The co-Founders of Google (Sergey Brin and Larry Page) have decided to take a little cash out of the equity monster that is Google.  The two currently own a combined 57,700,000 shares of the company.  They are each selling 5,000,000 of their shares.  There are business implications to this, the two will now own only 48% of the company and theoretically could be outvoted by their shareholders.  There are reasons that’s exceedingly unlikely, but those are for weekdays when I’m a businessman.  Today’s Saturday and I’m instead focused on what they might want to buy with the proceeds of their 5,000,000 shares each.  Combined that’s 10,000,000 shares with a current value of $550.01, or (as the calculation above shows, $5,500,100,000.  I have some theories on why they needed to make this little withdrawl:

1. They wanted to buy a new car or two or 3,050 Buggati Veyrons (the most expensive car in the world at $1.8 Million) or 478,000 Smart Cars.
2. They wanted to buy a new house, or the top 10 most expensive houses in the world.  Actually, if they bought all 10 houses TWICE they would still have 1 Billion left over for taxes and realtor fees.
3. They could have some friends over for dinner. If they purchased a nice steak ($10), a side ($5) and poured a glass of wine($3) they could have the entire United States population over for dinner and still have $27,000,000 left over to spend on paper plates.
4. They could buy 1 out of every 16 properties in Allegheny County, based on their assessed value.

Just for fun, what if they sold their entire stake in Google.  That’s $31,350,570,000 for 57.7 million shares.  The same metrics work out this way:

1. They could buy 17,350 Buggati Veyrons or 2.7 million smart cars.
2. They could buy the 10 most expensive houses nearly 15 times.
3. Assume they’re planning on having everyone over to Pittsburgh where the sales tax is 7%.  Let’s say they take us to McDonalds and buy a 4 piece nugget ($1.07), a Double Cheeseburger ($1.17), a McChicken ($1.07), and a small drink ($1.07).  These two billionaires could treat the ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE WORLD to lunch and still give use each a quarter to buy desert out of the gumball dispenser.
4. They could buy nearly 40% of Allegheny County (39.4%).