Sergey Brin's a Saint To His Mother-in-Law

Say what you will about Google's propensity for funneling money to a tight, back-scratching coterie of friends; but co-founder Sergey Brin does right by his mother-in-law, which is more than many husbands can say. Witness his new half-million-dollar donation.

Brin just contributed $500,000 of his personal wealth to the Creative Commons, a nonprofit to encourage the sharing of copyrighted works. Creative Commons, in turn, is chaired by Esther Wojcicki, notes Peter Kafka of All Things D, and Wojcicki, a Palo Alto high school teacher, is the mother of Brin's wife, Anne Wojcicki. Brin's company previously hired his mother-in-law as an educational consultant; she in turn has promoted in her Huffington Post column both Google Docs and an airship company Google appears to be invested in. Anne Wojcicki, of course, started 23andMe, a genetics-testing company that counts Google as a landlord and repeat investor.

Which is all by way of saying, we think Brin very much has earned the drumstick at Thanksgiving this year.