Larry Page-CEO of Google

1. Background:
- Larry Page was born as Lawrence Page on March 26, 1973, in East
Lansing, Michigan.
- His father, Carl Page, was a pioneer in computer science and artificial
intelligence, and his mother taught computer programming. His
childhood home was full of computers and science magazines, and
that increased his fascination for technology at an early age. He was
also interested in business and innovation, and by the age of 12 he
realized that he wanted to start a company.
- He graduated from East Lansing High School in 1991 and pursued a
bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the University of
Michigan. Later, he enrolled for his Master of Science in computer
science from Stanford University where he met Sergey Brin.
2. Career Progress:
- During his PhD at Stanford, he met fellow researcher Sergey Brin
while working on a research project in 1995. By 1996 they had built a
search engine called ‘BackRub’. It was operated on Stanford servers
for many months.
- Page and Brin decided to incorporate their project as a company. Sun
Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim played a major role in
financing the company as he wrote a check for $100,000 to the entity
that had not even come into existence as yet.
- In September 1998, the project, now renamed as ‘Google’, was
officially incorporated as a company. Eric Schmidt was appointed as
the CEO in 2001 while Page and Brin became the presidents of
products and technology, respectively.
- The year 2005 was quite productive for Google. Google Maps,
Blogger Mobile, Google Reader, and iGoogle were released that
year. The next year, Google acquired Youtube and introduced the
chat feature in Gmail.
- In 2008, Google launched Google Sites and a new version of Google
Earth.In 2010, Google acquired Aardvark and Picnik. The Google
Apps Marketplace was launched to enable customers to easily
manage cloud applications.
- In January 2011, Larry Page was made the CEO. Eric Schmidt, the
former CEO, continues to serve the company as Executive Chairman.
3. Achievements:
- In 2002, Page was named in the MIT Technology Review TR100 for
being among the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
- Page received the prestigious Marconi Foundation Prize (2004) which
is given to honour significant contributions in science and technology.
He was also elected Fellow of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia
University.
- In September 2013, Page was ranked No. 13 on the "Forbes 400" list
of the richest people in America. That October, he was ranked No. 17
on Forbes' 2013 "Most Powerful People" list.
4. Qualities:
- Planning:
In 2005, Larry Page told University of Michigan’s engineering
graduates to “talk about the future.” It isn’t the only time Page has
tackled that topic. He frequently champions the importance of
innovation. “Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do
they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future” Page
once said.
- Empower others:
Larry Page is not a leader who has missed the boat on the concept
of helping and empowering employees in order to help the
business. He words his feelings on this well “My job as a leader is
to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities,
and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are
contributing to the good of society. As a world, we’re doing a better
job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow that” .
- Persevere:
“Rome wasn’t built in a day” is what they say, and neither was
Google. According to one CNN article “It took Page some six years
to get staff to work on Google’s book digitization project. He came
up with the idea when he and Brin were students at Stanford, and
the first books were scanned in 2004.” It also took several years to
convince others to join his Google Maps . Moving forward he
acknowledges “The ultimate search engine would basically
understand everything in the world, and it would always give you
the right thing. And we’re a long, long ways from that” . However,
 despite the time it takes to achieve big goals, Page perseveres
because he wants to make a difference.
- Leading:
Larry Page has a democratic leading style causing him to value his
employee’s opinions. He encourages young employees to think of
crazy ideas because those ideas could involve into amazing things.
He motivates and values his employees by figuring out what would
be best for them and looking out for the health of his workers. He
believes if people are happier, they are going to be more
productive.

5. Fun facts:
- Larry was the first child in his elementary school to submit an
assignment in a word-processed form.
- Page made an inkjet printer using LEGO bricks when he was a
student at University of Michigan.
- He has a health condition that is slowly removing his ability to speak.
- Page and Brin did not get along well during their first meeting and
argued the entire time but eventually became friends.
6. Personal life:
Larry Page married Lucinda Southworth, a research scientist, in
2007. Their wedding was a lavish affair which took place on a
Caribbean island. They have one child.