Larry Page - Biography, Achievements and Quotes

Lawrence "Larry" Page is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. On April 4, 2011, he took on the role of chief executive officer of Google, replacing Eric Schmidt. As of 2012, his personal wealth is estimated to be $20.3 billion, ranking him #13 on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.

He is the inventor of PageRank, which became the foundation of Google's search ranking algorithm. Together, Brin and Page own about 16 percent of the company's stock

Achievement and Superb Facts about Larry Page

• Page and Brin began the project that would become Google in 1996, when Page was just 23 years old. Originally designed as a research project as part of their Stanford Ph.D. work, the search engine began operating in 1998.
• According to Forbes, Page was the 24th richest person in the world in 2010. He's worth a cool $17.5 billion and he has a sweet yacht.
• No, literally. In a 2009 commencement address at the University of Michigan, Page explained how the idea for a different kind of search engine came to him in the middle of the night: "When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole Web and just keep the links and ... I grabbed a pen and started writing!"
• Page was born in Lansing, Michigan, in 1973 to the late Dr. Carl Victor Page, a professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State University and one of the University of Michigan’s first computer science Ph.D. graduates, and Gloria Page, a computer programming teacher at Michigan State University. Page is also the brother of Carl Victoer Page, Jr., a co-founder of eGroups, later sold to Yahoo! for approximately half a billion dollars.
• Google's search technology is called PageRank (tm). It assigns an "importance" value to each page on the Web and gives it a rank. But that is not why the technnology is called PageRank. In fact, it is named after Google co-founder Larry page.
• Google's traffic doubled when they introduced their "Did you mean..." feature. This feature was made possible by a much-improved spell checker.
• Google users apparently never feel "lucky," since the "I feel lucky" is almost never used. However, in trials it was discovered that users saw it as a comfort button and did not want it removed.
• The search engine that Page and Brin were collaborating on was originally called BackRub, named for its ability to analyze the "back links" pointing to a given Web site.
• Over 100 million users are active on Google+.
• Larry Page, along with Sergey Brin, invented the world’s most popular search engine to date, “Google”. Google has an estimated 300 million users per day, with more than 2 billion searches conducted in a day, making Google one of the most visited websites on the internet.
• Lawrence E. Page (better known as Larry Page), was born in Lansing, the capital state of Michigan, on Monday, 26 March 1973. 26 March is also the date of birth of many other famous personalities such as Alan Arkin, Keira Knightley, Kevin O’ Neal and singer Diana Ross.
• Larry Page’s childhood is the reason behind his love for computers and technology. Coming from a home where both his parents were related to the computer science field, their home used to be filled with all sorts of gadgets, computers and science magazines.
• It was from here that he, at the age of six, started to show an interest in science related things. He eventually became the first child in his elementary school to submit an assignment in a word-processed form.
• Larry Page’s father Dr. Carl Page and his mother Gloria Page both worked in the field of computer science. Carl Page was one of the first few PhD graduates from the University of Michigan. He graduated in 1965, when the computer science field was still in its early years.  
• Larry himself completed the Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the same university as his father. Both of Larry’s parents were professors at Michigan State University. His father was a professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, whereas his mother taught a computer-programming class at the university.
• Larry Page’s brother, Carl Victor Page Jr. is not as successful as Larry is. Carl sold his co-founded eGroups to Yahoo. In 2008, Carl went through a financial crisis. Earlier Carl had been far ahead of his brother in terms of success. However, a decade later it had all changed.
• At the University of Michigan, Larry Page was also a member of the 1993, “Maize & Blue”, University of Michigan Solar Car team. The team was responsible for building the 1993 Maize & Blue solar car on behalf of the University of Michigan from 1990-1993. The car participated in 2 races, winning the National Championship in Sunrayce 1993 and finishing 11th in the World Solar Challenge. The car is now displayed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois.
• Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were students at Stanford University. Brin and Page met in March 1995, when Brin was asked to show the campus to the new PhD students during Spring Orientation. Larry was one of the new students. Apparently, both of them did not get along well during their first meeting and argued the entire time.
• Larry Page hired Google’s first employee, namely Susan Wojcicki. Susan was a fellow PhD of the founders at Stanford University.  It was also Susan’s garage from where the company started its first operation, back in September 1998.
• Success for Google did not come easy. It required a lot of effort in terms of time and money. Thus, when Google got its first investment of $ 100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, both Larry and Sergey went to Burger King to celebrate over breakfast.
• “Never lose a business opportunity”, is something that Larry Page firmly believes in. Therefore, when Google was developing the payment structure for its ad system, it was not a surprise that Page suggested taking goats as payment from customers in Uzbekistan. The reason for this was that Uzbekistan did not accept credit cards as a form of payment.
• Both co-founders are said to argue a lot and have differences of opinion, which they believe is essential for their success and growth. However, a few things are common as well, like their hatred for golf and their Boeing 767.
• During August 2004, when Google started its initial public offering, Larry Page wanted the buyers to take a test prior to buying Google stock. His philosophy behind this was that the buyers should be well aware of what Google is all about. However, the US Securities and Exchange Commission did not allow it.
• The press-shy Larry Page married Lucinda Southworth, sister of actor Carrie Southworth and a biomedical informatics student at Stanford, on a Caribbean island in 2007. She is better known as “Lucy Southworth”, a name given her by The New York Post. Their wedding was a lavish affair. 600 guests were flown to the island in a private jet and many A-listers were part of the wedding, such as U2 lead singer Bono, Leonardo Dicaprio and Johnny Depp, to name a few. Millions of dollars were spent on the lavish wedding, unlike the wedding of his partner Brin that was a small and quiet affair.
• Larry Page is reported to be on good terms with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, “at times”. They are said to have an on and off relationship with due to issues involving the Android operating systems.
• Google's first data center was Larry Page's dorm room.
• When Page and Brin tried to find buyers to license their search technology, one portal CEO told them "As long as we're 80 percent as good as our competitors, that's good enough. Our users don't really care about search."
• The first major investor, Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, wrote a check for $100,000 after seeing a quick demo on the porch of a Stanford faculty member's home in Palo Alto.
• At first, there was no way to deposit the $100,000 check. It was made out to "Google Inc.," but there was no legal entity with that name. The check sat in Page's desk drawer for two weeks while he and Brin rushed to set up a corporation and locate other investors.
• Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, Calif. in September 1998. The door came with a remote control, since it was attached to the garage of a friend who sublet space to the new corporation.
• On June 7, 1999, Google announced $25 million in funding from the two leading venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The venture capital firms were normally fierce rivals, but they both took seats on the board of directors. Even with all the new funding, when the board met, they sat around a ping pong table.
• After enrolling for a Ph.D. program in computer science at Stamford, Page was in search for a dissertation theme and considered exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web. His supervisor encouraged him to pursue this idea, and Page later recalled this as the “best advice I ever got.” He focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information about that page.
• Sergey Brin soon joined Page in his research project, nicknamed “BackRub.” They developed the Page Rank algorithm and realized that it could be used to build a search engine far superior to existing ones.
• Page currently holds the position of President of Products at Google and has an estimated net worth of $18.5 billion, placing him at rank 26 on Forbes’s list of the richest persons in the world, together with Brin.

