Dan Fredinburg, a Google executive who described himself as an adventurer, was among the hundreds who died in a massive earthquake that struck Nepal on Saturday.
Google confirmed his death. Lawrence You, the company's director of privacy, posted online that Fredinburg was in Nepal with three other Google employees climbing Mount Everest. The other three, he added, are safe.
Google would not give further details. According to the technology blog Re/Code, Fredinburg was an experienced climber who co-founded, in his spare time, Google Adventure. The project aims to "translate the Google Street View concept into extreme, exotic locations like the summit of Mount Everest or the Great Barrier Reef off Australia," according to Startup Grind, a global startup community.
Fredinburg also helped start Save the Ice, an organization dedicated to raising awareness about global warming "through adventurous campaigns and events around the world," according to its website.
Fredinburg started at Google in 2007. He served as product manager and the head of privacy at Google X, the company's secretive arm best known for "moonshot" projects such as the self-driving car.
Google said it has launched a "person finder" tool for Nepal to help people find loved ones in the aftermath of the quake and "is working to get updated satellite imagery to aid in the recovery effort." Google says it is committing $1 million to the quake response.
The actress Sophia Bush, who has appeared in photos with Fredinburg posted by entertainment outlets, called him "one-of-a-kind" in a post on Instagram.
"A dancing robot who liked to ride dinosaurs and chase the sun and envision a better future for the world. His brain knew how to build it," she wrote. "His heart was constantly evolving to push himself to make it so."
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More