Who is Larry Page?
Larry Page is an American computer scientist and businessman who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin. He co-created PageRank, the ranking method behind Google Search, and led Google and later its parent company Alphabet as CEO. He remains a board member and controlling shareholder, and is one of the richest people in the world.
Early life and education
Page was born in East Lansing, Michigan, in 1973. Both his parents worked in computer science, and he grew up surrounded by computers and technical magazines. He studied computer engineering at the University of Michigan and then went to Stanford University for graduate study.
The idea behind Google
At Stanford, Page became interested in the link structure of the web. He and Brin built a search engine called BackRub, which ranked pages by how many important pages linked to them. This idea, PageRank, gave far better results than other search engines of the time.
Career highlights
- Google (1998): incorporated with Brin, starting in a garage in Menlo Park.
- First CEO (1997–2001): then handed over to Eric Schmidt as the company grew.
- Back as CEO (2011–2015): pushed into Android, Chrome and long-term research projects.
- Alphabet (2015): created a parent company to separate Google from “moonshot” projects, and led it until 2019.
Major achievements
Google became the world’s main gateway to information, and Alphabet grew into one of the most valuable companies ever. Page and Brin received the Marconi Prize in 2004 for PageRank.
Expertise
Page is known for “10x thinking”: aiming for improvements ten times better rather than small gains, and for supporting ambitious research.
Current work
Since stepping back from executive roles in 2019, he has kept a low public profile while remaining on Alphabet’s board, and has invested in projects such as electric aircraft.
Lessons for your career
A strong idea grounded in research can become a huge business. Page’s story shows the value of thinking big and solving problems at their root.
Leadership style
Page is known for asking engineers to aim higher and for his belief that most companies think too small. As CEO he made quick decisions about which products to keep, closing many and focusing on big platforms such as Android, Chrome and YouTube. He also championed the “20% time” culture that let engineers work on side projects, which helped produce products like Gmail.
Timeline: key moments
- 1973Born in East Lansing, Michigan
- 1995Meets Sergey Brin at Stanford
- 1996Builds the BackRub search engine
- 1998Google is incorporated
- 2001Eric Schmidt becomes CEO
- 2004Google goes public; Marconi Prize
- 2011Returns as CEO of Google
- 2015Becomes CEO of Alphabet
- 2019Steps down from executive roles
Larry Page turned a research idea about web links into Google, changing how the world finds information.
