Google co-founder Sergey Brin seems to be finding his sea legs when it comes to philanthropy. Brin and his wife Anne Wojcicki have announced a $1 million gift to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a group which helped his family when he was just a little boy from the Soviet Union. The society provides protection and assistance to some of the most vulnerable refugee populations around the world and also offers information, training, and expert advice on immigration laws.

Sergey Brin has an estimated wealth of $16 billion but he and his wife are learning about what their money can do. They have given away $30 million so far to various organizations including the Michael J. Fox Foundation and other research organizations devoted to Parkinson's disease. In a NY Times article on the latest donation Brin cited Bill Gates' research-heavy philanthropic model as an inspiration.

The Brin family came to the U.S. 30 years ago and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society helped them leave the Soviet Union for the United States and assisted with getting them visas and tickets and giving them money (what an excellent return on their investment). Brin started social networking site, mystory.hias.org, on the society's website to for Russian Jewish immigrants to post their stories. The gift will be used for a variety of purposes including supporting advocacy on immigration policy.

From the LA Times Hot Properties:
Four-time Olympic gold medal winning swimmer Lenny Krayzelburg has put his bright white modern Sunset Strip-area home, shown above, on the market for $5.675 million. The virtual tour is here.
--Talk-show host Leeza Gibbons and her estranged husband, actor and architect Stephen Meadows, have listed their house in the Hollywood Hills at $7,395,000. We first saw this home back in 2006 when it was listed for just under $8 million. The eight-bedroom Mediterranean was built in 1926 and was once owned by Joan Crawford. The listing is here.
--Director Wolfgang Petersen has listed his Santa Monica home for sale for $3.95 million. It is our estate of the day later today.
--Milwaukee Brewers catcher Jason Kendall has listed a house he owns in Manhattan Beach at $7.3 million. The listing is here.
-- Rachel Ashwell, who created the Shabby Chic style, has listed her Brentwood home for sale at $4,395,000. Check out the Shabby Chic style at the listing here.

From the NY Post's Gimme Shelter:
--The unnamed buyer of PH2001 is suing the Plaza residential limited partnership, developer El-Ad, the marketing arm of Stribling & Associates and others for breach of contract. That means that two of the six penthouses originally offered at the Plaza are in litigation. Right now about 25 Plaza residences are for sale.
--Freddie Mac CFO Anthony Piszel has put his Easton, Maryland home on the market for $4.975 million. It was our estate of the day on Friday.
--Nightclub boss JE Englebert says he and other residents in the new Gramercy Starck building on East 23rd Street aren't thrilled that the tenant in the retail space of the pricey building is McDonald's. He plans to sue.
--NASCAR Chairman Brian France has flipped his 15 Central Park West condo for an $8 million profit. He bought unit 34A a year ago for $10.793 million and has sold for $18.8 million.

From the Real Estalker:
--The Real Estalker Mama has heard a rumor that Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife Ann spent $8.5 million for a duplex in Manhattan's West Village.
--Lingerie model and Surreal Life star Caprice Bourret has put her home in London's Notting Hill neighborhood on the market. It was our estate of the day on Saturday.
--The Goldwyn mansion has just been listed. For $24 million you get nearly 11,000 square feet of Hollywood history. The Georgian style mansion on Laurel Lane was built in 1934 and entertained many of Hollywood's greats. The listing is here.
--Former Lehman's boss Joseph Gregory has put his Hamptons hideaway on the market for $32.5 million. I'll be checking it out as an estate of the day on Monday.
--"Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis has been seen checking out La Villa Serena as a potential new playground for himself and his bevy of babes.
--Tina Sinatra has listed her home in the Beverly Hills post office area for $2.45 million. The listing is here.

From the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties:
--Actress Marsh Mason has put her New Mexico herb farm back on the market for $7.95 million which is about 30% below the original listing from last year. The listing is here.
--The Plaza Hotel's "Astor" suite has been listed for $55 million.
--Richard Holbrooke, who served as ambassador to the United Nations sold his Connecticut house for $1.125 million which is 25% less than the original listing.

