Task 1 : The Google Guys

Sergey Brin is the cofounder of the Google search engine. He and fellow Stanford University student Larry Page worked together on a project while doing a Ph.D. in Computer Science. The Pair left their studies to focus on developing the Google search engine. Sergey Brin and his partner Larry Page went on to become two of the wealthiest young entrepreneurs in America with the success of their university project, Google.

Sergey Mihailovich Brin was born in Moscow, Russia in 1973. The Brin family moved from Russia to the United States of American in 1979 when Sergey was 5 years of age. His father gained work as a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland and his mother went on to work at NASA. 

Brin grew up fascinated by computers and had one from a very early age, when home computers were not common in households (Commodore 64 days). He went on to receive a bachelor of science degree at the University of Maryland, with honors in mathematics and computer science in 1993. Brin then went on to start his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Stanford University.

While studying for his Ph.D he met Lawrence Page and went on to work with on a project to organize the Internet and improve the way people search for information. They first nicknamed the project "BackRub" as it relied heavily on the number and relevancy of links pointing to a website (later called PageRank).

"Research on the Web seems to be fashionable these days and I guess I'm no exception. Recently I have been working on the Google search engine with Larry Page." Sergey Brin Quote

Brin and Page left their studies at Stanford University and started Google Inc. in 1998. The popularity of the search engine increased dramatically, forcing the company to constantly expand its computing power, improve its technology, and move to bigger premises (now situated at the "Googleplex" in Mountain View, California). The company became a publicly traded company in 2004 (traded on the NASDAQ as GOOG) with individual shares being valued at $85 each and quickly rose to $100+ in the first day of trading. Google has continued to grow through acquiring and creating new Internet services and products online. The stock price also grew rapidly to more than $420 per share at the end of November in 2005.

"Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. We believe that the most effective, and ultimately the most profitable, way to accomplish our mission is to put the needs of our users first. We have found that offering a high-quality user experience leads to increased traffic and strong word-of-mouth promotion." SEC Filing of Google

Sergey Brin and Larry Page shared 16th position on the Richest Americans list released by the Forbes business magazine in 2005, having an estimated $11 billion USD each. 

Brin remains active in the company with the role of the president of Technology.