Last night, Google announced what the Wall Street Journal says "may be its most ambitious and difficult science project ever." Baseline Study will try to create the most comprehensive picture of "what a healthy human being should be" by mapping personal genetic and molecular information. It will start with anonymous data from 175 people and then "thousands more," says the paper.

Billionaire technorats can't just tweetstorm the impending techno-utopia and expect the plebes to like it. Radical innovation—like, say, driverless cars or computerized faces—takes some getting used to. In order to sell human obsolescence, Google CEO Larry Page opts for a Mary Poppins approach.

It's official. Google completed its controversial two-tiered stock split, insuring that top executives like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt control the voting power. Now all they need is immortality and they're good to go.

Philanthropy today: Larry Page, the Google co-founder with $32 billion and little record of altruism, says he'd prefer another tech billionaire inherit his estate instead of leaving it to charity.

Every year, the Chronicle of Philanthropy puts out a list of the largest donors. (Mark Zuckerberg came out on top in 2013.) But Inside Philanthropy calls that a vanity metric. Looking at the percentage of wealth an individual has given away, they argue, is the best measure of generosity.

Ever since acquisition rumors started building in late 2012, WhatsApp—the fast-growing messaging service with serious outer-bubble appeal—seemed destined for a multi-billion exit. But how, pray tell, did Facebook decide 19 was the "magic number"? One source tells Valleywag that it began with a $250 million funding offer.

Some moon shots are more self-serving than others. On April 2, Google will split its stock for the first time, in an "unorthodox" move to that shareholders fear will benefit cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin "at the expense of just about everyone else," reports the Associated Press.

Google's playboy executives didn't just land their planes on NASA property and start chugging Pentagon fuel without permission—first, they had to cozy up with the government.

Time magazine's new cover story is the about the ultimate tech company cage match: GOOGLE VS. DEATH. In Silicon Valley parlance, this mortal coil is a bug, not a feature, and Time gives GOOG pretty generous odds.

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt are all billionaires, many times over—which you might think disqualifies them from buying cheap vacation gas from the military to keep their private aircraft fueled in government-owned hangars. Incorrect.

During last week's rich person confab in Sun Valley, Idaho, the New York Times wondered why Google's chief was absent. Larry Page was "Conspicuous by His Absence," the headline read, and the article noted "he suffers from a chronic illness that affects his vocal cords and breathing." Too sick to attend? Nope! At a wedding. Whoops.

If you thought Google co-founder Larry Page sounded horribly sick last time he spoke, it's because he's recovering from an extremely rare form of vocal cord paralysis, which stifles speaking and breathing. Now Page is going public with his illness.