Film critic Roger Ebert owned millions of dollars worth of early Google stock

The late Roger Ebert was America's most famous film critic, as the reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times and opposite Gene Siskel and, later, Richard Roeper on TV.

But most people would not know Ebert had Google stock worth millions of dollars.

The critic was a passionate fan of technology. In a column about the Wall Street documentary "Inside Job" from 2010, Ebert revealed that he had bought shares in Steak n Shake, Apple, Wholesome and Hearty Foods, and Google. He got a piece of Apple because, he said, "I was a Macintosh fan from the late 1980s, and that's when I started buying."

As for Google, he wrote: "I liked Google when it was first introduced." So he became an early investor.

A forum post at siliconinvestor.com reports that Ebert was a holder of 18,000 Class B shares of Google. At the time of Google's IPO in 2004, he held on to shares worth $1.8 million. But back then the share price was only $89. Now it's more than $700.

Ebert died in 2013 following a long battle with cancer. At the time of his death, he was reportedly worth $9 million, a good chunk of it from Google stock.

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