I bet this kind of thing happens to you all the time ...
It began six months ago, when Brilliant was playing golf at the Presidio. His cell phone rang, and Chris Anderson, the former publishing magnate who now runs the TED Conference, informed Brilliant that he had been given $100,000 and unlimited plane tickets to come up with an idea for bettering the world.
Google Inc., which has said it plans to put $1 billion into its charitable efforts, hired as its first chief of philanthropy a man who has helped eliminate smallpox in the Third World, founded a pioneering online community and rubbed elbows with the Grateful Dead.
Dr. Larry Brilliant, 61, of Mill Valley will become executive director of Google.org as it gets started on its mission of "applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world's problems," in the words of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
