BIOGRAPHY:
Larry Page (Larry Page, born March 26, 1973) is an American billionaire businessman, co-founder of the IT giant Google, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.
The entrepreneur’s fortune as of March 2019 is estimated by Forbes at $53.3 billion. 45-year-old Page occupies 6th position in the global Forbes 400 – 2018 list, is recognized as the 10th most influential person on the planet, and ranks 10th in the Forbes 2019 billionaire ranking.
In 2018, he became 6th among tech billionaires according to the leading news portal Business Insider.
The biography of Larry Page is interesting because it lifts the curtain on the evolution of one idea – from the moment of its birth to its implementation in a successful business. What qualities helped the search pioneer develop Google and become a member of the billionaires’ club? The success story of Larry Page will serve as an excellent illustration of the fact that “crazy” ideas are worth implementing, because now millions of people use the results of his work every day.
Childhood and Family:
Lawrence Edward Page, known under the abbreviated name “Larry”, was born on March 26, 1973 in the USA in the capital of Michigan, Lansing.
Like Sergey Brin, the second co-founder of Google, Larry has Jewish roots: Larry’s maternal grandfather immigrated to Israel. But Larry’s upbringing, unlike Sergei’s childhood, did not take place in a religious environment. Both of Page’s parents were university teachers.
His father, Carl Victor Page, worked as a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, and his mother, Gloria (nee Gloria Weinstein), taught programming at the same university. According to the recollections of a colleague, the father of the future genius was very fond of arguing, and passed on to his son the habit of defending his opinion on any matter.
Page Sr. was also a lover of fun, and more than once took Larry with him to the performances of the Grateful Dead, a rock band distinguished by the ideas of an informal subculture.
Lawrence was the second son of the Page couple, and Carl, Larry’s older brother, who was born in 1964, was also growing up in the family. Carl Page Jr. would also become a successful businessman and take his rightful place among the Silicon Valley elite: in 2000, the Internet entrepreneur sold Yahoo for $432 million ! own company eGroups.com.
Larry Page also has a younger sister, Beverly Page, but there is no information about her in the media; Beverly prefers not to take advantage of her brother’s fame and keeps a low profile.
When Page Jr. was 8 years old, his parents separated. The former spouses still raised three children together. According to Larry, he did not feel a lack of either paternal or maternal attention.
School years:
The Page family was fond of computers, so the first PC appeared in their house in 1978, when Larry turned 5 years old.
From 1979 to 1975, Larry attended the “headquarters” of Okemos Montessori School, where education was conducted using the Montessori method. It’s funny that his future colleague Brin also went to an elementary school that used this method. Larry remembers that at first he was the only student doing his homework electronically.
At the age of 12, the future billionaire came across a biography of Nikola Tesla. The schoolboy was amazed that the fate of the brilliant scientist was unfavorable: the inventor’s life was overshadowed by enmity, he died in poverty. And the school curriculum focuses on Thomas Edison, with Tesla’s name mentioned in passing. The ending of the inventor’s life story made Larry cry and showed that creating a revolutionary technology is not enough, you should be able to introduce it to the masses. Young Larry is inspired by the idea of growing up as an outstanding personality and being remembered for great achievements that will be widely used.
While attending school in East Lansing, Larry became interested in the saxophone. He studied saxophone for two years as part of the Interlochen Center for the Arts’ summer program. The list of distinguished alumni on the Arts Center’s website also includes Larry Page.
Also, the developer of the Google Internet portal knows how to play percussion instruments.
University years: twice student:
University of Michigan:
After school, Larry entered the University of Michigan in 1991, where his parents once taught. In his first year, he experiences a serious shock: the death of his father, who died from complications of an illness suffered in childhood.
During his studies, Page was elected president of the Eta Kappa Nu chapter of the Science Caucus, which included computer engineering and electrical engineering students.
Larry also participated in LeaderShape, an individual development program offered at the university in the early 90s. As part of this project, Larry “upgraded” his leadership skills, which, as he admitted, were useful in the early days of Google.
