The Google story begins in 1995 at Stanford University. Larry Page was considering Stanford for grad school and Sergey Brin, a student there, was assigned to show him around.
By some accounts, they disagreed about nearly everything during that first meeting, but by the following year they struck a partnership. Working from their dorm rooms, they built a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub.
Soon after, Backrub was renamed by Google (phew). The name was a play on the mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros and aptly reflected Larry and Sergey"s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Over the next few years, Google caught the attention of not only the academic community, but Silicon Valley investors as well. In August 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Larry and Sergey a check for $100,000, and Google Inc. was officially born. With this investment, the newly incorporated team made the upgrade from the dorms to their first office: a garage in suburban Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki (employee #16 and now CEO of YouTube). Clunky desktop computers, a ping pong table, and bright blue carpet set the scene for those early days and late nights. (The tradition of keeping things continues to this day.)
Even in the beginning, things were unconventional: from Google’s initial server (made of Lego) to the first “Doodle” in 1998: a stick figure in the logo announcing to site visitors that the entire staff was playing hooky at the Burning Man Festival. “Don't be evil” and “ The ten things we know to be true” captured the spirit of our intentionally unconventional methods. In the years that followed, the company expanded rapidly - hiring engineers, building a sales team, and introducing the first company dog, Yoshka. Google outgrew the garage and eventually moved to its current headquarters (a.k.a. “The Googleplex”) in Mountain View, California. The spirit of doing things differently made the move. So did Yoshka.
The relentless search for better answers continues to be at the core of everything we do. Today, with more than 60,000 employees in 50 different countries, Google makes hundreds of products used by billions of people across the globe, from YouTube and Android to Smartbox and, of course, Google Search. Although we’ve ditched the Lego servers and added just a few more company dogs, our passion for building technology for everyone has stayed with us - from the dorm room, to the garage, and to this very day.
Sergey Brin is a scientist, programmer, mathematician; at the age of six he moved with his parents from the USSR to the USA. During his student years, together with Larry Page, he founded the largest search engine, Google. In 2016, according to Forbes magazine, he was ranked 13th among the richest people in the world, his fortune is estimated at $39.8 billion.
For reference:
- Full name: Brin Sergey Mikhailovich
- Was born: in 1973 on August 21 in Moscow
- Education: University of Maryland (bachelor's degree), Stanford University (master's degree).
- Starting a business: 1998
- Type of activity at start: creation of Google search engine
- What he is doing now: President of Alphabet Inc., into which Google Inc. was transformed
- State:$39.8 billion in 2016 according to Forbes magazine.
Sergey Brin is a scientist, a genius, a “guy,” the richest immigrant in America who has built a multibillion-dollar business. He wears augmented reality glasses and builds an airship. He is open, direct and bold. During his student years, he could burst into the professor’s office for the sake of an interesting conversation.
The biography of an entrepreneur is closely related to his business. He founded Google from scratch, which in 2016 was in second place on the list most valuable companies in the world by market capitalization. Where did it all begin?
Background to success
Everyone in the family of Google founder Sergey Brin was a scientist. Great-grandmother was a microbiologist, grandmother was a philologist, grandfather was a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences. Father taught mathematical disciplines at the Energy Institute, Sergei’s mother, Evgenia Brin, worked at the research institute.
The Breens are hereditary Jews. The family lived in Moscow. They encountered clear manifestations of anti-Semitism in the USSR. Mikhail Brin, the father of the future billionaire, was not allowed to go abroad for scientific conferences, were not allowed to study in graduate school.
In 1979, father, mother and six-year-old Sergei immigrated to the United States. After moving to the states, Mikhail Brin was invited to work at the University of Maryland, and Evgenia got a job as a specialist at the Center space flights them. Goddard at NASA.
When Mikhail Brin was asked what made him move with his wife and little son to a foreign country, he answered philosophically that “a person’s love for his homeland is not always mutual.”
Living and studying in the states
During his school years, Sergei mastered programming and even then decided that he wanted to connect his life with mathematics in relation to the field computer technology.
