BMJ  2008;336:986-988 (3 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.39548.369977.AD

Feature

Profile

Twenty first century native

¹ BMJ

Larry Brilliant is executive director of Google’s philanthropic arm. Tony Delamothe talked to him about his medical career, Google’s global health projects, and how the appointment finally made sense of his life

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In their first founders’ letter, Larry Page and Sergey Brin said they wanted to "make Google an institution that makes the world a better place." They committed 1% of the company’s equity and 1% of its annual profits to philanthropy and set up Google.org as the main route to disburse these funds. Two years ago, they put Larry Brilliant in charge, and earlier this year he announced the five core initiatives that will provide the focus of Google’s philanthropic efforts over the next 5-10 years.

"We tried to pick areas that allowed us to bring the energies and talents of Google engineers and Google resources to bear," says Brilliant. Altogether, $75m (£38m; 47m) has been committed to projects in three areas: global health, poverty, and climate change.

Unsurprisingly, given Brilliant’s background (of which more later), the initiative on global health is called Predict and Prevent. It "supports efforts to empower . . . [Full text of this article]

Enlightenment and transformation

From ideas to business

Making sense

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