Larry Page was the man who transformed the world by giving us the gift of Google. The project which simply began just as research project by him and his co-founder Sergey Brin today it is acting as a saviour for more than a million people.
An particularly shy and private American computer scientist, provided the world with one of the greatest gift of technology with this search engine.
| Born | March 26, 1973, Michigan, US |
| Citizenship | American |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, Computer Scientist, Investor & Board member of Alphabet Inc. (Parent company of Google) |
| Education | 1. Okemos Montessori School in Okemos as a child 2. higher Education from the East Lansing High School 3. computer science from the University of Michigan 4. PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University |
| Net Worth | $94 Billion |
| Wife | Lucinda Southworth |
| Children | 2 |
| Company |
Early life
Larry Page or Lawrence Edward Page was born on March 26, 1973 in Lansing, Michigan in the United States of America. His mother Gloria Page was a Jew and a professor of computer programming at the Lyman Briggs College. His father Carl Victor Page Sr. was a also a professor of computer programming at the University of Michigan.
In an interview Larry said, “my childhood was usually a mess, with computers, science, and technology magazines all over the place.”
He attended the Okemos Montessori School in Okemos as a child. Larry completed his higher from the East Lansing High School. He received a Bachelor of Science with a major in computer science from the University of Michigan and his Master of Science from the Stanford University. larry also attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts at Michigan, playing saxophone for two consecutive summers. He went ahead to get a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University, this is where he met Sergey Brin, who joined him in this research project.
Founding of Google
Google co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin was started as a research project. The project initially involved a third “unofficial” founder named Scott Hassan, who was the lead programmer and wrote much of the code for the project but left before Google was officially launched, to pursue a career in in robotics and founded a company named Willow Garage.
Google was initially named “Backrub” because it checked backlinks to estimate the importance of the site. Eventually the name was changed to “Google” which is actually a misspelt word. They meant to name it “googol” which means 1 followed by a 100 zeros.
Google was initially funded by Andy Bechtolsheim co-founder of Sun Microsystems with a hefty amount of $100,000. This initial investment acted as a motivation to incorporate funds from other companies.
Google also received investments from the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and entrepreneur Ram Shriram.
Before initial investors, Google raised around $1,000,000 from family and friends which allowed them to open their first shop in Menlo Park, California. Craig Silverstein became their first official employee.
Growth of Google
In March 1999, the founders decided to officially move the company offices to Palo Alto, which was a home to several technology start-ups.
In June of 2000, it was announced that Google would become the default search engine provider for Yahoo, replacing Inktomi, the initial traffic server of Yahoo.
The very same year they began selling advertisements associated with search keywords against Page and Brin’s initial plan towards an advertise-funded search engine.
After three years and after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from Silicon Graphics. The complex came to be known as “The Googleplex.”
Again three years later in 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million. By that time, the name “Google” was being found in everyday language, causing the verb “google” to be added to the Oxford English Dictionary, came to be denoted as “to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet”.
But in 2001, the investors, felt the need to have a strong internal management, as they agreed to hire Eric Schmidt as the chairman and the CEO of Google. Eric was proposed by John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins, but Sergey and Larry rejected several candidates because they wanted to retain control over their company. As part of him joining, Eric agreed to buy $1 million worth of Google’s stocks as a way to show his commitment and to provide funds that Google required at that time.
By 2011, the Google was handling approximately 3 billion searches every day. To distribute this pressure, 11 other data centres were built up around the world with a several thousand servers in each.
By the later this year, Google surpassed one billion users for the first time.
In 2019, Google announced its arrival, on the video game market launching cloud gaming platform named Google Standia.
Criticisms and Controversies
Over the years, Google has received criticisms over various issues.
Conflict with different search engines
In 2018, Google was blamed for intentionally slowing down the speed of YouTube performance on Firefox, in order to boost adoption of Google Chrome.
Conflict related to the violation of human rights
Google was a part of the Project Nimbus, a billion dollar deal, in which the technology companies like Google and Amazon would provide Israel’s military with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other cloud services. The contract was criticized by the shareholders as well as their employees over concerns that the project will lead to further abuses of Palestinians’ human rights in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Invasion of privacy of the consumers
In early 2020, a $5 billion class-action lawsuit was filed against Google by consumers, saying that Chrome’s Incognito browsing mode still collected the user history. The federal judge denied Google’s request to dismiss the case.
Gender discrimination towards the employees
In 2017, three women employees sued Google, accusing the company of violating The Equal Pay Act by underpaying the female employees. The lawsuit observed a wage gap of $17,000 and also that Google forced women into lower career tracks, leading to smaller salaries and bonuses.
Google agreed to pay a whopping $118 million settlement to 15,550 female employees working in their Californian office since 2013. As a part of the settlement, Google also agreed to hire a third party to analyze the hiring and compensation practices.
Larry Page’s exit from Google
In 2019, both Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s decision to hand over control of Google, to Sundar Pichai was termed as “the end of an era for the search engine giant”.
Sundar Pichai, who was previously the chief executive of Google, will take on of the roles as a CEO of the company.
Bothe Larry and Sergey said they would remain “actively involved” as board members and major shareholders.
Achievements of Larry Page
In 2002, Larrry Page was named a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow.
He along with his co-founder Sergey Brin received an MBA from IE Business School in 2003,
In the year of 2003, they were the national finalists for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
They received the Marconi Foundation’s prize and were elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University in 2004.
It was year 2004, both received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement.
Brin and Page were elected for the Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.
In 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan.
Larry ranked 24th on the Forbes list of billionaires around the world in 2011.
In 2014 Fortune magazine named Page its “Businessperson of the Year”, declaring him “world’s most daring CEO”.
In 2017, Page was awarded honorary citizenship of Agrigento, Italy.
Larry Page’s other interests
Larry is an investor in Tesla Motors.
He has also invested in flying car startups called the Kitty Hawk and Opener.
Larry helped to set up Singularity University, where he still funds the scholarships.
He is also a backer in the Opener startup which develops aerial vehicles for consumer travel.
Larry Page’s net worth
His net worth is estimated to be $93.1 billion as of 2023.
Larry Page’s personal life
Larry Page married Lucinda Southworth, a research scientist and sister of Carrie Southworth, on Necker Island, in 2007. The happy couple have two children together, born in 2009 and 2011 respectively. They currently reside in their home in their home in Fiji.
Larry Page’s famous and inspiring quotes
1) You never lose a dream, it just incubates as a hobby.
2) Coming up with an idea is the least important part of creating something great. It has to be the right idea and have good taste, but the execution and delivery are what’s key. Any conversation I have about innovation starts with the ultimate goal.
3) My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society. As a world, we’re doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow that.
4) You know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know that if you don’t have a pencil and pad by the bed, it will be completely gone by the next morning. Sometimes it’s important to wake up and stop dreaming. When a really great dream shows up, grab it.
5) Invention is not enough. Tesla invented the electric power we use, but he struggled to get it out to people. You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people.
Unknown facts about Larry Page
1) Larry turned his Stanford dorm room into a machine lab where he used to conduct researches with his partner Sergey Brin.
2) Larry was diagnosed with left vocal cord paralysis – a nerve condition that caused the vocal cord to not move properly.
3) Larry is very fond of sailing and therefore owns a $45 million yacht.
4) Larry was one of the first investors of Tesla.
Conclusion
This was the inspiring life of the founder of the most used search engines in the world. He is a perfect example of how to rule you company. He knew when to step down for the betterment of his company and put his company’s lifeline before his want for fame.
