Google chief’s search engine reveals his wedding secret
GOOGLE co-founder and chief executive Larry Page’s wedding today is supposed to be a secret affair.
But his own search engine is undermining the effort.
A recent Google search for “Larry Page marriage†revealed a number of details about the event. Mr Page will definitely be married today to a woman named Lucy Southworth at an “undisclosed location†— meaning on Necker Island, Richard Branson’s 74-acre estate in the Virgin Islands.
Six hundred guests are reportedly due to attend the ceremony to see Mr Page, 34, and Ms Southworth, 27, tie the knot.
Although the guest list is a closely-guarded secret, former US President Bill Clinton, his wife and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, U2 singer Bono, as well as several billionaires and Silicon Valley visionaries are thought to have been invited.
Having only dated for a year, it is not known if the happy couple have signed a pre-nuptial agreement.
In this web-friendly age, billionaires, politicians, and others who live in the public eye have a hard time keeping information about their lives private. Because the public is so interested in the marriages of the rich and famous, every detail of a billionaire’s personal life — from courtship to wedding to, if they’re unlucky, divorce — ends up shooting through millions of fused networks and popping up on millions of strangers’ computer screens. It is true if you’re Bill Gates of Microsoft, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, or Oprah Winfrey of Harpo Entertainment and Mr Page is no exception.
Attorneys familiar with billionaire marriages urge their clients to proceed with care and caution.
“A billionaire has to treat an upcoming marriage as a merger. But it’s a merger with a potential enemy,†says New York divorce lawyer Raoul Felder.
Prenuptial agreements are important, but they’re no guarantee of a satisfactory split if things go south. Consider the divorce of Steven Spielberg, now at DreamWorks Animation, and his first wife Amy Irving. He claimed their prenup was invalid because it had been written on a napkin and she hadn’t had legal representation. A judge tossed it out; Irving got $100 million (€68.2m).
Valuations are tricky, too. Donald Schiller, of Chicago’s Schiller, Du Canto & Fleck, America’s largest matrimonial law firm, says valuing a billionaire’s worth is particularly complicated when real estate and other privately held property is involved. “You can’t evaluate them the same way you can evaluate assets traded on the New York Stock Exchange,†he said.
Another issue that comes with prenups is privacy. Agreements can include confidentiality clauses that can mean barring anything from TV interviews about the ex to writing a book.
Given all of the billionaire marriages that have ended badly, Mr Page may well have a prenup ready. Money doesn’t buy happiness, even if you’re capable of spending billions.
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