Superb Quotes by Larry Page

• Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting.
• I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. In fact, there are so few people this crazy that I feel like I know them all by first name.
• Almost everyone who has had an idea that's somewhat revolutionary or wildly successful was first told they're insane.
• The Star Trek computer doesn't seem that interesting. They ask it random questions, it thinks for a while. I think we can do better than that.
• We have a mantra: don't be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.
• Basically, our goal is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful.
• The ultimate search engine would basically understand everything in the world, and it would always give you the right thing. And we're a long, long ways from that.”
• We don't have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many. We want a thin structure.
• You can try to control people, or you can try to have a system that represents reality. I find that knowing what's really happening is more important than trying to control people.
• It is a tremendous responsibility for us to have all the eyes focused on what we do and give people exactly what they need when they ask for it.
• I remember turning in my first assignment in elementary school using the computer and the teachers were kind of confused that I had printed it.
• We have a mantra, "Don't be evil" which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.
• Our mission is to organize the world's information. Clearly, the more information we have when we do a search, the better it's going to work.
• We really care about our brand. We really want it to stand for high quality. We want people to be excited about it, for it to be fun.
• Over time, it's becoming more and more understood by people that we're acting in their interests. And that's a very, very powerful thing for our brand.
• Part of our brand is that we're pretty understated in what we do. If you look at other technology companies, they might preannounce things, and it will be a couple years before they really happen, and they don't happen in the way they said they would.
• If you have a product that's really gaining a lot of usage, then it's probably a good idea.”
• We don't have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many.”
• If you can run the company a bit more collaboratively, you get a better result, because you have more bandwidth and checking and balancing going on.”
• The increasing volume of information is just more opportunity to build better answers to questions. The more information you have, the better.
• Many leaders of big organizations, I think, don't believe that change is possible. But if you look at history, things do change, and if your business is static, you're likely to have issues.
• 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.
• You never lose a dream. It just incubates as a hobby.