Sergey Brin Explained

Sergey Brin
Birth Name:Sergey Mikhailovich Brin
Birth Date:August 21, 1973
Birth Place:Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality:American
Children:3
Signature:Sergey Brin google signature.svg

Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (Russian: link=no|Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American businessman and computer scientist who co-founded Google with Larry Page. He was the president of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., until stepping down from the role on December 3, 2019.[1] He and Page remain at Alphabet as co-founders, controlling shareholders, and board members. As of June 2024, Brin is the 7th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $146 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes.[2] [3]

Brin immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics as well as computer science. After graduation, he enrolled in Stanford University to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met Page, with whom he built a web search engine. The program became popular at Stanford, and they discontinued their PhD studies to start up Google in Susan Wojcicki's garage in Menlo Park.[4]

Early life and education

Sergey Mikhailovich Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow in the Soviet Union,[5] to Russian Jewish parents,[6] Mikhail and Eugenia Brin, both graduates of Moscow State University (MSU).[7] His father is a retired mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, and his mother is a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.[8] [9]

The Brin family lived in a three-room apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey's paternal grandmother.[8] In 1977, after his father returned from a mathematics conference in Warsaw, Poland, Mikhail Brin announced that it was time for the family to emigrate.[8] They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result, his father was "promptly fired". For related reasons, his mother had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, afraid their request would be denied as it was for many refuseniks. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.[8]

The Brin family lived in Vienna and Paris while Mikhail Brin secured a teaching position at the University of Maryland with help from Anatole Katok. During this time, the Brin family received support and assistance from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. They arrived in the United States on October 25, 1979.[8] [10]

Brin attended elementary school at Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland, but he received further education at home; his father, a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Maryland, encouraged him to learn mathematics and his family helped him retain his Russian-language skills. He attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Maryland. In September 1990, Brin enrolled in the University of Maryland, where he received his Bachelor of Science from the Department of Computer Science in 1993 with honors in computer science and mathematics at the age of 19.[11] In 1993, he interned at Wolfram Research, the developers of Mathematica.[11]

Brin began his graduate study in computer science at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, receiving an M.S. in computer science in 1995.[12], he was on leave from his PhD studies at Stanford.[13]

Search engine development

During an orientation for new students at Stanford, he met Larry Page. The two men 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 on extending "the concept of inferring the importance of a research paper from its citations in other papers".[14] Together, they authored a paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine".[15]

To convert the backlink data gathered by BackRub's web crawler into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm, and realized that it could be used to build a search engine far superior to those existing at the time.[16] The new algorithm relied on a new kind of technology that analyzed the relevance of the backlinks that connected one Web page to another, and allowed the number of links and their rank, to determine the rank of the page.[17] Combining their ideas, they began utilizing Page's dormitory room as a machine laboratory, and extracted spare parts from inexpensive computers to create a device that they used to connect the nascent search engine with Stanford's broadband campus network.[16]

After filling Page's room with equipment, they then converted Brin's dorm room into an office and programming center, where they tested their new search engine designs on the web. The rapid growth of their project caused Stanford's computing infrastructure to experience problems.[18]

Page and Brin used the former's basic HTML programming skills to set up a simple search page for users, as they did not have a web page developer to create anything visually elaborate. They also began using any computer part they could find to assemble the necessary computing power to handle searches by multiple users. As their search engine grew in popularity among Stanford users, it required additional servers to process the queries. In August 1996, the initial version of Google was made available on the Stanford Web site.[16]

By early 1997, the BackRub page described the state as follows:

Some Rough Statistics (from August 29, 1996)

Total indexable HTML urls: 75.2306 Million

Total content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes

...

BackRub is written in Java and Python and runs on several Sun Ultras and Intel Pentiums running Linux. The primary database is kept on a Sun Ultra series II with 28GB of disk. Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg have provided a great deal of very talented implementation help. Sergey Brin has also been very involved and deserves many thanks.

- Larry Page [19] BackRub already exhibited the rudimentary functions and characteristics of a search engine: a query input was entered and it provided a list of backlinks ranked by importance. Page recalled: "We realized that we had a querying tool. It gave you a good overall ranking of pages and ordering of follow-up pages."[20] Page said that in mid-1998 they finally realized the further potential of their project: "Pretty soon, we had 10,000 searches a day. And we figured, maybe this is really real."

