Larry page
the British musician, see Larry Page (singer).
Lawrence Edward Page[3] (born March 26, 1973) is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of the co-founders of Google along with Sergey Brin.[1][4]
Larry Page
Larry Page in the European Parliament, 17.06.2009 (cropped).jpg
Page in 2009 speaking in public
Born
Lawrence Edward Page
March 26, 1973 (age 47)
Lansing, Michigan, U.S.
Alma mater
University of Michigan (BS)
Stanford University (MS)
Occupation
Computer Scientist
Internet entrepreneur
Known for
Co-founding Google
Co-founder Alphabet Inc.
Co-founder PageRank
Net worth
US$63.3 billion (May 2020)[1]
Spouse(s)
Lucinda Southworth (m. 2007)
Children
2
Page was the chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc. (Google's parent company) until stepping down on December 3, 2019. After stepping aside as Google CEO in August 2001 in favor of Eric Schmidt, he re-assumed the role in April 2011. He announced his intention to step aside a second time in July 2015 to become CEO of Alphabet, under which Google's assets would be reorganized. Under Page, Alphabet sought to deliver major advancements in a variety of industries.[5] On December 4, 2019, Page stepped down from his CEO position from Alphabet. Both Page and Sergey Brin remain at Alphabet as co-founders, board members, employees, and controlling shareholders.[6]
Forbes placed him 10th in the list "Billionaires 2019".[7] As of March 2020, Page is the 13th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $62.6 billion, according to Forbes.[1]
Page is the co-inventor and namesake of PageRank, a search ranking algorithm for Google, which he wrote with Brin.[15] Page received the Marconi Prize in 2004 with Brin.[16]
Early life and education
PhD studies and research
Google Edit
Page in the early days of Google
1998–2010 Edit
Founding Edit
Mark Malseed wrote in a 2003 feature story:
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.[43]
In 1998,[44] Brin and Page incorporated Google, Inc.[45] with the initial domain name of "Googol", derived from a number that consists of one followed by one hundred zeros—representing the vast amount of data that the search engine was intended to explore. Following inception, Page appointed himself as CEO, while Brin, named Google's co-founder, served as Google's president.[8] Writer Nicholas Carlson wrote in 2014:
The pair's mission was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."[46] With a US$1-million loan from friends and family, the inaugural team moved into a Mountain View office by the start of 2000. In 1999, Page experimented with smaller servers so Google could fit more into each square meter of the third-party warehouses the company rented for their servers. This eventually led to a search engine that ran much faster than Google's competitors at the time.[8]
By June 2000, Google had indexed one billion Internet URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), making it the most comprehensive search engine on the Web at the time. The company cited NEC Research Institute data in its June 26 press release, stating that "there are more than 1 billion web pages online today", with Google "providing access to 560 million full-text indexed web pages and 500 million partially indexed URLs."[47]
Early management style Edit
During his first tenure as CEO, Page embarked on an attempt to fire all of Google's project managers in 2001. Page's plan involved all of Google's engineers reporting to a VP of engineering, who would then report directly to him—Page explained that he didn't like non-engineers supervising engineers due to their limited technical knowledge.[8] Page even documented his management tenets for his team to use as a reference:
Don't delegate: Do everything you can yourself to make things go faster.
Don't get in the way if you're not adding value. Let the people actually doing the work talk to each other while you go do something else.
Don't be a bureaucrat.
Ideas are more important than age. Just because someone is junior doesn't mean they don't deserve respect and cooperation.
