Larry Page

Lawrence Edward Page[2][3][4] (born March 26, 1973) is an American businessman, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin.[2][5]

Page was chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until August 2001 when he stepped down in favor of Eric Schmidt and then again from April 2011 until July 2015 when he became CEO of its newly formed parent organisation Alphabet Inc. which was created to deliver "major advancements" as Google's parent company,[6] a post he held until December 4, 2019 when he along with his co-founder Brin stepped down from all executive positions and day-to-day roles within the company. He remains an Alphabet board member, employee, and controlling shareholder.[7]

As of March 2024, Page has an estimated net worth of $125 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the ninth-richest person in the world.[8] He has also invested in flying car startups Kitty Hawk and Opener.[9]

Page is the co-creator and namesake of PageRank, a search ranking algorithm for Google[17] for which he received the Marconi Prize in 2004 along with co-writer Brin.[18]

Early life

Lawrence Edward Page was born on March 26, 1973,[19] in Lansing, Michigan.[20][21] His mother is Jewish;[22] his maternal grandfather later immigrated to Israel,[21] though Page's household while growing up was secular.[22][23] His father, Carl Victor Page Sr., earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Michigan. BBC reporter Will Smale described him as a "pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence".[24] Page's paternal grandparents came from a Protestant background.[25][26] Page's father was a computer science professor at Michigan State University and his mother Gloria was an instructor in computer programming at Lyman Briggs College at the same institution.[27][24][28] Larry's parents divorced when he was eight years old, but he maintained a good relationship both with his mother Gloria and his father's long-term partner and MSU professor Joyce Wildenthal.[29]: ch. 2 

When Larry Page was six years old, in 1979, his father brought home an Exidy Sorcerer computer, which Larry soon mastered and began using for schoolwork.[30]

During an interview, Page recalled his childhood home "was usually a mess, with computers, science, and technology magazines and Popular Science magazines all over the place", an environment in which he immersed himself.[31] Page was an avid reader during his youth, writing in his 2013 Google founders letter: "I remember spending a huge amount of time pouring [sic] over books and magazines".[32] According to writer Nicholas Carlson, the combined influence of Page's home atmosphere and his attentive parents "fostered creativity and invention". Page also played instruments and studied music composition while growing up. His parents sent him to music summer camp—Interlochen Arts Camp in Interlochen, Michigan, and Page has mentioned that his musical education inspired his impatience and obsession with speed in computing. "In some sense, I feel like music training led to the high-speed legacy of Google for me". In an interview Page said that "In music, you're very cognizant of time. Time is like the primary thing" and that "If you think about it from a music point of view, if you're a percussionist, you hit something, it's got to happen in milliseconds, fractions of a second".[10]

Page was first attracted to computers when he was six years old, as he was able to "play with the stuff lying around"—first-generation personal computers—that had been left by his mother and father.[27] He became the "first kid in his elementary school to turn in an assignment from a word processor".[33] His older brother Carl Victor Page Jr.[29]: ch. 2  also taught him to take things apart and before long he was taking "everything in his house apart to see how it worked". He said that "from a very early age, I also realized I wanted to invent things. So I became interested in technology and business. Probably from when I was 12, I knew I was going to start a company eventually."[33]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page