Google founder Sergey Brin’s affair with Google Glass marketer Amanda Rosenberg created waves at the tech giant — and co-founder Larry Page was so appalled, he refused to speak to Brin, a juicy Vanity Fair investigation reveals.
Last year Brin split with his wife Anne Wojcicki and mother of his two young kids, and word quickly spread he was dating Rosenberg who in turn ditched her boyfriend Hugo Barra, a top exec at Google’s Android arm.
The piece by Vanessa Grigoriadis talks about the rampant workplace romances at Google including one between Larry Page and Marissa Mayer, now CEO of Yahoo.
Grigoriadis reports, “There were hallway discussions about the two of them dating, and some believed being close to Mayer was helpful when trying to secure Page’s approval for a project.” And Eric Schmidt was “sometimes accompanied by younger women, one of whom briefly worked at Google,” while his wife Wendy retreated from the Google social scene.
The piece says cracks in Brin’s marriage emerged after the launch of Google Glass when Brin “was suddenly awesome, a cool person, a performer – a celebrity!” while Wojcicki still wanted a normal family life.
Meanwhile she and Rosenberg became close friends. But in late 2012 Wojcicki “Came across messages between Rosenberg and Brin that caused her to feel alarm.” Months later he moved out.
Grigoriadis writes, “Wojcicki must have wondered at the way a partnership built on love, pragmatism and a shared philosophy…can be trumped by the passion and excitement of a new relationship.”
But then Brin was caught in a strange love triangle with Rosenberg and Barra. “Something odd was happening. Rosenberg was not leaving Barra. They were still dating when she was seeing Brin. Allegedly Page and Schmidt were aware of this”.
In late May 2013, Rosenberg broke up with Barra, and news of the Brin-Wojcicki split broke in the news in August. A source tells the magazine that many at Google, including Larry, were appalled.
“It was inappropriate,” the magazine quoted a the source close to the situation, of the relationship. “Larry is so ethically strict. . . . I heard Larry was insanely upset by this whole situation and wasn’t talking to Sergey” for a time. The source adds that Brin and Rosenberg both remained in their roles, working together at Google X. “At Google, some people were furious internally, especially women, that Sergey and Amanda were not [professionally] separated.”
But all isn’t rosy in his new relationship, the magazine quotes a family friend who says of Brin and Rosenberg, who has admitted she suffers from clinical depression, “the two of them have horrible, screaming fights. Its part of the passion, the chemical attraction.”