• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, August 15, 2013

How does a billionaire with a net worth of $8.2 billion spend his money? He funds an ocean research vessel. At least that's what Google Chairman Eric Schmidt did. He recently unveiled the ocean liner, Falkor, rebuilt in less than three years. Researchers can use the ship for free, but there's a catch.

Researchers must make all findings made during their use public within two months of the voyage. Falkor, owned by the Schmidt Ocean Research Institute, got its name from a character in a book.

A video uploaded to YouTube in 2012 talks about one project this year that will explore what's happening in the deepest parts of the ocean. The conditions suggest similarities to how the earth was formed and how life emerged.

Another Googler -- actually one of the two top Googlers, Sergey Brin, with an estimated net worth of $22.8 billion, according to Forbes -- funded a project to grow meat to the tune of $330,000, but not through livestock. The goal is to produce meat that's less demanding on traditional resources.

The funds went to Dr. Mark Post, professor of Vascular Physiology and head of the Physiology department at Maastricht University, so he could create the world's first cultured beef burger, which some reports call the test-tube burger. The project took about three months. The burger served up in London earlier this week.

And we shouldn't omit Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with a net worth of $25.2 billion, just because he's not a Googler. Bezos acquired The Washington Post earlier this week. Doesn't anyone else find it ironic that the father of online ecommerce, who built a book-selling site into an online empire, should buy a company that got its start in publishing news on paper? 

Overall, U.S. newspaper print ad revenue will decline 4.3% to $21.35 billion in 2013, from $22.31 billion last year, although digital ad revenue should rise 5.6% to $3.56 billion this year, according to eMarketer. The analyst firm estimates Amazon's worldwide ad revenue will rise 36.9% this year to $835.05 million.