Daniel Fredinburg was an American Google executive, explorer, climate activist and entrepreneur
@Google X Engineer, Timeline and Personal Life
Daniel Fredinburg was an American Google executive, explorer, climate activist and entrepreneur
Daniel Fredinburg born at
Daniel Paul Fredinburg was born on September 8, 1981 in Mission Viejo, California, United States. He left home at the age of 15 to study at Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts. He then attended University of California, Irvine and graduated from there in 2004. Later on, Fredinburg received his master’s degree in intelligent robotics from University of Southern California and also did other graduate programs at University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University.
From 2013 to 2014, Fredinburg dated American actress Sophia Bush. The two remained friends even after their separation.
On April 25, 2015, Fredinburg died because of head injuries suffered by him during an avalanche at the Mount Everest's South Base Camp.
Daniel Fredinburg started his career in the defense industry at Boeing where he worked on future combat systems. He was then hired by Google in 2007 after which he contributed a lot to the company. He invented more than a dozen software technologies and techniques. He developed Google Adventure Team, an effort to map formations and geological areas on the Earth at a level of detailing similar to Google Earth's street-level view of towns, cities and other populated areas. Fredinburg was also the head of privacy at Google, co-founder of Save the Ice and The Laundry SF as well as an advisor on Project Loon.
Fredinburg was one of the four employees selected by Google to document Mount Everest ascent routes for a project. On April 24, 2015, he unrolled a banner on the top of Kala Patthar, a landmark located in the Nepalese Himalayas, for the climate change cause titled SaveTheIce.org. Before his death in an avalanche following the Nepal earthquake the same year, Fredinburg had climbed the relatively inaccessible and difficult Puncak Jaya, the highest peak in Oceania.
Fredinburg had also topped four out of the seven so-called Seven Summits including Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Elbrus in Europe, and Aconcagua in South America.