Google cofounder Larry Web page has bought one other personal island, this time in Puerto Rico.
In 2018, Web page, whose internet value is estimated to be roughly $127 billion, purchased the island of Cayo Norte for $32 million, Business Insider not too long ago reported.
Cayo Norte is situated between Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands within the Caribbean.
Web page bought the island in two separate transactions through a restricted legal responsibility firm known as U.S. Virgin Island Properties, which Enterprise Insider recognized as belonging to him and his spouse, Lucinda Southworth. The primary buy was for a giant chunk of land on the island, priced at $28.7 million, adopted by one other smaller deal valued at $3.4 million. Previously, Web page used the LLC in query to buy different personal islands he owns.
Web page’s collection of private islands stretches throughout the Caribbean and South Pacific. In 2014, he purchased the Lollik Islands, a pair of islands within the British Virgin Islands archipelago, simply 12 miles east of Cayo Norte, for $23 million. Additionally within the Caribbean, Web page owns Eustatia Island, on the jap finish of the British Virgin Islands. In 2020, Web page expanded to the South Pacific, buying a majority share within the deed for the island of Tavarua in Fiji.
Web page reportedly spent several months on Tavarua throughout the pandemic. On the time Fiji was closed to vacationers apart from these arriving by personal jet or superyacht, which allowed Web page to enter the nation.
Since stepping down from any government management roles at Google’s father or mother firm Alphabet in 2019, Web page has largely receded from public life. Nonetheless, he retains a board seat and effectively controls the company, alongside cofounder Sergey Brin, by a majority possession of a particular class of voting inventory.
The explanations for his buy of Cayo Norte or another personal islands in his portfolio stay unclear. Some have speculated they’re reclusive retreats for a Silicon Valley icon who prefers to keep away from the highlight. One other idea is that Web page goals to make use of the islands as “safe spaces” for scientific experiments, which he believes there aren’t enough of, based on an interview he gave at Google’s annual developer conference in 2013, when he was nonetheless the corporate’s CEO. His personal Eustatia Island was reportedly used for checks of his flying automobile firm Kitty Hawk, which shut down in 2022.
No matter Web page’s reasoning , his personal islands stay a status symbol even among the many world’s elite. In actual fact, the primary ever difficulty of Fortune, revealed in February 1930, featured an article concerning the then-emerging pattern, fashionable with early-Twentieth-century titans of business—chocolatiers, penmakers, and hoteliers—who lived there in luxurious and by their very own guidelines. On these islands a billionaire may “build his home, make his laws, fly, if he will, his own flag,” the article reads.
Web page is much from the one billionaire to buy a non-public island. Close by his islands within the British Virgin Islands lies Sir Richard Branson’s personal Necker Island. Oracle founder David Ellison bought an island in Hawaii in 2012, in a deal that has led to some objections from locals involved about Ellison’s courting of the super-rich and his development projects for the island.