Some compared Page and Brin's vision to the impact of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of modern printing:

The comparison was also 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."[21] Also, not long after the two "cooked up their new engine for web searches, they began thinking about information that was at the time beyond the web," such as digitizing books and expanding health information.

Other interests

In June 2008, Brin invested $4.5 million in Space Adventures, a Virginia-based space tourism company.[22]

Brin and Page jointly own a customized Boeing 767–200 and a Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet,[23] and pay $1.3 million a year to house them and two Gulfstream V jets owned by Google executives at Moffett Federal Airfield. The aircraft has scientific equipment installed by NASA to allow experimental data to be collected in flight.[24] [25]

Brin is a backer of LTA Research & Exploration LLC, an airship maker company.[26] In October 2023, LTA's 124-meter long flagship, Pathfinder 1, became the largest airship since the Hindenburg to receive clearance for flight testing, permitted over the boundaries of Moffett Field and neighboring Palo Alto Airport’s airspaces, at a height of up to 460 meters.[27]

Personal life

Brin was raised Jewish, but is not religious.[28]

In May 2007, Brin married biotech analyst and entrepreneur Anne Wojcicki in the Bahamas.[29] [30] They had a son in late 2008 and a daughter in late 2011.[31] In August 2013, it was announced that Brin and his wife were living separately after Brin had an extramarital affair with Google Glass's marketing director Amanda Rosenberg.[32] [33] [34] In June 2015, Brin and Wojcicki finalized their divorce.[35]

On November 7, 2018, he married Nicole Shanahan, a legal tech founder. They have a daughter, born in late 2018.[36] Brin and Shanahan separated on December 15, 2021, and Brin filed for divorce on January 4, 2022.[37] In summer 2023, the divorce was finalized.[38]

Brin's mother, Eugenia, has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In 2008, he decided to make a donation to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where his mother has received treatment.[39] According to Forbes, Brin has donated over $1 billion to fund research on the disease.[40]

Brin and Wojcicki, although divorced, jointly ran The Brin Wojcicki Foundation until 2014. Since then, Brin has used the Sergey Brin Family Foundation and a donor-advised fund for his philanthropic giving.[41] They donated extensively to The Michael J. Fox Foundation and in 2009 gave $1 million to support the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Brin is a donor to Democratic Party candidates and organizations, having donated $5,000 to Barack Obama's reelection campaign and $30,800 to the DNC.[42]

