Sergey Brin is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who co-founded Google Inc in 1998 with Larry Page. Brin immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union when he was a child. He majored in mathematics and computer science in college before pursuing a PhD in computer science at Stanford University. His scientific interests as a research scholar included information extraction from unstructured sources, search engines, and data mining of big data sets. He met Larry Page, a fellow research scholar with whom he collaborated on a study project. On an intellectual level, the two guys became friends and began testing with their new search engine concepts on university computers. Their initiative was originally known as ‘BackRub,’ and it was supported by the National Science Foundation. Brin and Page collaborated on the PageRank algorithm, which Google uses to rank online sites. The couple decided to create their own company after successfully running their project on university computers for several months. They both put their doctoral studies on hold and formally formed their firm, Google Inc, in California, with financial backing from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
Childhood and Adolescence
Sergey Brin was born to Jewish parents Michael and Eugenia Brin in Moscow. His father was a math professor, and his mother worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as a researcher.
His family immigrated to the United States when he was six years old because it was extremely difficult for Jews in Moscow to obtain higher education and pursue their chosen career.
Brin went to Maryland’s Paint Branch Montessori School. At home, his father urged him to pursue mathematics.
He proceeded to the University of Maryland to study mathematics and computer science after high school and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1993.
He received a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation to pursue his PhD studies in computer science at Stanford University.
Google Inc. was founded in 1998.
When Sergey Brin and Larry Page were working on a research project for their thesis, they came up with the idea for Google. Page was fascinated by the mathematical features of the World Wide Web, a concept that Brin found appealing as well.
They started working on the ‘BackRub’ research project together. Initially, a web crawler was utilized to explore the internet using the Stanford home page as a starting point.
The PageRank algorithm was created by Brin and Page. They believed that a search engine based on PageRank would produce better results than the previous ways after analyzing BackRub’s output using this algorithm.
They put their theory to the test on the computers at their institution, and the results were excellent. For months, their experiment ran on Stanford computers. The initiative originally used the university’s website, which had the domain google.stanford.edu.
They registered the domain google.com in 1997. On September 4, 1998, the firm was formally formed in a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California.
With a $100,000 check, Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, provided the first investment to Google.
By 1999, the company had grown to eight people and relocated to Palo Alto, California, a more suitable location for expansion. ‘Googleplex’ is the name of the office complex.
Over the next few years, Google added a slew of new features, bought a number of other internet companies, and formed strategic alliances with other businesses to become one of the world’s fastest-growing internet companies.
Major Projects of
Sergey Brin’s greatest achievement to date is the founding of Google. Within such a short time, the company he co-founded in a garage in 1998 has experienced great development and success. Brin and Page have changed the way people look for information on the internet.
Google.org, Google.charitable Inc’s arm, was founded in 2004 to work in areas that have a broad impact on society. It creates technology that aid in the resolution of global concerns such as education, energy scarcity, and hunger management, among others.
Achievements & Awards
The MIT Technology Review TR100 ranked Brin and Larry Page among the top 100 innovators under the age of 35 in the world.
“For embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and contributing energy to the establishment of new firms,” IE Business School awarded Brin and Page honorary MBA degrees.
Brin and Page received the Marconi Foundation Prize, dubbed the “Highest Award in Engineering,” in 2004 and were named Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University.
Brin was named to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for “leading the creation of quick indexing and retrieval of pertinent information from the World Wide Web.”
Personal History and Legacy
Sergey Brin married Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andMe, in 2007. In 2008, the couple welcomed a son, and in 2011, they welcomed a daughter.
After having an affair with Google Glass marketing manager Amanda Rosenberg, Sergey Brin’s marriage was shattered. In 2013, he and Anne began living apart and eventually separated in 2015. The Brin Wojcicki Foundation, which Sergey Brin and his ex-wife oversee, provides money to numerous charitable initiatives.
Google is a pun on the word ‘Gogool,’ which means ‘biggest number’ (digit 1 followed by 100 zeros).
He has a mutation in the LRRK2 gene, which makes him more likely to acquire Parkinson’s disease later in life.
He and Larry Page share ownership of a Boeing 767–200 and a Dornier Alpha Jet, both of which have been customized.
Estimated Net Worth
He is the world’s 12th richest person, with an estimated net worth of $124 billion.