LONDON ¨C By the time Pierre Omidyar was 31, he was, in his own words, not just regular rich but ¡°ridiculous rich.¡± With enough money to make an impact in pretty much any sphere he chooses, the eBay billionaire last week made a splash in an area that is increasingly attracting the attention of tech titans: news.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald announced on Tuesday that he was leaving The Guardian, where he has broken a series of stories on the National Security Agency, based on documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. His new, as yet unnamed, venture will be a general news service backed by Omidyar. It will be the most hotly awaited news startup in years.
Omidyar¡¯s move comes just three months after Jeff Bezos, Amazon¡¯s founder, bought The Washington Post. Omidyar, too, had looked at the paper, he wrote in a blog post. ¡°That process got me thinking about what kind of social impact could be created if a similar investment was made in something entirely new, built from the ground up. Something that I would be personally involved in outside of my other efforts as a philanthropist,¡± he wrote.
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