by Eli Kintisch
Google has been an American technological success story if there ever was one, leading to billions of dollars in technological innovation, and, recently, fledgling research in important fields like energy, public health and brain science.
But maybe this high-tech juggernaut might have ended up in Israel, an interview with the mother of Google co-founder Sergey Brin suggests.
Eugenia Brin explained that in 1979 the Brin family, from Russia, was deciding between Israel and the United States, and an organization called the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society helped them with their move to Maryland.
Sergey Brin, who was 6 years old when his family emigrated to the United States, started Google as a computer science grad student at Stanford University. There's no way of knowing, but it's certainly possible he might have ended up at one of Israel's top universities if he wanted to, and started his company in the Tel Aviv suburbs instead of northern California.
As Martin points out, this is not the only example of how things could have turned out quite differently if a few prominent figures had not ended up in the US. I wonder how Google would have been received had it indeed been born in Israel?
Following on from this fascinating what-if idea, it occurred to me that there are several other key examples of very prominent US figures responsible for considerable wealth-creating enterprises which may not have been based in the US - had things turned out differently.
For example, Henry Ford’s father, William Ford, was born in County Cork Ireland in 1826. Had he not emigrated to the US, is it possible that his son might have gone on to create the Ford Motor Company back in Ireland ?
Then there’s Donald Trump. If Donald’s father Fredierik had never embarked on the trip from Kallstadt, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany to settle in New York ( where he eventually became a successful property developer ) would the Trump Organization be instead Trump Gmbh ?
Similarly, the father of Blake Edwards ( the director ) was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1867. If he stayed there, perhaps the ‘Pink Panther’ would have been Canadian ?