It’s no worse than picking a market high preceding an ongoing recession as a reference, as the parent commenter did. The point is that his stock performance incentives are not tied to the absolute value of the stock, as the parent commenter is mistakenly claiming. Most of his performance based incentives don’t even relate to stock price, as the parent commenter is also mistakenly claiming. But the ones that do are tied to the stock’s performance against a benchmark. That benchmark has had the same ups and downs as the rest of the market, and Google’s stock has been tracking against it very well. Something that is an achievement, and that’s what google’s shareholder elected directors decided to reward him for with performance based incentives.

These are very simple concepts, and while you can be forgiven for not already knowing them, aspiring to retain your ignorance certainly isn’t admirable.