Awards and accolades

2002–2009

2009–present

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepping down as CEO and president. ABC News. en. April 14, 2020. December 4, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20191204070351/https://abcnews.go.com/Business/google-founders-larry-page-sergey-brin-stepping-company/story?id=67472607. live.
  2. News: Bloomberg Billionaires Index: Sergey Brin. Bloomberg.com. June 5, 2023. May 13, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20220513064447/https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/sergey-brin/. live.
  3. News: Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires List: Sergey Brin . Forbes. March 20, 2024.
  4. Web site: Larry Page and Sergey Brin paid $1,700 a month to rent the garage where Google was born . Business Insider . October 17, 2018 . October 18, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20181018043300/https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cofounders-paid-1700-garage-rent-2015-9?r=UK&IR=T . live .
  5. News: Nine immigrants who helped make America great. Jimison. Robert. July 31, 2019. CNN. August 18, 2019. August 18, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190818102346/https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/19/us/immigrants-who-made-america-great-cfc/index.html. live.
  6. Web site: Sergey Brin . February 20, 2020 . March 21, 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20190321094557/https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/sergey-brin . live .
  7. News: Rolnik . Guy . 'I've Been Very Lucky in My Life' . Haaretz . May 22, 2008 . March 10, 2020 . November 12, 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20191112103329/https://www.haaretz.com/1.4983416 . live .
  8. Malseed. Mark. February 2007. The Story of Sergey Brin. Moment Magazine. https://web.archive.org/web/20130121055147/http://www.oldsite.momentmag.net/moment/issues/2007/02/200702-BrinFeature.html. January 21, 2013.
  9. Smale, Will (April 30, 2004). Profile: The Google founders, BBC News. Retrieved January 7, 2010.
  10. News: Strom . Stephanie . Billionaire Aids Charity That Aided Him . The New York Times . October 24, 2009 . October 31, 2018 . October 31, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20181031133141/https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/us/25donate.html . live .
  11. Web site: Resume. March 9, 2008. Brin. Sergey. January 7, 1997. March 22, 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080322000250/http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/resume.html. live.
  12. Book: Henderson . Harry . Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology . 2009 . Facts On File . 978-0-8160-6382-6 . 57 . Revised.
  13. Web site: Sergey Brin: Executive Profile & Biography. March 9, 2008. Business Week. He is currently on leave from the PhD program in computer science at Stanford university.... March 8, 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20090308131028/http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=534604&symbol=GOOG. dead.
  14. News: Enlightenment Man. The Economist. December 6, 2008. February 20, 2020. February 3, 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20090203054616/http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12673407. live.
  15. Brin. S.. Sergey Brin. Page. L.. Larry Page. 10.1016/S0169-7552(98)00110-X. The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems. 30. 1–7. 107–17. 1998. 0169-7552. 10.1.1.115.5930. 7587743 . August 28, 2015. September 27, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150927004511/http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf. live.
  16. John Battelle. The Birth of Google. Wired. February 12, 2018. August 13, 2005. November 7, 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20121107160749/http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/battelle.html?tw=wn_tophead_4. live.
  17. Moschovitis Group. The Internet: A Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2005.
  18. News: Enlightenment man. The Economist. February 2, 2015. December 4, 2008. April 4, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180404134801/https://www.economist.com/node/12673407. live.
  19. http://backrub.c63.be/1997/backrub.htm Downloaded 11 – February 2009
  20. Wired 13.08: The Birth of Google. wired.com. August 2005. February 13, 2015. July 9, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150709201400/http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/battelle.html?pg=2&topic=battelle&topic_set=. live.
  21. [Vise, David]
  22. News: John. Schwartz. Google Co-Founder Books a Space Flight. The New York Times. June 11, 2008. June 11, 2008. April 25, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130425092828/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/technology/11soyuz.html. live.
  23. News: Dornier Alpha Jet for Google's Founders. The New York Times. Miguel. Helft. October 23, 2008. September 29, 2012. October 4, 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20121004200919/http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/a-new-fighter-jet-for-googles-founders/. live.
  24. News: Google Founders' Ultimate Perk: A NASA Runway. Miguel. Helft. September 13, 2007. The New York Times. September 13, 2007. April 25, 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20090425092726/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/technology/13google.html. live.
  25. News: Google founders pay NASA $1.3 million to land at Moffett Airfield. Verne. Kopytoff. September 13, 2007. September 13, 2007. San Francisco Chronicle. May 16, 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120516185454/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2007%2F09%2F13%2FBUPRS4MHA.DTL. live.
  26. News: Sergey Brin Has a Secret Plan to Put Airships Back in the Skies . 29 May 2023 . Bloomberg.com . 25 May 2023 . en . May 29, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230529204525/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-05-25/inside-google-founder-sergey-brin-s-secret-plan-to-build-airships . live .
  27. Web site: Harris . Mark . EXCLUSIVE: Google Founder's Airship Gets FAA Clearance - IEEE Spectrum . . en.
