Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google and the world’s sixth-richest person, has filed for divorce from his three-year-long wife, becoming the third billionaire to do so in recent years.
According to court filings, Brin filed a petition for divorce of his marriage to Nicole Shanahan this month, citing “irreconcilable disagreements.” The couple, who have a three-year-old boy, requested that court documents be sealed in order to keep the specifics of their divorce confidential.
According to the filing in Santa Clara, California, “there is likely to be significant public interest in their divorce case and any prospective child custody difficulties” because of their high-profile connection.
What you should know
- The 48-year-old American billionaire has a net worth of $94 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is mostly derived from his stakes in Google, which he co-founded with Larry Page in 1998 and later merged with Alphabet Inc. He and Page both left Alphabet in 2019, but they remain on the board of directors and are the majority shareholders.
- His latest divorce comes a year after Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates announced their divorce, and three years after Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott divorced. When they split up, Bill and Melinda Gates had a $145 billion wealth to divide, whereas Jeff Bezos and Jeff Scott had a $137 billion fortune to divide.
- Because the relationship began long after he became a billionaire, Monica Mazzei, a partner at Sideman & Bancroft LLP in San Francisco, believes Brin and Shanahan have a prenuptial agreement. “We will never know the details” of the divorce, she claimed, because the matter is being handled by a private judge.
- Sergey Brin’s fortune is enough to buy 51.2 million troy ounces of gold or 831 million barrels of oil. As investors cautiously buy the shares, the billionaire made a daily profit of $917 million.
The Wall Street Journal said that YouTube Shorts – a short-form video product that competes with TikTok – has grown quite popular, and investors are responding favourably. Monthly logged-in users on YouTube Shorts have surpassed 1.5 billion.
This accounts for almost three-quarters of YouTube’s entire global user base of 2 billion monthly logged-in users. In comparison, TikTok said in September that it had reached 1 billion monthly active users.