While attending school in East Lansing, Larry became interested in the saxophone. He studied saxophone for two years as part of the Interlochen Center for the Arts’ summer program. The list of distinguished alumni on the Arts Center’s website also includes Larry Page.
Also, the developer of the Google Internet portal knows how to play percussion instruments.
Creation of Google:
Page is the inventor of the PageRank search engine algorithm, named after Page’s last name and the word “page”. He, a 23-year-old graduate student, comes up with a revolutionary approach to information retrieval: the idea of indexing search links in order to return query results based on the significance of the resource, its “authority.” This was a real breakthrough in the world of searching for information on the Internet. PageRank, which was based on link ranking, was replaced in 1996 by BackRub, a project by Brin and Page, which was a prototype of a search engine, later renamed Google.
Students and teaching staff of the university became the first testers of the search engine prototype, because the startup operated on the facilities of their native university – the web server www.google.stanford.edu. The resource was liked by the first users and gained great popularity in the period 1996–1998, practically exhausting the capabilities of the university server.
Realizing that their startup is head and shoulders above existing search engines, graduate students leave Stanford to go into business full-time. After unsuccessful attempts to sell the project, they find a generous investor in Andy Bechtolsheim, who sponsors the development for $100 thousand. In September 1998, the friends registered Google Inc.
In Page’s first corporate report, he stated that he and Sergei decided to start the company because they were confident in their ability to provide a valuable service to humanity: providing relevant information on a required topic. The author of the search algorithm recalls that he always dreamed of working not only on important scientific and research projects, but also on something very useful and entertaining. With Google, his dreams came true.
On September 27, 2018, the company celebrated its 20th anniversary, and the words “Google” and “Google” have firmly entered the vocabulary of modern people. The first recorded evidence of the word “google” as a verb was in an email from Larry himself, in which he urged his Stanford classmates to “Keep googling.”
Personal life:
The IT genius’s chosen one is his longtime girlfriend, blue-eyed blonde Lucinda Southworth, who is the sister of model and actress Carrie Southworth. Lucy is not only “beautiful”, but also “smart”: after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she continued her education at Stanford, where she studied biometric computer science. The bride of the search pioneer was honored to achieve what her fiancé could not: receive a doctorate degree.
For the wedding ceremony, the couple rented Necker, one of the British Virgin Islands. Page probably liked having a wedding on the island – after all, in the same 2007, just in May, Sergey Brin married Anne Wojcicki in the Bahamas.
34-year-old Page and 27-year-old Lucinda (born 1979) walked down the aisle on December 8, 2007. Guests invited to the wedding from all over the world were transported to the island by boats and helicopters. Page’s “boyar” was his friend and island owner Richard Branson .The couple has two children, born in 2009 (a boy) and in 2011.
The gender of the second child, as well as the names of the children, are kept strictly secret by the spouses. It is not surprising that Page, an information technology specialist, protects any information about her children, hiding their heirs from lens flares and lively journalists.
Health:
Larry Page suffers from paralysis of both vocal cords. In 2013, there were active rumors about his illness, and therefore Page officially confirmed the presence of the illness through his Google+ profile. The illness was caused by the consequences of a very severe cold that the businessman suffered in 1999. Even then, one of his ligaments was damaged, and his voice never recovered to normal.
The situation worsened when, due to another acute respiratory infection, the second vocal cord also suffered. Page’s voice now sounds softer, the businessman assures that the illness does not interfere with work. Sergei Brin jokes about this that the illness made Larry a better boss than he was, since now Larry began to choose his words more carefully.
Page vs. Brin: comparing Larry and Sergei:
Many facts in the biographies of Larry Page and Sergey Brin coincide: both businessmen have two children, Jewish roots and the title of Marconi Fellow from the prestigious Marconi Prize (2004).
The co-founders of Google are 90 years old between them, and the years are divided equally: both entered 2019 at 45 years old. The billionaires will celebrate their 46th birthday in March (Larry) and August (Sergey). On the Forbes Richest in Tech 2017 list they are No. 5 and No. 6, respectively.