The worst thing you can do is stop someone from doing something by saying, "No. Period." If you say no, you have to help them find a better way to get it done.[8]
Even though Page's new model was unsustainable and led to disgruntlement among the affected employees, his issue with engineers being managed by non-engineering staff gained traction.[48]Page also believed that the faster Google's search engine returned answers, the more it would be used. He fretted over milliseconds and pushed his engineers—from those who developed algorithms to those who built data centers—to think about lag times. He also pushed for keeping Google's home page famously sparse in its design because it would help the search results load faster.[27]
2001–2011 Edit
Changes in management and expansion Edit
Before Silicon Valley's two most prominent investors, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, agreed to invest a combined total of $50 million in Google, they applied pressure on Page to step down as CEO so that a more experienced leader could build a "world-class management team." Page eventually became amenable to the idea after meeting with other technology CEOs, including Steve Jobs and Intel's Andrew Grove. Eric Schmidt, who had been hired as Chairman of Google in March 2001, left his full-time position as the CEO of Novell to take the same role at Google in August of the same year, and Page moved aside to assume the President of Products role.[8]
Under Schmidt's leadership, Google underwent a period of major growth and expansion, which included its initial public offering (IPO) on August 20, 2004. He always acted in consultation with Page and Brin when he embarked on initiatives such as the hiring of an executive team and the creation of a sales force management system. Page remained the boss at Google in the eyes of the employees, as he gave final approval on all new hires, and it was Page who provided the signature for the IPO, the latter making him a billionaire at the age of 30.[8]
Page led the acquisition of Android for $50 million in 2005 to fulfill his ambition to place handheld computers in the possession of consumers so that they could access Google anywhere. The purchase was made without Schmidt's knowledge, but the CEO was not perturbed by the relatively small acquisition. Page became passionate about Android and spent large amounts of time with Android CEO and cofounder Andy Rubin. By September 2008, T-Mobile launched the G1, the first phone using Android software and, by 2010, 17.2% of the handset market consisted of Android sales, overtaking Apple for the first time. Android became the world's most popular mobile operating system shortly afterward.[8]
Assumption of CEO position at Google Edit
Following a January 2011 announcement,[49] Page officially became the chief executive of Google on April 4, 2011, while Schmidt stepped down to become executive chairman.[50] By this time, Google had over $180 billion market capitalization and more than 24,000 employees.[51]
After Schmidt announced the end of his tenure as CEO on January 20, 2011, he jokingly tweeted on Twitter: "Adult-supervision no longer needed." Quartz organizational management reporter, Max Nisen, described the decade prior to Page's second appointment as Google's CEO as his "lost decade." While Page continued to exert a significant influence at Google during this time, overseeing product development and other operations, he became increasingly disconnected and less responsive over time.[8][48]
2011–2013 Edit
As Google's new CEO, Page's two key goals were the development of greater autonomy for the executives overseeing the most important divisions, and higher levels of collaboration, communication, and unity among the teams. Page also formed what the media called the "L-Team", a group of senior vice-presidents who reported directly to him and worked in close proximity to his office for a portion of the working week.[52] Additionally, he reorganized the company's senior management, placing a CEO-like manager at the top of Google's most important product divisions, including YouTube, AdWords, and Google Search.[8]
In accordance with a more cohesive team environment, Page declared a new "zero tolerance for fighting" policy that contrasted with his approach during the early days of Google, when he would use his harsh and intense arguments with Brin as an exemplar for senior management. Page had changed his thinking during his time away from the CEO role, as he eventually arrived at the conclusion that his greatly ambitious goals required a harmonious team dynamic. As part of Page's collaborative rejuvenation process, Google's products and applications were consolidated and underwent an aesthetic overhaul.[48][53]
Changes and consolidation process Edit
At least 70 of Google's products, features and services were eventually shut down by March 2013, while the appearance and nature of the remaining ones were unified.[54][55] Jon Wiley, lead designer of Google Search at the time, codenamed Page's redesign overhaul, which officially commenced on April 4, 2011, "Project Kennedy", based on Page's use of the term "moonshots" to describe ambitious projects in a January 2013 Wired interview.[53][56] An initiative named "Kanna" previously attempted to create a uniform design aesthetic for Google's range of products, but it was too difficult at that point in the company's history for one team to drive such change. Matias Duarte, senior director of the Android user experience when "Kennedy" started, explained in 2013 that "Google passionately cares about design." Page proceeded to consult with the Google Creative Lab design team, based in New York City, to find an answer to his question of what a "cohesive vision" of Google might look like.[53]
