Some would say that he found success through his association and final incorporation with super-star Larry Page. Others that it was Sergey Brin’s keen imagination that started them along the way. Still more that the two together saw a future that others sneered at as they looked upon the fledgling entrepreneurs building sandcastles in the sky.
Sergey Brin is an American business magnate, computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur whose insight into technology and the future created tools that we use every day. Known nowadays as the brains behind Google X and the Google Glass “debacle?” he’s the cool face of Alphabet.
Back in the day Sergey would hang around the computer science department at Stanford University, which is actually how he first met Larry Page. Being an outward going character Brin had volunteered to act as a kind of guide to show new students around the campus and ostensibly to make them feel welcome and at home.
When he met Larry however who was in his same year just some months older than Brin, they didn’t like eachother from the start. Or so say blogs and articles who may want to ham up the initial meeting of these two titans in the making. Truth is though this is often how it goes, many firm friends start out as skirmishing frenemies testing for weaknesses and ensuring that they make no friend who is not better than themselves. Following Confucius logic, of course.
As things progressed and sparring practice was over Larry Page has claimed that he “had a dream”. Reaching up to the heavens it is said he saw a new world wide web. Linked together with something he called “PageRank” to determine how to attribute value and rank pages.
Brin realized that this could be turned into a business and together they worked on the idea eventually creating a new reality. A reality where information is organized based on value to the reader.
Brin has a mind for data mining which is crucial to Google’s profitability. Data is big money especially nowadays where it can be used to serve ad content that matches the users interests and needs. This results in higher click rates on ads and more sales for the businesses using their platforms like Google AdWords. Not to mention a better user experience for Google’s some 4.3 billion users.
Together with Larry Page, Sergey created algorithms for gathering and determining the value of data as well as building systems that threaded into their many products. Not everything they worked on worked. But the platforms that did, including their aforementioned advertising platform AdWords transformed Google into one of the most profitable businesses the world has ever seen. Becoming the fourth trillion dollar company in 2020.
Today it is estimated that some 5.8 billion searches are made daily on the search engine they originally named, BackRub. Later renaming to Google in 1996 and entertaining an offer to sell the entire company for just $750,000 three years later. Apparently “Google was willing to sell for under a million dollars, but Excite didn’t want to buy them”. And with all the outside noise and no doubt people trying to push them off their path, it must have put the pair in a headspin.
Fortunately they stuck it out and continued building their vision, turning their noses up at such offers or nonsense mutterings about their eventual and inevitable failure.
Not only did they not fail, in 2005 Brin and Page made what many consider one of the best acquisitions in Internet history; Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. And unlike Yahoo! who after acquiring Broadcast.com broke it up “into various streaming media businesses, none of which exist today.” Google acquired Youtube.com and didn’t change a thing. They let YouTube grow and flourish as an independent brand all the while threading in computer algorithms on the backend making the user experience the best in the world. I’m pretty sure these new algorithms even use machine learning to match content with each individual’s interests, desires and needs. It’s a brave new world.
In 2012 Sergey was trusted with the mission of making Google Glass a waking reality. It failed and Brin really bore the brunt of the failure some say because it was his interest in Amanda Rosenberg that really turned his lights on.
A stunning Asian, born in Hong Kong, with Chinese and Jewish roots who moved to England when she was young, and was educated at the same school as Kate Middleton and Princess Beatrice. Rosenberg really caught Brin’s attention. With long dark hair and Chinese wit and charm, some say Brin’s concentration lapsed on the project at hand. And it also seemed to culminate in his divorce with his then wife of 8 years Anne Wojcicki. Yet it all turned around for him when he married the charming beauty, Nicole Shanahan.
Fortunately, in May 2019, Google announced the Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2. So we will have to just wait and see.
Sergey Brin has a wide range of interests including both space and also tourism. That’s why in 2008 he made the investment into Space Adventures, a Virginia-based space tourism company. His $4.5 million dollar investment served as a deposit for a reservation on one of Space Adventures’ proposed flights in 2011. However as of 2023, Brin has not exercised his onboard flight options or booked one of the available seats and so we’ll have to just wait and see about that, too.
Summing-Up
Sergey Brin is one of the two founders of Google LCC. alongside Larry Page. A legendary computer scientist Brin was actually born in the then Soviet Union making his way to the United States in 1979 with his family. Eager to get ahead Sergey developed his skills and worked diligently together with Larry Page to bring to the world the most useful and exciting technology the world has ever seen.