The development of the personality of the future billionaire was greatly influenced by his father’s approach to training and education. It is as follows: in a situation where 7 awards out of 10 possible are received, the father always asks the question “what about the other three?” Sergey always asks himself the same question in life. He does not sit still, but always strives for more.
In 1990, Sergei entered the university where his father worked, at the Faculty of Mathematics, majoring in mathematics and computer systems. He received his bachelor's degree in three years instead of four. Received a diploma with honors and a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. This allowed Brin to choose any university and continue there higher education.
Sergei chose Stanford University. Having a bachelor's degree, he immediately entered doctoral studies. Here he gained invaluable practical experience in major projects and in conducting research. Developed technologies for collecting data from large amounts of unstructured information. IN free time Sergei was involved in swimming and gymnastics, and actively participated in the life of the university. But most of his time was devoted to programming and mathematics.
In an interview, Brin says that he knows how difficult it was for his parents in the USSR, and is very grateful to them for taking him to the USA. He is also credited with saying that “Russia is Nigeria in the snow.” Although Sergei himself claims that he does not remember saying this.
Significant acquaintance
At Stanford in the fall of 1995, Sergey Brin met Lawrence Edward (Larry) Page, the future co-founder of Google. Already at the first meeting, a heated argument ensued between the guys, each trying to prove their point of view. At first, the guys seemed to each other to be very unpleasant types.
However, in the process of communication, the young people discovered a lot of common interests, became friends and eventually began working together. scientific work- doctoral dissertation, which was devoted to searching for data on the Internet through hyperlink analysis. On campus, the tandem of talented programmers was called “LarrySergey.”
Google success story
Collaboration grew into the creation of a search system. By early 1997, a primitive search engine called BackRub had been developed. It processed links to web pages. Its logo was a black and white image of the palm of Larry's left hand, made using a scanner. Later, friends renamed it Google.
This is interesting: The name Google comes from the mathematical term googol, which means a number consisting of one followed by hundreds of zeros. The comrades spelled the word incorrectly. When they found out about this, the name Google.com had already been registered. The name symbolized Brin and Page's grandiose intentions.
The work algorithm was technically different from other existing search engines: the system was focused not on verbal queries, but on the number of links. The more links to a site, the more popular it is. In addition, the significance of the sites on which these links are located was taken into account. This link ranking algorithm is given the name PageRank.
Brin did not have the funds to pay for the services of a professional designer, so he designed the search engine simply and uncomplicatedly: multi-colored letters on a white background. As it turned out, he was right.
Initially, the search engine was located on the Stanford University server and was used only by students. By 1998, about 10 thousand people were already using the system, this created a heavy load on the server, which was equal to half of all university traffic. In addition, the search robot could access restricted pages. The newly minted entrepreneurs were asked to release the server.
The comrades offered their developments to existing Internet companies, venture investors, however, they received refusals. And the head of one of the most recognizable brands on the Internet in the 90s - Excite - told Sergei and Larry that “search engines have no prospects and it is impossible to make money on them.” Now Google is thriving, and Excite has lost its popularity and gone bankrupt.
The first investor to believe in the Google search engine was the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, which produced software and hardware. His name is Andy Bechtolsheim. The investor liked that while other companies were spending money on advertising, Page and Brin planned to make the system popular through positive reviews and recommendations from users, creating a truly useful service. Bechtolsheim wrote a check for $100,000 for a company that did not yet exist.
By 1998, the enterprising friends managed to raise a total of $1 million. That same year, they registered a company whose headquarters were located in a garage in the Californian city of Menlow Park.
The comrades rented the garage from the sister of Brin’s future wife, Anna Wojcicki. Sergey and Anna were married from 2007 to 2013, after which they divorced. They have two children: a son and a daughter.
The search engine was included in the top 100 Internet sites for its high search accuracy, according to the world-famous British video game magazine PlayStation Magazine.
In 2004, Google Inc listed its shares on the stock exchange at a price of $85, and within a year the price increased by 273% to $317.8.
The number of requests was already in the billions per day. Google has received the status of the main search engine in the world. Even then, the company's value was estimated at $23 billion. In 2015, its value was estimated at $460 billion. Sergey Brin is actively involved in charity work and plans to spend $20 billion for these purposes.