The eventual results of "Kennedy" which were progressively rolled out from June 2011 until January 2013, were described by The Verge technology publication as focused upon "refinement, white space, cleanliness, elasticity, usefulness, and most of all simplicity." The final products were aligned with Page's aim for a consistent suite of products that can "move fast", and "Kennedy" was called a "design revolution" by Duarte. Page's "UXA" (user/graphics interface) design team then emerged from the "Kennedy" project, tasked with "designing and developing a true UI framework that transforms Google's application software into a beautiful, mature, accessible and consistent platform for its users." Unspoken of in public, the small UXA unit was designed to ensure that "Kennedy" became an "institution."[53]
Acquisition strategy and new products Edit
When acquiring products and companies for Google, Page asked whether the business acquisition passed the toothbrush test as an initial qualifier, asking the question "Is it something you will use once or twice a day, and does it make your life better?". This approach looked for usefulness above profitability, and long-term potential over near-term financial gain, which has been noted as rare in business acquiring processes.[57][58][59]
With Facebook's influence rapidly expanding during the start of Page's second tenure, he finally responded to the intensive competition with Google's own social network, Google+, in mid-2011. After several delays, the social network was released through a very limited field test and was led by Vic Gundotra, Google's then senior vice president of social.[60]
In August 2011, Page announced that Google would spend $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility.[61] The purchase was primarily motivated by Google's need to secure patents to protect Android from lawsuits by companies including Apple Inc.[8] Page wrote on Google's official blog on August 15, 2011 that "companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android. The United States Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to 'protect competition and innovation in the open source software community' ... Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google's patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies".[62][63] In 2014, Page sold Motorola Mobility for $2.9 billion to Personal Computer maker, Lenovo which represented a loss in value of $9.5 billion over two years.[64]
Page also ventured into hardware and Google unveiled the Chromebook in May 2012. The hardware product was a laptop that ran on a Google operating system, Chrome OS.[65]
2013–2015 Edit
In January 2013, Page participated in a rare interview with Wired, in which writer Steven Levy discussed Page's "10X" mentality—Google employees are expected to create products and services that are at least 10 times better than those of its competitors—in the introductory blurb. Astro Teller, the head of Google X, explained to Levy that 10X is "just core to who he [Page] is", while Page's "focus is on where the next 10X will come from."[56] In his interview with Levy, Page referred to the success of YouTube and Android as examples of "crazy" ideas that investors were not initially interested in, saying: "If you're not doing some things that are crazy, then you're doing the wrong things."[56] Page also stated he was "very happy" with the status of Google+, and discussed concerns over the Internet in relation to the SOPA bill and an International Telecommunication Union proposal that had been recently introduced:
... I do think the Internet's under much greater attack than it has been in the past. Governments are now afraid of the Internet because of the Middle East stuff, and so they're a little more willing to listen to what I see as a lot of commercial interests that just want to make money by restricting people's freedoms. But they've also seen a tremendous user reaction, like the backlash against SOPA. I think that governments fight users' freedoms at their own peril.[56]
At the May 2013 I/O developers conference in San Francisco, Page delivered a keynote address and said "We're at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we're still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity ... Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That's boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don't exist" and that he was "sad the Web isn't advancing as fast as it should be", citing a perceived focus on negativity and zero-sum games among some in the technology sector as a cause.[66] In response to an audience question, Page noted an issue that Google had been experiencing with Microsoft, whereby the latter made its Outlook program interoperable with Google but did not allow for backward compatibility—he referred to Microsoft's practice as "milking off". During the question-and-answer section of his keynote, Page expressed interest in Burning Man, which Brin had previously praised—it was a motivating factor for the latter during Schmidt's hiring process, as Brin liked that Schmidt had attended the week-long annual event.[8][67][68]
In September 2013, Page launched the independent Calico initiative, a R&D project in the field of biotechnology. Google announced that Calico seeks to innovate and make improvements in the field of human health, and appointed Art Levinson, chairman of Apple's board and former CEO of Genentech, to be the new division's CEO. Page's official statement read: "Illness and aging affect all our families. With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives."[69]
Page participated in a March 2014 TedX conference that was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The presentation was scripted by Page's chief PR executive Rachel Whetstone, and Google's CMO Lorraine Twohill, and a demonstration of an artificially intelligent computer program was displayed on a large screen.[8]
Page responded to a question about corporations, noting that corporations largely get a "bad rap", which he stated was because they were probably doing the same incremental things they were doing "50 or 20 years ago". He went on to juxtapose that kind of incremental approach to his vision of Google counteracting calcification through driving technology innovation at a high rate. Page mentioned Elon Musk and SpaceX:
He [Musk] wants to go to Mars to back up humanity. That's a worthy goal. We have a lot of employees at Google who've become pretty wealthy. You're working because you want to change the world and make it better ... I'd like for us to help out more than we are.[70]
