Larry Page - Co-founder and CEO of Google Inc

Co-founder and CEO of Google Inc. Born : Lawrence Page March 26, 1973 (age 39) East Lansing, Michigan, U.S. Residence : Palo Alto, California, U.S. Nationality : American Alma mater : University of Michigan (B.S.) Stanford University (M.S.) Occupation : Computer scientist, internet entrepreneur Known for : Co-founder and CEO of Google Inc. Salary : $1 Net worth : US$ 18.7 billion (2012) Title : CEO of Google Spouse : Lucinda Southworth (m. 2007) Signature :

Lawrence "Larry" Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. On April 4, 2011, he took on the role of chief executive officer of Google, replacing Eric Schmidt. As of 2012, his personal wealth is estimated to be $18.7 billion, ranking him #15 on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. He is the inventor of PageRank, which became the foundation of Google's search ranking algorithm. Together, Brin and Page own about 16 percent of the company's stock. Early life and education Larry Page was born in East Lansing, Michigan. His father, Carl Page, earned a Ph.D. in computer science in 1965 when the field was in its infancy, and is considered a "pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence." Both he and Page's mother, Gloria, were computer science professors at Michigan State University. Page's mother is Jewish but he was raised without religion. During an interview, Page recalled his childhood, noting that his house "was usually a mess, with computers and Popular Science magazines all over the place". His attraction to computers started when he was six years old when he got to "play with the stuff lying around". He became the "first kid in his elementary school to turn in an assignment from a word processor." His older brother 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 really interested in technology and business. Probably from when I was 12, I knew I was going to start a company eventually". After enrolling in a Computer Science Ph.D. program at Stanford University, Page was in search of a dissertation theme and considered exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph. His supervisor Terry Winograd encouraged him to pursue this idea, which Page later recalled as "the best advice I ever got". Page then focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information about that page, with the role of citations in academic publishing in mind. In his research project, nicknamed "BackRub", he was soon joined by Sergey Brin, a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student. "At the time Page conceived of BackRub, the Web comprised an estimated 10 million documents, with an untold number of links between them. The computing resources required to crawl such a beast were well beyond the usual bounds of a student project. Unaware of exactly what he was getting into, Page began building out his crawler. The idea's complexity and scale lured Brin to the job. A polymath who had jumped from project to project without settling on a thesis topic, he found the premise behind BackRub fascinating. "I talked to lots of research groups" around the school, Brin recalls, "and this was the most exciting project, both because it tackled the Web, which represents human knowledge, and because I liked Larry". Brin and Page originally met in March 1995 during a spring orientation of new Ph.D. candidates. Brin, who had already been in the program for two years, was assigned to show some students, including Page, around campus, and they later became friends. Business In 1998, Brin and Page founded Google, Inc. Page ran Google as co-president along with Brin until 2001 when they hired Eric Schmidt as Chairman and CEO of Google. In January 2011 Google announced that Page would replace Schmidt as CEO in April the same year. Both Page and Brin earn an annual compensation of one dollar. On April 4, 2011, Page officially became the chief executive of Google, while Schmidt stepped down to become executive chairman. Personal life Page married Lucinda Southworth at Richard Branson's Caribbean island, Necker Island in 2007. Southworth is a research scientist and sister of actress and model Carrie Southworth. They have one child. Page has been reported to have dated Marissa Mayer. Awards and recognition PC Magazine has praised Google as among the Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines (1998) and awarded Google the Technical Excellence Award for Innovation in Web Application Development in 1999. In 2000, Google earned a Webby Award, a People's Voice Award for technical achievement, and in 2001, was awarded Outstanding Search Service, Best Image Search Engine, Best Design, Most Webmaster Friendly Search Engine, and Best Search Feature at the Search Engine Watch Awards." In 2002, Page, along with Sergey Brin, was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35. In 2003, Page, along with Brin, received an honorary MBA from IE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses.In 2004, they received the Marconi Foundation Prize and were elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's president, congratulated the two men for :their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004. Also that year, Page and Brin were named "Persons of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight. In 2005, Brin and Page were elected Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2002 the World Economic Forum named Page a Global Leader for Tomorrow and in 2004 the X PRIZE chose Page as a trustee for their board. Page received an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2009 during graduation commencement ceremonies. In 2011, he was ranked 24th on the Forbes list of billionaires and as the 11th richest person in the United States. - r@j