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May 22, 2007
Google Does Bioinformatics Venture Deal
This should be controversial: Google announced in a filing at the close today that it has invested $3.9-million into a bioinformatics startup called 23andMe. The company's co-founder is Ann Wojcicki, Google co-founder Sergey Brin's new spouse. According to the filing, Ann's company helps consumers understand and browse their genome.The deal is interesting for (at least) two reasons, not counting the spousal connection. First, bioinformatics had largely fallen out of favor, at least until recently; and second, Google hasn't to my knowledge, done much venture investing, so it's interesting that this is the area (and the sure-to-be-controversial company) Google has selected.
As a related aside, Mohr Davidow, Genentech, and NEA are also in the deal.
[via Dan Primack]
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is nepotism evil?
Her name is Anne Wojcicki
'...UNDERSTAND their genome..'
A tall claim, if there was one.
if this were The World Bank, he'd have to resign.
Was gonna say the same thing -- how is it that Paul Wolfowitz gets fired for getting his girlfriend a $200K/year job but Brin gets away with giving his wife's company $3.9M worth of Google investors' money? This investment had better pay off...
Boy, if this isn't a perfect example of the conflict of interest training I went through last week, I don't know what is! Zillions of $ in the bank, and he has to get his publicly traded company to fork over instead of shelling out a few of his own shekels for his wife's company? That just shows poor judgement on the part of him AND Google's board - what would Warren do?
really blatant case of poor judgement and
surrounding yourself with a bunch of
yes-men/women. the relative magnitude of
the stupidity of this move is more along those
of Martha Stewarts insider trading debacle.
"First, bioinformatics had largely fallen out of favor, at least until recently"
What do you mean by that?
1) Bioinf has fallen out of favor with Google in terms of where they are putting their efforts/money?
2) Bioinf is falling out of favor with the technical community in general?
or something else?
All your base pairs are belong to us.