Larry Edward Page is a computer scientist and entrepreneur from the United States who is greatly celebrated for the creation of Google.
Early life and education
Larry was born on 26th March 1973 in Michigan, United States. His father, Carl Page, and his mother, Gloria, were computer scientists at the University of Michigan State. Their home was filled with first-generation computers and scientific magazines. It was an environment that influenced young Larry and his older brother to immerse themselves in the tech world. His brother is also a successful internet entrepreneur.
Larry joined Montessori Primary School and attended East Lansing High School. He later studied at Michigan University where he graduated with a degree in computer engineering. He furthered his studies at Stanford University where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. It was during his time at Stanford University that he first took on the project of assessing different links on the World Wide Web.
Career
The World Wide Web and the Internet were starting to take over the telecommunication industry when Larry enrolled at Stanford University. Page had an idea of devising a technique for determining the number of web pages that could be linked in one page. He asked for assistance from his friend, Sergey Brin, who was his classmate at Stanford University. Together, they came up with something that was more enhanced than the existing search engines. In 1997, they registered their new search engine as Google. The name originated from the term ‘googol’ a big number comprising 1 followed by 100 zeros. In the tech world, it is a term that is used to express the unlimited information in the universe. Later, Google was established as a private entity where at first, Sergey Brin acted as the president while Larry served as the chief executive officer. Their company’s mission was to re-arrange the world’s data and make it useful to those who want to access it.
In 2000, Larry’s company started selling advertisements linked with search keywords. The ability to provide ads associated with users’ interests quickly proved to be a valuable move. In the subsequent year, many internet startups closed down but Google continued to expand and make profits. Larry and Segrey recruited Eric Shmidt as the chief executive officer, with Segrey as head of technology and Larry as the president of products. The three individuals have managed to run the company as a triumvirate to date.
Achievements
In 2004, Larry’s company’s initial public offering accumulated 1.7 billion dollars and its market capitalization rose to 23 billion dollars. Employees who had shares in the company were lucky as they turned into millionaires overnight. Both Larry and his colleague Sergrey became billionaires at twenty-seven years old. In 2006, Larry had over ten thousand workers and the company’s revenue reached the ten billion dollar mark. Various magazines placed Larry and Segrey among the richest individuals on earth. The explosive growth of Google is much attributed to its creative and informal environment. The company is acknowledged for employing a chief culture officer whose main role is to develop and maintain a collaborative and creative atmosphere. Workers are encouraged to use twenty percent of their time on independent work. Many of Google’s new services and products have originated from this model of working.
In 2007 and the subsequent year, Fortune magazine ranked Google as the best business for people to work for. Since then, many investors have ranked Google as their favorite investing company. In recent years, Google has enormously grown through acquisitions of software and hardware entities with social networking and teleconferencing products. Larry has managed to personally amass a fortune of over one hundred billion dollars. He is among the top six wealthiest people in the world.
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