• Sergey Brin and Larry Page from different backgrounds
• Common interests bring them together at the university
• Brin and Page form a search engine giant
Sergey Brin – mathematician’s son from Moscow
Sergey Brin was born Sergei Mikhailovich Brin in Moscow in 1973. His father, Mikhail Israilevich Brin, worked as an economic planner in the Soviet Union, his mother worked in the research laboratory of the Soviet Gas and Oil Institute. Both parents are trained as mathematicians, but could not pursue an academic career because of their Jewish origins in the Soviet Union, as Sergey Brin confirmed in various interviews in the past.
The challenges that the Jewish family faced in their home country prompted them to apply for an exit visa: In 1979, when Sergey was five years old, the family left the Soviet Union for the USA. “Undoubtedly, the great suffering my parents were inflicted on in Russia because of anti-Semitism was the main reason they left Russia. And that has had a major impact on my life. […] My family faced many challenges in Russia. My father could not work in his chosen field. Everything we had in Russia we had to leave behind and start over. It gave me a different perspective on life,” Brin said years later in an interview with Israeli financial publication TheMarker.com.
Moving to the United States brought many changes: Sergey went to a school in Maryland, his father Mikhail took a job as a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland in College Park.
Brin later also studied mathematics and computer science at the university where his father taught. He received his Bachelor of Science degree with honors in 1993 and later began to study for a doctorate at the renowned Stanford University, which he did not complete.
Larry Page – the silent computer expert
Lawrence Edward Page was also born in 1973 and gained early insight into their professional activities through his family: His father, Carl Victor Page, worked as a computer science professor, his mother, Gloria Page, was loyal to the industry as a database developer and programmer.
Page also started studying at the University of Michigan, where his father worked as a professor, and decided on engineering. Another parallel to Brin: Page also graduated with honors. Parallel to his academic career, Page worked as a software developer.
Larry Page later also went on to study for a doctorate at Stanford University, but ultimately did not make it to a dissertation.
The meeting of the two experts
While pursuing doctoral studies, Brin and Page met at Stanford and realized they had similar interests. For his doctoral thesis, Larry Page dealt with the topics of mathematics, search engines and the World Wide Web, and Brin showed a similar interest.
They began work on a research project called “BackRub” on which they tested their invention, a PageRank algorithm. They achieved better results than the mechanisms that existed at the time for searching the Internet.
They continued to test their invention until they registered the domain google.com in 1997 and shortly thereafter founded the company Google and applied for a patent on the technology. The founding of the company was owed to a curious event: Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim supported Bri and Page in their early days as search engine developers with 100,000 US dollars, but put the related check on a company called “Google Inc. ” which now had to be created as quickly as possible so that the check could be cashed.
A multi-billion dollar community project
For years, Brin and Page ran the company together, turning the university project into a trillion-dollar giant that dominates the global search engine market. They not only accompanied the company during its IPO in 2004, but were also jointly responsible for a new group structure, in which Google was sorted as a subsidiary under the Alphabet umbrella in 2015.
Larry Page held the chief post until 2001, when he resigned his position and assumed the powers Eric Schmidt transferred. He was initially responsible for product development himself, before taking over the position from Schmidt again in 2011 and finally handing it over to Sundar Pichai in 2015 to take over the management of the new holding company.
In 2019, both company founders withdrew from day-to-day business. Up to this point, Brin had served as President with an unspecified area of responsibility at Google. “If the company were a human, he would be a young adult of 21 – and it would be time to get out of the nest,” Brin and Page wrote in a joint blog post. “We believe it’s time to take on the role of proud parent – offering advice and love, but no daily nagging.”
The founders remain associated with the company through their continued participation in the listed company, which consists in particular of Alphabet shares with additional voting rights. According to press reports, they were asked by Sundar Pichai for help with the company’s new AI strategy in 2023.
Own interests of Brin and Page
Google would remain Brin and Page’s greatest success to date. In the meantime, Larry Page had appeared as an investor in the Kittyhawk flying car manufacturer, but the company has since ceased operations. Page also invested money in another flight car startup called Opener.
Sergey Brin, meanwhile, founded LTA Research and Exploration, a company that aims to build a fuel cell-powered zeppelin for use in disaster areas.
At the same time, both Google founders are also active as philanthropists and have each started billion-dollar charitable foundations.
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