Google's CEO Says He Wants Elon Musk to Get All His Money When He Dies

It's a well-known fact that the chief executives of the largest technology companies out there are also among the world's biggest philanthropists, and Bill Gates is probably the best example in this case.

But as far as Google's CEO Larry Page is concerned, donating to charity isn't quite the best idea. That's why he won't be donating anymore to a philanthropic organization, should he pass away in the coming years.

In an interview with Charlie Rose at TED, Page explained that he would rather give his money to a scientist that has more chances to change the world than to a charity that would only spend it with no further benefit.

Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, and CEO and chief product architect of Tesla Motors, has invested heavily in space exploration and estimated in 2011 that humans would arrive on Mars within 10 or 20 years.

“Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that’s somewhat correct,” Page explained. “Companies are doing the same incremental thing that they did 50 years ago, 20 years ago. That’s not really what we need. Especially in technology, we need revolutionary change, not incremental change.”

The 12th billionaire in the United States

At this point, Larry Page has a net worth of $29.6 billion (€24.3 billion) and is ranked by Forbes as the 9^th most powerful person in the world and the 12^th billionaire in the United States.

For the sake of comparison, Bill Gates, who's currently the richest person in the United States and in the entire world, has a net worth of $81.6 billion (€67 billion). Microsoft's co-founder has donated a total of $42.3 billion (€34.7 billion) to charity through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, trying to fight a number of diseases in poor countries, including polio and malaria.

Larry Page has also donated billions of euros to cure a number of diseases, and the most recent such effort took place in November, when the Google CEO announced that his company would double down on Ebola donations and for every dollar people gave, the search giant donated two dollars.