggets to pull away from it:

- In the past year alone we have made 359 changes to our web search — nearly one per day.

- Today, almost a third of all Google searches in Japan are coming from mobile devices — a leading indicator of where the rest of the world will soon be.

Within each category, the letter talks about ways that Google aims to improve, and that is perhaps the most intriguing part. The letter is a lengthy document, but if you’ve got some time to kill, it’s very interesting and worth reading. It’s pretty much a look at the state of Google on its many technological fronts.
 

As an Internet company, Google is an active participant in policy debates surrounding information access, technology and energy. Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions — Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and gay — we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues. So when Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an official company position on.

However, while there are many objections to this proposition — further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text — it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

The new post talks about how Google has signed an amicus brief in support of several cases currently challenging Proposition 8 in the California Supreme Court. "Denying employees basic rights isn’t right, and it isn’t good for businesses," says Google General Counsel Kent Walker. "We are committed to preserving fundamental rights for every one of the people who work hard to make Google a success."

Google wants to make it very clear where they stand on the issue, and obviously has its employees in mind. Google is reaching out for further support.

It’s only taken 10 years for this to surface. Obviously people are skeptical about his claims. "This person wants us all to believe that during the past 10 years he has failed to see how much money Google was making and it didn’t dawn on him that he may be entitled to a share," says LockerGnome’s Ron Schenone. "What did he get his PH.d in? Stupidity?"

Chang does claim that he tried to get involved with Google again in 2002, but was snubbed by Page and Brin. If Chang is telling the truth, then he must be one depressed guy. But of course, there is the huge possibility that he’s just full of it.

So, is Chang’s claim legitimate or is he just some guy trying to get attention? Most of us are probably leaning toward the former, but nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how this story develops. I wonder what Brin and Page have to say about it.