In 2013, Google’s Sergey Brin separated from wife Anne Wojcicki, co-creator of DNA testing company 23andMe. The most obvious cause was a tangled Silicon Valley romance between Brin and Google Glass marketing manager Amanda Rosenberg, who was also dating then-Android VP Hugo Barra. At Vanity Fair, Vanessa Grigoriadis traces the story all the way back to Wojcicki and Brin’s first meeting, and to Brin’s discovery (via a 23andMe test) that he was at risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.
Behind Sergey Brin’s affair with the face of Google Glass
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
Grigoriadis blends Silicon Valley gossip with shades of Dave Eggers’ The Circle, saying that to some, the story is “about the danger inherent in data sets, when the data includes too much information about one’s mortality. If Brin had never learned about his Parkinson’s risk, he might never have had what a friend of the couple’s characterizes as an emotional crisis and strayed from his wife. (But had Wojcicki not helped him discover his risk for contracting the disease, he might not have enacted the healthy lifestyle choices that may prolong his life.)”
It’s not clear that the particulars of Silicon Valley made Brin and Wojcicki’s separation any stranger than any number of other failed relationships, but as a report on the dynamics (romantic and otherwise) at Google, it’s well worth reading.
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