From Newsday's Real LI:
--Jets coach Eric Mangini has sold his Garden City home for $2.225 million, taking a $75,000 loss on the property, he purchased the home for $2.3 million in 2006. Mangini and wife, Julie, purchased a six-bedroom Colonial in Morris County for $4 million.

From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--Warner Music Group chairman-CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. and his wife Clarissa have paid $28.5 million for the "Muppet mansion" an East 69th Street mansion was bought by Jim Henson in 1977 and turned into Muppets headquarters. It was on the market for $32 million, only three years after the current owners bought it from Jim Henson's estate for $12.4 million.
--Hedge fund manager Ray Iwanowski, just bought a 4,184-square-foot apartment at 823 Park Avenue for $13,567,500.
-- Some of the biggest multimillion-dollar real estate purchases in New York were made by executives at Lehman Brothers: In January 2007, the firm's chief executive, Dick Fuld, and his wife paid $21 million for a Park Avenue co-op, and a bunch of Lehman people bought in at 15 Central Park West: the co-head of Lehman Brothers Real Estate Partners, Raymond Mikulich, paid $17.9 million; Lehman CFO Erin Callan paid $6.48 million; the head of Lehman's European fixed-income sales, David Bizer, paid $5.3 million; and managing director Arthur Estey bought one of the building's biggest non-penthouse units for $16.9 million. Lehman's global head of investment management, George Herbert Walker IV, one of the president's cousins, paid $13.95 million for a townhouse at 6 East 10th Street in Greenwich Village.
-- Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander is picking up a place at Superior Ink, Robert A. M. Stern's new brick-and-stone, townhouse-and-apartment development on West 12th Street for around $25 million.
--Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers owner Ed Snider just sold his 36th-floor apartment at 15 Central Park West for $12.4 million, three weeks after he bought it for only $7.34 million.
--Zinc magnate Bill Flaherty and his wife, Tina Santi Flaherty, put the 10-room apartment on the market for $43 million. The listing is here(no good pics yet).

Google.org recently announced its investment of over $10 million in "breakthrough geothermal energy" to further its goal to develop clean energy alternatives to coal. Functioning as the philanthropic arm of Google (effectively the 1% co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin initially pledged toward global concerns), Google.org has already donated or invested over $85 million across five focus areas which include renewable energy and the improvement of public services.

If you're into videos about geothermal energy, check out this one. It's all about drilling for energy in the Australian outback. You'll learn words and phrases such as "exajoules" and "distributed indigenous nature" -- just in time for your Labor Day cocktail parties!

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has announced he'll be join the ranks of the ultra-wealthy booking a space flight. Brin's date with the sky will be in 2011 when he will be one of the passengers aboard Russian Soyuz rocket. Brin has put down a $5 million deposit with Space Adventures, a company which has already sent five tourists into space for $20 to $35 million each. Brin is the first of six founding members of an "Orbital Mission Explorers Circle" who will each contribute $5 million to pay for the company to launch its first private mission to the International Space Station. Visitors to the space station may be allowed to take their own space experiments with them.

Google has previously demonstrated an interest in space travel, funding the Google Lunar X Prize, a $25 million competition to get a spacecraft to the moon.

Google is getting more and more famous for spoiling and splurging on its employees every day it seems. A couple of years ago the two founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, made headlines when they purchased a used Boeing 767 which they converted to a large customized private jet. Now they're making headlines again as they have negotiated a $1.3 million deal to with NASA to both use the Moffett Field runway and to have parking spaces for Google's over-sized private Boeing jet and 2 other smaller jets. The Google execs get an exclusive parking spot within mere minutes of headquarters, and NASA gets both the annual income and the chance to put scientists on board Google flights for research purposes.

All the other high rollers in the area are just drooling with envy.

The Google guys really seem to be enjoying their cash. They splurged on a plane and now Decanter reports that Larry Page and Sergey Brin threw a late night party for the participants of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Google guys served their guests Château Margaux 1979, Château Gruaud Larose 1989  and magnums of 1990 Krug Champagne (regular size bottles sell for upwards of $200). The evening's menu included Belon oysters and Spanish Bellota ham. With Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Bono in attendance this year, Davos was clearly the place to be last week.