Google bigwigs settle for US$1 salary

The three billionaires who run online search leader Google Inc will settle for a US$1 salary again this year while four other top executives will receive raises of US$200,000 apiece, according to documents filed on Monday.

It marks the third consecutive year that Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have limited their salaries to a US$1. It is a sacrifice that they can afford because they have gotten rich off their large stakes in Google, whose stock price has more than quintupled from its initial offering price of US$85 in August 2004.

Page and Brin are each worth about US$14 billion while Schmidt's fortune stands at US$5 billion, according to Forbes magazine's annual ranking of the nation's wealthiest people.

The salaries of four other Google executives are climbing from US$250,000 last year to US$450,000 this year. They are: Robert Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research; Omid Kordestani, senior vice president of global sales and business development; Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product management and George Reyes, the company's chief financial officer.

Google also gave the same four executives bonuses totaling US$829,912 for their performance last year. Schmidt, Page and Brin did not receive bonuses.