  28. Web site: Nate . Bloom . Jews in the News: Diane Von Furstenburg, Michael Kors and Barbara Hershey . Tampa Jewish Federation . September 10, 2013 . Brin’s Jewish parents left the former Soviet Union in 1979, tired of the anti-Semitism which had impeded their respective academic careers and despairing of the prospects for their son. Brin wed biologist Wojcicki in 2007 and the couple now have two children. Neither Brin nor Wojcicki (whose mother is Jewish) are religious, but they did have some Jewish touches at their secular wedding: a chuppah-- and Brin stepped on a glass . November 5, 2019 . November 5, 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20191105023447/https://www.jewishtampa.com/jews-in-the-news/jews-in-the-news-diane-von-furstenburg-michael-kors-and-barbara-hershey . live .
  29. News: Amy . Argetsinger . Roberts, Roxanne . Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts – Oprah Winfrey's Degrees of Communication at Howard . . May 13, 2007 . October 20, 2007 . August 21, 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110821233857/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/12/AR2007051201168.html . live .
  30. Web site: Anne Wojcicki Marries the Richest Bachelor . Cosmetic Makovers . October 20, 2007 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20071028080241/http://www.cosmetic-makeovers.com/2007/05/18/anne-wojcicki-marries-the-richest-bachelor . October 28, 2007.
  31. Web site: The Way I Work: Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe. Inc.com. May 29, 2012. March 16, 2013. March 1, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130301033930/http://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/liz-welch/the-way-i-work-anne-wojcicki-23andme.html. live.
  32. Liz Gannes, "Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin and 23andMe Co-Founder Anne Wojcicki Have Split", All Things Digital, August 28, 2013
  33. https://abcnews.go.com/Business/google-founder-divorce-latest-costly-ceo-split/story?id=20143307 Alan Farnham, "Google: Men Apparently Do Make Passes At Girls Who Wear Glasses"
  34. Web site: Sergey Brin and Amanda Rosenberg: Inside the Google Co-Founder's Romance with the Google Glass Marketing Manager. Vanessa. Grigoriadis. Vanity Fair. March 12, 2014. April 24, 2018. October 26, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181026214338/https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-rosenberg-affair. live.
  35. News: Sergey Brin and Amanda Rosenberg: Inside the Google Co-Founder's Romance with the Google Glass Marketing Manager. Grigoriadis. Vanessa. Vanity Fair. August 10, 2018. October 26, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181026214338/https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-rosenberg-affair#~o. live.
  36. Web site: Google's Sergey Brin has been married to the founder of a legal tech startup since 2018. Business Insider. Leskin. Paige. October 3, 2019. April 10, 2020. December 23, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20191223005422/https://www.businessinsider.in/entertainment/news/googles-sergey-brin-has-been-married-to-the-founder-of-a-legal-tech-startup-since-2018/articleshow/71430460.cms. live.
  37. Web site: Court filings reveal details of Google cofounder Sergey Brin's divorce from his wife, attorney Nicole Shanahan. subscription. Price. Rob. Langley. Hugh. June 17, 2022. Insider. June 17, 2022. live. https://archive.today/20220617141324/https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cofounder-sergey-brin-nicole-shanahan-divorce-court-filings-2022-6. June 17, 2022.
  38. News: Davis O’Brien . Rebecca . February 12, 2024 . Meet the Woman Who Helped Pay for That R.F.K. Super Bowl Ad . February 18, 2023 . The New York Times.
  39. News: Google Co-Founder Has Genetic Code Linked to Parkinson's. September 18, 2008. The New York Times. Miguel. Helft. September 19, 2008. December 13, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171213084840/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/technology/19google.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin. live.
  40. Web site: Dolan . Kerry A. . December 9, 2022 . Google Cofounder Sergey Brin Has Quietly Donated More Than $1 Billion Toward Parkinson's Disease . . https://web.archive.org/web/20221209120553/https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2022/12/09/exclusive-google-cofounder-sergey-brin-has-quietly-donated-more-than-1-billion-toward-this-one-specific-disease/ . December 9, 2022 . live.
  41. Web site: Maria . Di Mento . February 13, 2023 . The Philanthropy 50 . February 26, 2024 . Chronicle of Philanthropy.
  42. Web site: OpenSecrets. Open Secrets. March 11, 2019. March 27, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190327101159/https://www.opensecrets.org/search?q=sergey+brin&type=donors. live.
  43. 2002 Young Innovators Under 35: Sergey Brin, 28 . . 2002 . August 14, 2011 . September 3, 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110903141528/http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx?TRID=238 . live .
  44. http://www.ie.edu/IE/php/en/noticia.php?id=225 Brin and Page Awarded MBAs
  45. "15 Local Business Leaders Receive Awards for Their Success in Business and the Community." 15 Local Business Leaders Receive Awards for Their Success in Business... PR NewsWire, June 23, 2003. Web. April 10, 2015. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/15-local-business-leaders-receive-awards-for-their-success-in-business-and-the-community-71384622.html
  46. Web site: Sergey Brin Biography and Interview. achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement. April 1, 2019. February 5, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190205004130/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sergey-brin/#biography. live.
  47. Web site: Great Immigrants, Great Americans . February 21, 2024 . Carnegie Corporation of New York.
  48. https://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/20/power-09_Sergey-Brin-and-Larry-Page_D664.html "The World's Most Powerful People: #5 Sergey Brin and Larry Page"
  49. http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=02062009 National Academy of Engineering

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