There are also significant differences: Page was born and raised in the USA, and Brin is an immigrant from the USSR. Page is happily married, and Brin managed to get a divorce. There are also minor differences, for example, in the lengths of their own yachts – Page has a 59-meter-long Senses yacht, purchased for $45 million, and Brin has a 73-meter Dragonfly yacht for $80 million.
On Forbes’ list of the World’s Most Powerful People, Page ranks 10th and Brin 35th. Why is there such a gap? Perhaps it is determined by the fact that Google, the search engine algorithm, was developed by Larry Page, and not Sergey Brin. Yes, and Alphabet Inc. shares. class B (they give 10 votes at once) Page has 25.9%, and Brin has 25.2%.
But the provocative question of journalists, “Which of you is in charge?” does not cause rivalry among Google developers. By joining forces, they achieved what they could not have achieved individually, including control over Alphabet Inc., because together they have a decisive 50.1%. The Alphabet company is third in the Forbes list of the best companies in the Just 100 2019 rating.
Larry Page’s career:
1998-2001: CEO of Google Inc.
August 2001-2011: President of Products at Google.
After 3 years of leading the company, Page receives a “demotion” from investors. The reason was his unexpected and “immature” act. One hot day in July 2001, Larry decided to fire all the project managers, deciding that they were slowing down the overall project and were not correctly communicating instructions to the programmers. And why do talented developers (and only such people were recruited at Google!) need additional managers?
Page once said that the best way to solve a problem is to simplify it to a binary option and choose the correct answer from two alternatives. However, the rule “the simpler the better” did not work in this situation, and it cost Larry dearly. The managers were not fired, but transferred to another division, but Page had to say goodbye to the position of CEO of the company, and Eric Schmidt took the place of CEO.
At first, Brin and Page opposed the “outside manager,” but after learning that Mr. Schmidt was not only a manager, but also a former programmer, who also attended the Burning Man festival, they came to terms with the candidacy imposed by investors.
A photo of Schmidt wearing a homemade paper cowboy blouse at the festival was popular online. Photos of Larry Page and Sergei Brin from “Burning Man” cannot be found on the Internet, and it is unlikely that anyone was able to spot them in unusual costumes and makeup among the same colorful crowd of thousands. Among the supporters of the informal event, in addition to the creators of Google, are Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk .
It is worth noting that the business tandem of Google’s creators would not have been so successful without Eric Schmidt. Thanks to his leadership and dedication, Google has developed the necessary corporate infrastructure required to cope with the company’s rapid growth rate. Eric, along with Larry and Sergey, was responsible for the day-to-day operations of Google.
In the eyes of his subordinates, Page remained the head of the company; it was he who gave the final “go-ahead” for hiring new employees, and it was he who signed the IPO, which in 2004 made him a billionaire.
In 2005, Page decided that every person should have a Google search engine, and delegated his subordinates to acquire a startup developing such technology. As a result, the company acquired Android Inc. for $50 million. The CEO, Mr. Schmidt, was not even notified about this transaction, which was not considered important. The general director found out about the acquisition only when it was time to sign the documents.
Larry Page devotes almost all his working time to the new Android project. When Apple entered the market with the iPhone in 2007, Larry had to significantly accelerate development. According to his recollections, they performed only one percent of the possible, but, given the resources available, the movement was too slow.
Google reaps many benefits from treating its employees well. Larry Page believes that happy staff are productive staff. The company cares not only about employees, but also about their families. Thus, employees who are young parents can apply for time off or cash assistance, and during the first three months after the birth of a child, they are allowed to “shop” up to five thousand dollars in take-out food from a cafe on the premises of the office.
In 2007, Page decides to be straightforward again and fire everyone – this time her own assistants. His secretaries scheduled too many meetings, which wasted his precious time. Now, in order to communicate with Larry, it was necessary to “catch” him personally.
Talking to people doesn’t give Page much pleasure. An introvert by nature, he practically distanced himself from giving interviews. 2008 is indicative – this year the entrepreneur told the company’s press service that he would allocate 8 hours of his time a year for them.
In 2008, T-Mobile released the first phone with Android G1, and already in 2010, smartphones with this software took over 17% of the sales market. Android soon becomes the world’s most popular operating system for mobile devices.