Tales of Silicon Valley's dot-com millionaires and their excesses are legendary: the cars, the toys and the mansions.
But friends of Google Inc.'s notoriously frugal co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin predict the pair will forge a more altruistic path as they begin to cash in fortunes in company stock now valued at more than $6-billion apiece.
"They have a very strong social sense, of wanting to do good things for the world," said Terry Winograd, a computer science professor at Stanford University, who supervised the pair's pioneering doctoral work in the late 1990s.
What is clear is that that both men will have enough money to do anything they've ever dreamed.
Last week, Mr. Page, 31, and Mr. Brin, 31, along with Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt, disclosed plans to begin selling a total of 16.6 million shares over 18 months. For the founders, the sales represent roughly a fifth of their 30-per-cent stake in the Web search colossus, based in Mountain View, Calif.
Google shares have nearly doubled since August, when the company went public. Now, a six-month lockup period imposed on insiders and early investors who acquired shares in the initial public offering is being lifted. That frees them to sell up to 266 million shares.
Just as it did at Microsoft Corp., the Google bonanza will put new fortunes in the hands of hundreds of employees and early investors in the company, which grew out of the founders' PhD creation of an Internet search engine.
Among some of the early believers in Google, who now stand to earn a big payoff, are Henry Kissinger, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tiger Woods.
Millions of people who bought stock at $85 in an unusual auction process designed to make the IPO accessible to ordinary investors, have also reaped large rewards as the stock has soared.
Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, both sons of college math professors, aren't known for their conspicuous consumption. Already billionaires, they still live in modest apartments in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley and home of Stanford. Neither owns a yacht.
Not surprisingly, they have a passion for gadgets. The men drive trendy, but fuel-miserly Toyota Priuses (price: $21,500 and up). Mr. Page sometimes rides a Segway around town, while Mr. Brin sometimes commutes by in-line skates.
Both men have a passion for outer space, the environment and education.
Prof. Winograd said Mr. Page was at Stanford last week to talk to a group of his grad students about the computer-human interface.
"They are technologists first, and businessmen second. They value ideas over money."
He predicted that both men would likely look to endow colleges.
In a letter to prospective investors last August, the Google founders touted Google Grants, a new company that works with non-profit organizations on environmental, poverty and human rights projects.
They've also set up the Google Foundation, endowed with company stock with a mission to do good deeds around the globe.
"We hope some day this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world's problems," Mr. Page and Mr. Brin told shareholders.
Google has already given back a lot to its employees.
The company's head office - known as Googleplex - is famous for its hip employee perks. There are toys and diversions for workers, including a spa, a grand piano, a snooker table and a roller rink. The cafeteria serves up gourmet health food created by a chef who once fed Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.
And like many other tech companies, Google employees enjoy competitive stock options.
Philanthropy is a well-trodden path for tech billionaires. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has retreated from day-to-day operations of the company, now spends his time giving rather than innovating. He's now the world's biggest philanthropist, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on three of the planet's worst diseases - AIDS, malaria and hepatitis B.
Many other retire young, leaving the whirlwind high-tech business forever. Zarko Draganic, a Canadian who became an instant multimillionaire when he sold his Silicon Valley startup AltoCom Inc. to Broadcom Corp. five years ago for $175-million, bought a farm in Italy and retired at age 34.
"It's hard when you are that young to know what to do," Mr. Draganic said from Florence.
Having more money than you know what to do with can be very unsettling, said the University of Waterloo graduate who was drawn to Silicon Valley in the 1990s.
"At first, there's an overwhelming feeling of euphoria. Nothing is real," he explained. "But money isn't a true measurement of success. So you have to find out who you really are, not just your net worth."
Going through a wildly successful IPO like Google is a perfect opportunity to reconsider everything about your life, he offered as advice to Mr. Page and Mr. Brin.
"It's one thing to say it, but I guess everyone has to experience it on their own."