2021 has been a pretty crappy year so far for most people, but not Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index (via The Guardian), each of them has "earned" more than $20 billion so far this year—remembering that today is April 12, so we're not even four months in yet—which affords them entry into the ultra-exclusive club of people who are worth at least $100 billion.
There are eight men in the world with a total net worth of at least $100 billion based on Bloomberg’s estimation, and Page and Brin are actually far from the top of the charts, although you have to think that such rankings become entirely irrelevant once you're past your first $10 billion or so.
Anyway, here's the list:
- Jeff Bezos - $197 billion
- Elon Musk - $175 billion
- Bill Gates - $145 billion
- Bernard Arnault - $132 billion
- Mark Zuckerberg - $118 billion
- Larry Page - $104 billion
- Warren Buffet - $101 billion
- Sergey Brin - $100 billion
All but two are members of the tech industry. The exceptions are Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffet. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, another tech industry titan, is next in line to join the club, although with a piddling net worth of just $92.2 billion, he's still got some ground to make up.
Page and Brin stepped down from their positions as CEO and president of Google parent company Alphabet Inc in December 2019, but they retain ultimate control over the company as its majority shareholders. Alphabet itself has also seen a significant rise in value year-to-date, climbing from a little over $1700 per share at the beginning of January to $2244 today.
Its gaming ambitions have not fared quite so well, however: Earlier this year, Google closed Stadia’s internal development studios, and shortly after that it was the target of a class action lawsuit over its claim that games like Doom Eternal and Destiny 2 would run at 4K 60fps on the streaming service—which, for the record, they do not.
