When Facebook engineers first heard the news that their CEO had bought all four houses next to his own house, it was basically just 4 houses – but they definitely spotted the ‘programmer’s clue’ in the purchase: “For Facebook’s CEO reportedly heard word that an unscrupulous someone was trying to buy one of the neighboring houses and then market it as “The House Next Door to Mark Zuckerberg.”. Well, by that logic, once he is done with this 4, the next houses become ‘next doors’ and then …

And they were right. Using that reasoning recursively, Zuckerberg has now bought almost half of Palo Alto, when reports last came in. SVChronicle has also learnt that the buying program has been “interrupted” right now since it hit a house belonging to Larry Page on one side and a house belonging to Marissa Meyer on the other. Apparently, they had initiated their own buying programs last week.