The most well-known accomplishment of Lawrence Edward Page, an American businessman, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur (born March 26, 1973), is co-founding Google with Sergey Brin.
Page served as Google's CEO from 1997 until August 2001, when he resigned to make way for Eric Schmidt. From April 2011 to July 2015, he served as CEO of Google's newly formed parent organisation, Alphabet Inc., which was established to deliver "major advancements" as Google's parent company. Page held this position until December 4, 2019, when he and his co-founder Brin resigned from all executive positions and operational roles within the company. He continues to be a majority stakeholder, employee, and member of the Alphabet board.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Page's estimated net worth as of October 2023 was $118 billion, ranking him as the sixth-richest person in the world. Additionally, he has funded in the flying automobile businesses Opener and Kitty Hawk.
Together with co-author Brin, Page is the co-creator and namesake of PageRank, a Google search ranking algorithm for which he shared the 2004 Marconi Prize.
Personal And Early Life
On March 26, 1973, Lawrence Edward Page was born in Lansing, Michigan. His mother is Jewish, and although Page's family remained secular when he was a child, his grandpa eventually relocated to Israel. The University of Michigan awarded Carl Victor Page Sr. a PhD in computer science. He was dubbed a "pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence" by BBC correspondent Will Smale. The paternal grandparents of Page were Protestants. Gloria, Page's mother, taught computer programming at Lyman Briggs College at the same university as his father, Page, who was a professor of computer science there.When Larry was eight years old, his parents separated, but he remained close to both his mother Gloria and his father's longtime lover, MSU professor Joyce Wildenthal.
In an interview, Page noted that his boyhood house "was usually a mess, with computers, science, and technology magazines, and Popular Science magazines all over the place", an atmosphere in which he immersed himself. In his 2013 Google founders letter, Page noted that he read a lot when he was younger: "I remember spending a huge amount of time pouring [sic] over books and magazines." Nicholas Carlson, a writer, claimed that Page's home environment and his caring parents' combined influence "fostered creativity and invention". While growing up, Page also studied music composition and performed instruments. His parents took him to Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan, a music summer camp, and Page has stated that his musical training is what gave him the impatience and fixation with speed in computers.
"In some sense, I feel like music training led to the high-speed legacy of Google for me" . Page stated in an interview that "In music, you're extremely conscious of time. Time is basically everything, and when it comes to music, if you're a percussionist and you strike something, it has to happen in milliseconds or fractions of a second.
When Page was six years old, he became interested in computers because he could "play with the stuff lying around"—first-generation personal computers—that his parents had left behind. He was the "first kid in his elementary school to turn in an assignment from a word processor" . He learned how to disassemble items from his elder brother Carl Victor Page as well, and soon he was disassembling "everything in his house to see how it worked." He claimed, "I also realised I wanted to develop stuff at a very young age. I therefore developed an interest in business and technology. I think I knew I wanted to start a business when I was 12 years old.
Education And Research
From the age of 2 to 7 (1975 to 1979), Page attended the Okemos Montessori School (now known as Montessori Radmoor) in Okemos, Michigan. He graduated in 1991 from East Lansing High School. He spent two summers studying at the Interlochen Centre for the Arts in Interlochen, Michigan, where he played the saxophone but also the flute. Page graduated from the University of Michigan with honours in 1995 with a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering and from Stanford University with a Master of Science in computer science in 1998.In order to print large posters inexpensively using inkjet cartridges, Page developed an inkjet printer made of Lego bricks while he was a student at the University of Michigan. Page reverse-engineered the ink cartridge and created the electronics and mechanics to drive it. Page was a member of the 1993 "Maize & Blue" University of Michigan Solar Car team and served as president of the Beta Epsilon chapter of the Eta Kappa Nu honour society. He proposed that the University of Michigan replace its bus system with a personal rapid-transit system, which is effectively a driverless monorail with individual cars for each passenger. He made this suggestion while still an undergraduate student at the university.
In quest of a dissertation topic after enrolling in Stanford University's computer science PhD programme, Page contemplated looking into the mathematical characteristics of the World Wide Web and seeing its connection structure as a massive graph. Page remembered in 2008 that Terry Winograd, his boss, had advised him to pursue the concept and that it was the finest advice he had ever heard. During this period, he also pondered doing research on telepresence and autonomous vehicles.Page concentrated on the issue of discovering which websites connected to a specific page, viewing the quantity and kind of backlinks as important data for that page. The significance of citations in scholarly publishing would also be relevant to the study. A fellow Stanford PhD candidate called Sergey Brin would shortly join Page's research effort, known as "BackRub." The two co-wrote a research paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" that at the time was one of the most downloaded academic works in Internet history.
Assumption CEO Google
Following a declaration in January 2011, Page assumed the role of Google's CEO on April 4, 2011, while Schmidt resigned to take on the role of executive chairman. Google had over 24,000 workers and a market valuation of over $180 billion at this point. The decade previous to Page's second appointment as CEO of Google was referred to by reporter Max Nisen as Page's "lost decade" because, although having enormous influence at Google through product development and other activities, he gradually grew more distant and unresponsive.
On January 20, 2011, Schmidt made a lighthearted Twitter announcement that his time as CEO was coming to an end: "Adult-supervision no longer needed.