Page also mentioned Nikola Tesla with regard to invention and commercialization:
Invention is not enough. [Nikola] Tesla invented the electric power we use, but he struggled to get it out to people. [You have to] combine both things ... invention and innovation focus, plus ... a company that can really commercialize things and get them to people.[71]
Page announced a major management restructure in October 2014 so that he would no longer need to be responsible for day-to-day product-related decision making. In a memo, Page said that Google's core businesses would be able to progress in a typical manner, while he could focus on the next generation of ambitious projects, including Google X initiatives; access and energy, including Google Fiber; smart-home automation through Nest Labs; and biotechnology innovations under Calico.[72] Page maintained that he would continue as the unofficial "chief product officer".[55] Subsequent to the announcement, the executives in charge of Google's core products reported to then Google Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai, who reported directly to Page.[72][73][74][75]
In a November 2014 interview, Page stated that he prioritized the maintenance of his "deep knowledge" of Google's products and breadth of projects, as it had been a key motivating factor for team members. In relation to his then role as the company's CEO, Page said: "I think my job as CEO—I feel like it's always to be pushing people ahead."[55]
On August 10, 2015, Page announced on Google's official blog that Google had restructured into a number of subsidiaries of a new holding company known as Alphabet Inc with Page becoming CEO of Alphabet Inc and Sundar Pichai assuming the position of CEO of Google Inc. In his announcement, Page described the planned holding company as follows:[76]
Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead. ... Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren't very related.
As well as explaining the origin of the company's name:
We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity's most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search! We also like that it means alpha‑bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for!
Page wrote that the motivation behind the reorganization is to make Google "cleaner and more accountable." He also wrote that there was a desire to improve "the transparency and oversight of what we're doing" and to allow greater control of unrelated companies previously within the Google ecosystem.[76][77][78]
Page has not been on any press conferences since 2015 and has not presented at product launches or earnings calls since 2013. The Bloomberg Businessweek termed the reorganization into Alphabet as a clever retirement plan allowing Page to retain control over Google, at the same time relinquishing all responsibilities over it. Executives at Alphabet describe Page as a "futurist" , highly detached from day-to-day business dealings and more focused on moon-shot projects. While some managers of Alphabet companies speak of Page as intensely involved, others say that his rare office check-ins are "akin to a royal visit" .[79]
2019 Edit
On December 3, 2019, Larry Page announced that he will step down from the position of Alphabet CEO and would be replaced by Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Pichai will also continue as Google CEO. Page and Google co-founder and Alphabet president Sergey Brin announced the change in a joint blog post, "With Alphabet now well-established, and Google and the Other Bets operating effectively as independent companies, it’s the natural time to simplify our management structure. We’ve never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there’s a better way to run the company. And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President."[80]
Other interests
Personal life
Awards and accolades Edit
1998–2009 Edit
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.[116]
In 2002, Page was named a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow[citation needed] and along with Brin, was named by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Technology Review publication as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35, as part of its yearly TR100 listing (changed to "TR35" after 2005).[117]
In 2003, both Page and Brin received an MBA from IE Business School, in an honorary capacity, "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses."[118]
In 2004, they received the Marconi Foundation's 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."[119]
In 2004, Page and Brin received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[120]
Page and Brin were also Award Recipients and National Finalists for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2003.[121]
Also in 2004, X PRIZE chose Page as a trustee of their board[122] and he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.[citation needed]
In 2005, Brin and Page were elected Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[123]
In 2008 Page received the Communication Award from Prince Felipe at the Prince of Asturias Awards on behalf of Google.[124]
2009–present Edit
In 2009, Page received an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan during a graduation commencement ceremony.[125] In 2011, he was ranked 24th on the Forbes list of billionaires, and as the 11th richest person in the U.S.[1]
In 2015, Page's "Powerful People" profile on the Forbes site states that Google is "the most influential company of the digital era".[126]
As of July 2014, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists Page as the 17th richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $32.7 billion.[127]
At the completion of 2014, Fortune magazine named Page its "Businessperson of the Year", declaring him "the world's most daring CEO".[128]
In October 2015, Page was named number one on the Forbes "America's Most Popular Chief Executives" list, as voted by Google's employees.[129]
In August 2017, Page was awarded honorary citizenship of Agrigento, Italy.[130
