Google & Family Roots


It's possible that Google's defiance of China--on March 22 it stopped censoring its search engine there and redirected traffic to a Hong Kong site--is linked to co-founder Sergey Brin's roots. His parents, Soviet Jews, emigrated from Moscow to the U.S. at the Cold War's height, and Brin has a keen awareness of anything that smacks of political censorship. Google, of course, knew about the compromises one must make to do business in China when it entered the market in 2006. But it seems that Brin decided this year that the company could no longer abide the level of censorship, and hacking, and e-mail pilfering that takes place behind Beijing's Great Firewall.
--By Bill Powell
Time Magazine, April 5, 2010

How has your family roots affected what you do in your life and what you stand for?

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