After realizing that going to the Moon was not their cup of tea, the Mountain View giant has decided to partner up with Virgin Galactic to launch the first Martian colony funded by corporate dollars instead of governmental taxes.
(Google Press Release) "Some people are calling Virgle an 'interplanetary Noah's Ark,'" said Virgin Group President and Founder Sir Richard Branson, who conceived the new venture. "I'm one of them. It's a potentially remarkable business, but more than that, it's a glorious adventure. For me, Virgle evokes the spirit of explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, who set sail looking for the New World. I do hope we'll be a bit more efficient about actually finding it, though." [...]
"Virgle is the ultimate application of a principle we've always believed at Google: that you can do well by doing good," said Google co-founder Larry Page, who plans to share leadership of the new Martian civilization with Branson and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
"We feel that ensuring the survival of the human race by helping it colonize a new planet is both a moral good in and of itself and also the most likely method of ensuring the survival of our best – okay, fine, only -- base of web search volume and advertising inventory," Page added. "So, you know, it's, like, win-win."
The plan calls for terraforming the planet within a 100 years, using the newly improved Virgle One spaceship to transport citizens willing to brave the dangers of Martian weather, radiation and wildlife in order to settle the red planet (via the Open Source Planet).
Despite the fact that experts have pointed out that terraforming Mars may be a bad idea, Sergey Brin has decided to lead the charge and is asking humans with Earthen citizenship to join him in his quest to conquer the crimson planet.
Sergey Brin is asking interested users to not only fill out the necessary forms online, but to also submit a video proving why they should be one of the lucky few to join him and several hundred pigs on the surface of another world.
Note: While Brin works out getting the permits for establishing a Martian colony, Larry Page is working on the Jupiter mission which involves settling the moons Ganymede and Callisto in the hopes of expanding Virgle's empire across the solar system.
In other related news, Microsoft has decided to partner with the Saturn Corporation (a division of General Motors) to colonize Titan in the hopes that its methane lakes will help ease the energy crisis on our home world.
Microsoft hopes this initiative will help ease public tension after the software giant imprisoned Yahoo! employees on Mercury after they resisted its attempts at taking over the company.
Note: Microsoft and Google are still suing each other in court over the right to colonize the dwarf planet Ceres, which they believe holds the key towards settling Mars.
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