Quote from Sergey Brin: “Obviously, everyone wants to succeed, but I want to be thought of as a great innovator, a person of high morals, trustworthy, and, ultimately, bringing great change to this world.”
Watch the video interview with Sergey Brin
Company and personal finance
In 2015, it was officially announced that Google Inc would be transformed into Alphabet Inc, a management company that combines many assets. Among them:
- Google search engine;
- Calico Life Extension Program;
- smart home developer Nest Labs;
- Verily Health Research Center;
- system integrator of broadband Internet access Fiber;
- developer of self-organizing software X;
- investment company Google Capital and venture capital company Google Venture.
In 2017, the European Commission fined Alphabet Inc $2.42 billion for abusing its dominant position in the search engine market. This amount is a record of all fines in antimonopoly cases.
The founder of Google does not disdain traveling on the subway, prefers a simple style of clothing, despite his status and financial condition, see table 1.
*as of June 2017 according to Forbes
In the spring of 2017, a report appeared in the press that Sergey Brin was working on the construction of a huge airship. What this is: a new business project or a whim of a billionaire has not yet been announced.
Today, almost every Internet user knows Google. Its founder, Sergey Brin, a Jew by nationality, had long thought about the need for a discovery of this kind. His biography - shining example It is quite possible to make a discovery today, to create a brilliant project.
Sergei’s biography originates in the USSR, therefore Russian people can proudly say today that the creator of a unique Google systems, Sergey Mikhailovich Brin is our fellow countryman, Russian. Sergei Mikhailovich Brin was born in Moscow into a family of mathematicians in 1973.
His mother, Evgenia, worked as an engineer, while his father was a gifted mathematician. However, in the former Soviet Union, Mikhail Brin experienced enormous inconvenience: hidden anti-Semitism posed obstacles to the talented mathematician. After graduating from Moscow State University, he was denied admission to graduate school, which prompted him to begin working “privately” on his Ph.D. thesis. Mathematicians were not allowed to go abroad to scientific conferences either. But for unknown reasons, he was given a visa to travel to the United States by private invitation.
And at the end of the 70s of the last century from Soviet Union Families who wanted to change their place of residence began to graduate. One of the first to decide to leave the country was Mikhail Brin. He had many mathematician acquaintances in the USA, so the choice fell on this country. So the biography of six-year-old Sergei took a sharp turn: he turned from a Soviet subject into an American.
The beginning of the Breens' life in the USA
After the move, the father of the family settled at the University of Maryland in the small town of College Park. His wife got a job as a scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Agency.
Sergey Brin, the future creator of Google, during his studies began to amaze teachers with completed homework assignments, which he printed out on his home printer. Indeed, at that time, even in the United States, not everyone in the family had computers - it was a rare luxury. Sergei Brin owned a real Commodore 64 computer, which his father gave him for his ninth birthday.
Years of doctoral studies
After graduating from school, Sergei Brin received his education at the University of Maryland, where his father worked. With a bachelor's degree in his pocket, the future founder of Google moves to Silicon Valley, a place where the most powerful minds in the country are concentrated. The myriad of tech schools and high-tech companies in Silicon Valley provide a wide range of choices for those looking to improve their knowledge. Sergey Brin chooses a super-prestigious computer university from the entire mass of offers - this was Stanford University.
Anyone who didn’t know Brin well could be mistaken in believing that the future founder of Google was a “nerd” - Sergey, like most young students, preferred fun activities to boring doctoral studies. The main disciplines to which Sergey Brin devoted the lion's share of his time were gymnastics, dancing, and swimming. But, despite this, a sharp idea had already begun to swarm in the inquisitive brain, the name of which was “the Google search engine.
After all, a lover of the fascinating site “Playboy” was sorry for the time and effort spent “combing” it in order to look for something new. And, as they say, laziness is the very first reason for progress - and Sergey Brin created a program, independently and personally for his needs, which automatically found everything “fresh” on the site and downloaded it to the resourceful PC young man this material.
