subject: A Potted Biography of Google Co-Founder Larry Page [print this page] Born in Michigan in 1973, chances are the young Larry Page would never have imagined creating one of the world's most successful enterprises and brands, let alone be worth somewhere in the region of $17.5 billion. Page became interested in computers from an early age and with both his parents working as computer science professors, it wasn't long before he was rewiring and inventing creations of his own.
Following in his parents footsteps, Page went on to study computer science at the University of Michigan where his love of computers and technology grew and grew. It wasn't until he enrolled for a Masters degree in computer science at Stanford University that the first hints of what we now know as Google first came to the surface. Here, Page met fellow Google founder and PHD student Sergey Brin.
Brin and Page quickly became friends and started working on a research project nicknamed 'BackRub' that explored the mathematical basis and problems associated with the internet and the way that information and data was stored, accessed and collated. Birn and Page's project eventually went on to develop a way of counting and recording every link on the web.
When the pair began their project, the web was made up of over ten million items with no search engine or directory at the time capable of recording the web in full. With this in mind, Page built a crawler that would scour the web collating data which would then be sorted in what eventually became the PageRank algorithm. Both Brin and Page are considered amongst the world's top SEO experts as well as the founding fathers of the system on which SEO is based.
Since 1996 when Google first went live, Brin and Page have revolutionised the way in which we use the web as well as the internet we know today. Having received Honorary MBAs and doctorates numerous times over, Brin and Page are currently ranked fifth on Forbes' 'World's Most powerful People' list as well as both being billionaires; despite their one dollar-a-year salaries!
A Potted Biography of Google Co-Founder Larry Page
