Google Explorer Killed on Everest Raised Awareness About Climate

Google Inc. executive Dan Fredinburg was pursuing his latest environmental passion -- and a challenge from the late author Jack Kerouac -- when he lost his life in an earthquake on Mount Everest.

Fredinburg had quoted Kerouac, whose works in the 1950s and 1960s instilled wanderlust in a generation of young explorers, on his Google+ page last year while planning an excursion to the world’s highest peak: “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”