A meeting of two geniuses that changed the entire Internet world
Here, at Stanford University, the meeting of the future founders of Google took place. Larry Page and Sergey Brin formed an excellent intellectual tandem that introduced a unique innovation to the Internet - the original Google search engine.
However, the first meeting did not bode well at all: both Sergey Brin and Larry Page were a match for each other - both proud, ambitious, uncompromising. However, at some point in their arguments and shouting, two magic words flashed - “search engines” - and the young men realized that this was their common interest.
We can say that this meeting became an important milestone in the destinies of both young people. And who knows, Sergei’s biography would have been enriched by the discovery of Google if he had not met Larry? Although today it is generally accepted that it is Sergey Brin who is the founder of Google, while undeservedly forgetting to mention Larry Page.
First search page
Meanwhile, Sergey Brin, together with Larry Page, now, having abandoned all youthful fun, spent days poring over their “brainchild”. And so, in 1996, a page appeared on the computer at Stanford University, where both young men studied, the predecessor of the now well-known Google search engine. The search page was called BackRub, which translated as “you to me, and I to you.” It was the scientific work of graduate students whose names were Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Later the search page became known as PageRank.
BackRub founder Sergey Brin kept a server with a hard drive in his dorm room. Its volume was equal to one terabyte or 1024 “gigs”, if translated into modern language geeks. The operating principle of BackRub was based on not just finding pages on the Internet upon request, but ranking them depending on how often other pages link to them and how often Internet users access them. Actually, this principle was subsequently developed in the Google system.
The future founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, became even more confident in their decision to continue working on improving the search system, because even this imperfect program began to be used great amount of people. For example, in 1998, about ten thousand users accessed this site every day.
However, the proverb that initiative should always be punished came to life at this time very inopportunely. Sergey Brin recalls that Stanford professors became indignant because the service began to consume most of the university’s Internet traffic. But the worst thing for teachers was not even this - the future creators of Google were accused of hooliganism!
The reason for everything was the imperfection of the system. And she “displayed” to everyone even university “closed” documents, access to which was strictly limited. At this time, the biography of the future founders of Google could well have received such a negative fact as expulsion from the university.
Turning Googol into Google
The young people were already developing their grand discovery, they even came up with the name of the company - Googol, which meant one followed by one hundred zeros. The meaning of this name was that the company would have a huge base, a huge number of users! But it became impossible to continue working on the university computer, so it was necessary to urgently look for investors.
As it turned out, it’s not enough to come up with a bright name for your company; you also need to be able to convince wealthy people to believe in your genius and decide to invest their capital. And here Sergey Brin and Larry Page could not find their passion - the majority of potential investors did not even want to talk about the company.
And suddenly the young people were surprisingly lucky: businessman Andy Bechtolsheim, who was among the founders of the Sun Microsystems corporation, decided to help them. However, he did not even listen to the confused speech of the young men, but somehow immediately believed in their genius and success.
Two minutes into the conversation, Andy took out his checkbook and began writing out a check for one hundred thousand dollars, inquiring about the name of the company. And only when they went outside, the young people discovered a “mistake”: their investor, due to his carelessness, casually renamed their brainchild, replacing “Googol” with the company name “Google Inc.”
Now the partners faced a new problem: in order to receive money from the check, they had to urgently register the Google company. Sergey Brin, together with Larry Page, took an academic leave from the university and began urgently calling friends and relatives in order to obtain some finances to achieve their goal. It took a whole week, and on September 7, 1998, the birth of Google was officially registered with a million-dollar capital in its account.
The success of a search engine is the success of its creators
At first, Google had a staff of four people. Sergey Brin was a leading founder of Google. Most of the finances were spent on business development - there was practically nothing left for advertising. However, in 1999, all major media outlets were buzzing about the successful Internet search engine, and the number of Google users increased many times over. Sergey Brin and Larry Page noted that Google search was no longer limited to a few powerful servers - Google was supported by several thousand simple personal computers.
In the summer of 2004, the company's shares reached their highest price on the stock exchange. Sergei and Larry were at the peak of their success.
From that moment on, Sergei Brin experienced a dramatic revolution in his biography: he and his friend-companion turned into billionaires. Each of them today has a net worth of over $18 billion.
