Lawsuits Fly Over Google Founders' Party Plane 238
Mr. Soxley writes to tell us that the Boeing 767 recently purchased by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page is at the heart of what promises to be quite a legal battle. From the article: "Now the Delaware holding company that technically owns the 767, Blue City Holdings LLC, is embroiled in multiple lawsuits with an aviation designer hired to plan and oversee the massive plane's interior renovation. [...] But last October, Blue City terminated Mr. Jennings's contract, saying he wasn't doing his job properly. Mr. Jennings then filed a nearly $200,000 lien against the aircraft with the Federal Aviation Administration for payment he hadn't received. He later filed a complaint related to the matter against Blue City and Gore Design Completions Ltd., the San Antonio executive-jet outfitting firm that worked on the plane, in District Court in Bexar County, Texas."
Doing the job well? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you have 1200+ emails relating to a project doesn't necessarily mean you are doing your job. With a project this size it could be argued that fewer emails mean you are doing your job better. This is the kind of project that requires a fair amount of oversight on a local level.
Must be a slow news day (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Must be a slow news day (Score:5, Insightful)
YRO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Must be a slow news day (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, we get an insight into human behavior when we see supposedly brilliant, rich people bickering about idiotic stuff.
Re:Must be a slow news day (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:YRO? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's time that YRO either got re-named or re-thought.
Clearly we need a "Legal" or "Law" section. But if YRO was re-focused back to its original purpose, that might still be useful too.
(To forstall the inevitable "Why?" and "Who cares?", the answer is "So you can correctly filter the stories.", which is the only reason to have the sections at all. Someone can be interested in law stories like this and not actual YRO stories, or vice versa. And the purpose of these sections is so we can tell people who bitch about a particular set of stories to just filter them out, thus keeping the comment area that much cleaner.)
This is a rich person's problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
From the WSJ article: Mr. Jennings says Messrs. Brin and Page "had some strange requests," including hammocks hung from the ceiling of the plane. At one point he witnessed a dispute between them over whether Mr. Brin should have a "California king" size bed, he says. Mr. Jennings says Mr. Schmidt stepped in to resolve that by saying, "Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom. Let's move on." Mr. Jennings says Mr. Schmidt at another point told him, "It's a party airplane."
NASA Ames & the Googlejet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do no evil - except when outfitting your 767 (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I think a hammock on a jetliner sounds like fun.
"Okay Bob, a nice gentle bank to the right
It wouldn't surprise me if Brin and Page get a little miffed at this guy for discussing their private jet in public, though.
Re:Must be a slow news day (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh No Not $200,000! That'll sink Google! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Must be a slow news day (Score:5, Insightful)
Great people talk about ideas
Average people talk about things
Small people talk about other people
Oh, the humanity... (Score:2, Insightful)
I just find it... I dunno... sad? offputting? ...that billionaires pretty much choose to blow off steam about the same way Bubba in the trailer park does, just more expensively. Booze and drugs and whores. Outside of technical endeavors, we are ultimately an uncreative species. :(
Re:Do no evil - except when outfitting your 767 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is a rich person's problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, B&P wanted to found a company that did things differently. Good for them. But to do anything at all, and organization has to have follow-through. It has to balance all the creative geniuses with the dedicated, boring sloggers that get things out the door.
Re:Do no evil - except when outfitting your 767 (Score:3, Insightful)