Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin (
Russian: Серге́й Миха́йлович Брин; born August 21,
1973) is an
American computer scientist and
Internet entrepreneur who, with
Larry Page, co-founded
Google, one of the most profitable
Internet companies.
As of 2013, his personal wealth was estimated to be $24.4 billion.
Together, Brin and
Page own about 16 percent of the company.
Brin immigrated to the
United States with his family from the
Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his undergraduate degree at the
University of Maryland, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as computer science. After graduation, he moved to
Stanford University to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met Larry Page, with whom he later became friends. They crammed their dormitory room with inexpensive computers and applied Brin's data mining system to build a superior search engine.
The program became popular at
Stanford and they suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in a rented garage.
The Economist newspaper referred to Brin as an "
Enlightenment Man", and someone who believes that "knowledge is always good, and certainly always better than ignorance", a philosophy that is summed up by Google's motto "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"[5][6] and "
Don't be evil".
During an orientation for new students at Stanford, he met Larry Page. In a recent interview for The Economist, Brin jokingly said, "We're both kind of obnoxious." They seemed to disagree on most subjects. But after spending time together, they "became intellectual soul-mates and close friends". Brin's focus was on developing data mining systems while Page's was in extending "the concept of inferring the importance of a research paper from its citations in other papers".[6] Together, the pair authored a paper titled "The
Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web
Search Engine".[16]
Combining their ideas, they began "cramming their dormitory room with cheap computers" and tested their new search engine designs on the web. Their project grew quickly enough "to cause problems for Stanford's computing infrastructure". But they realized they had succeeded in creating a superior engine for searching the web and suspended their PhD studies to work more on their system.[6]
As
Mark Malseed wrote, "Soliciting funds from faculty members, family and friends, Brin and Page scraped together enough to buy some servers and rent that famous garage in
Menlo Park. ... [soon after],
Sun Microsystems co-founder
Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $
100,
000 check to '
Google, Inc.' The only problem was, 'Google, Inc.' did not yet exist—the company hadn't yet been incorporated. For two weeks, as they handled the paperwork, the young men had nowhere to deposit the money."[9]
The Economist magazine describes Brin's approach to life, like Page's, as based on a vision summed up by Google's motto, "of making all the world's information 'universally accessible and useful'".
Others have compared their vision to the impact of
Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of modern printing:
In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg introduced
Europe to the mechanical printing press, printing Bibles
for mass consumption. The technology allowed for books and manuscripts -- originally replicated by hand -- to be printed at a much faster rate, thus spreading knowledge and helping to usher in the
European Renaissance ... Google has done a similar job.[17]
The comparison was likewise noted by the authors of
The Google Story: "Not since
Gutenberg ... has any new invention empowered individuals, and transformed access to information, as profoundly as Google."[11]:1Also not long after the two "cooked up their new engine for web searches, they began thinking about information that is today beyond the web", such as digitizing books, and expanding health information.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin
Image By
Joi Ito [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
2.0)], via
Wikimedia Commons
- published: 23 Dec 2013
- views: 4235