Work in a company
Today, the company has a head office in the very center of Silicon Valley. The comfort in which employees work here is shocking to the most democratically structured companies and corporations.
For example, employees can play roller hockey on Saturdays right in the company's parking lot, and breakfasts and lunches in the cafe for employees are prepared by well-known qualified chefs invited there. Hot coffee and a variety of soft drinks are provided to employees absolutely free of charge. They can also use the services of massage therapists during the working day.
This fact may seem surprising: workplace staff are allowed to bring their own pets. Therefore, in the company’s offices you can see cats, dogs, rats and hamsters, and even iguanas and other reptiles.
Sergey Mikhailovich Brin. Born on August 21, 1973 in Moscow. American entrepreneur and computer scientist information technologies and economics, billionaire, developer and co-founder (with Larry Page) of the Google search engine.
Lives in Los Altos, California. According to Forbes magazine, in 2015 he ranked 20th among the richest people on the planet.
Sergei Mikhailovich Brin was born in Moscow into a Jewish family of mathematicians who moved to the United States permanently in 1979, when he was 5 years old. Sergei's father is Mikhail Brin, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Mother - Evgenia Brin (née Krasnokutskaya, born 1949), a graduate of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University (1971), formerly a researcher at the Institute of Oil and Gas, then a climatologist at NASA and director of the charitable organization HIAS; author of the series scientific works in meteorology.
His father, a former researcher at the Scientific Research Economic Institute under the USSR State Planning Committee (NIEI under the USSR State Planning Committee), candidate of physical and mathematical sciences Mikhail Izrailevich Brin (born 1948), became a teacher at the University of Maryland (now an honorary professor), and his mother, Evgenia (née Krasnokutskaya, b. 1949), formerly a researcher at the Institute of Oil and Gas and a climatologist at NASA (currently director of the HIAS charity organization). Sergei Brin's parents are both graduates of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow state university(1970 and 1971 respectively).
Sergei's grandfather - Israel Abramovich Brin (1919-2011) - Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, was an assistant professor at the Electromechanical Faculty of the Moscow Energy Institute (1944-1998). Grandmother - Maya Mironovna Brin (1920-2012) - philologist; In her honor, a research program (The Maya Brin Residency Program) and a lecture position (Maya Brin Distinguished Lecturer in Russian) were organized at the Russian department at the University of Maryland with donations from her son. Among other relatives, the grandfather’s brother is known - the Soviet athlete and coach in Greco-Roman wrestling, Honored Coach of the USSR Alexander Abramovich Kolmanovsky (1922-1997).
He received his bachelor's degree ahead of schedule in Mathematics and Computer Systems from the University of Maryland. Received a fellowship from the National Science Foundation.
Main area scientific research Sergey Brin had technologies for collecting data from unstructured sources, large amounts of scientific data and texts.
In 1993, he entered Stanford University in California, where he received a master's degree and began working on his dissertation. Already during his studies, he became interested in Internet technologies and search engines, became the author of several studies on the topic of extracting information from large arrays of text and scientific data, and wrote a program for processing scientific texts.
In 1995, at Stanford University, Sergei Brin met another graduate student in mathematics, Larry Page, with whom they founded Google in 1998. Initially, they argued fiercely when discussing any scientific topic, but then they became friends and teamed up to create a search engine for their campus. Together they wrote a scientific paper, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” which is believed to contain the prototype of their future super-successful idea.
Brin and Page proved the validity of their idea on the university search engine google.stanford.edu, developing its mechanism in accordance with new principles. On September 14, 1997, the domain google.com was registered. Attempts followed to develop the idea and turn it into a business. Over time, the project left the university and managed to collect investments for further development.
The joint business grew, made profits, and even demonstrated enviable stability during the dot-com crash, when hundreds of other companies went bankrupt. In 2004, the founders were named in Forbes magazine's list of billionaires.
In May 2007, Sergey Brin married Anna Wojcicki. Anna graduated from Yale University in 1996 with a major in biology and founded 23&Me. At the end of December 2008, Sergei and Anna had a son, Benji, and at the end of 2011, a daughter. In September 2013, the marriage broke up.
