Google Veteran Asks Obama to Raise His Taxes

[Waqas 48]

Doug Edwards’ greatest claim to fame is that he was Google employee number 59, and the author of a memoir called I’m Feeling Lucky. He retired from the Silicon Valley search giant in 2005, shortly after its IPO, with a significant amount of stock. He is now, as he puts it, “unemployed by choice.”

As of Monday, however, Edwards has a new title: the guy who asked President Barack Obama in a public forum to raise taxes on millionaires like himself. “My question is would you please raise my taxes?” Edwards said at Monday’s LinkedIn Town Hall. “I would like very much for our country to continue to invest in things like Pell grants, infrastructure, job training–programs that made it possible for me to get to where I am. It kills me to see Congress not supporting the expiration of tax cuts that have been benefiting so much of us for so long.â€

Edwards would not name the company where he made his money, saying only that he had joined a startup nearby. But when pressed by Obama, admitted it was “a search engine.”

The former journalist, who worked as Google’s brand manager from 1999 to 2005, is not normally so coy. He runs a blog of recollections from former Googlers called Xooglers. His memoir spills the beans on various disagreements with Google luminaries such as Marissa Meyer and founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. As the head of branding at a startup that tended to eschew all forms of marketing, relying instead on the quality of the search product, Edwards had his work cut out for him.

Whether Congress will allow Obama to raise taxes on the richest Americans — or at least sunset the Bush tax cuts — is still uncertain. But billionaire investor Warren Buffett, writing in a New York Times opinion piece, asked for the president to do just that, leading to the so-called “Buffett Rule” in Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act. Edwards is unlikely to get any legislation named after him, but he just added his voice to the chorus — and promptly became the most visible wealthy figure in Silicon Valley to call for a bigger tax bill.

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