It’s pretty easy being green if you’re a Silicon Valley notable apparently. We just got word that Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, Friendfeed and now a Facebook employee, has surpassed Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’s 70K contribution to the Yes on Prop 19 campaign.
Buchheit’s 100K donation, in celebration of the 41st anniversary of email, joins that of industry heavyweights Moskovitz, Sean Parker, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel and Steve Silberstein in the effort to legalize marijuana in California. Voters will have a chance to weigh in on the measure November 2nd.
Buchheit was the originator of the term “Don’t Be Evil” while he was at Google. His current employer Facebook rejected advertising from marijuana activists over the summer.
Update: Buchheit explains his motivation behind supporting the controversial proposition and why it seems like Silicon Valley has come out particularly strong in favor of marijuana legalization.
“The essential issue is that prohibition not only strips us of our personal liberty, but it also funnels billions of dollars to violent criminal organizations. Prop19 obviously won’t solve all our problems, but I believe that it could be the turning point that leads us towards a more safe and sane drug policy. On this issue, the politicians will follow where the voters lead.
Prop 19 is popular in many areas, but the support in Silicon Valley is more visible because people here tend to have a greater degree of independence, and are therefore more likely to publicly express their support for what has historically been a controversial issue.”
Buchheit goes into the issue further in a post on his own blog here.
Paul Buchheit co-founded social network aggregator FriendFeed, along with three other former Google employees. He is also an investor in FriendFeed and participated in a $5 million Series A round in February 2008. He was the 23rd employee at Google, where he created Gmail and implemented many of its innovative features. He developed the original prototype of Google AdSense, and was responsible for Google’s famous “Don’t be evil” motto in a meeting.
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