Sergey Brin
Co-founder of Google
Quick Facts
- Born
- 1973, Moscow, Russia
- Company
- Google founded
- 1998
- Industry
- Technology
- Known for
- Co-founding Google
- Born
- 1973 in Moscow, Soviet Union
- Met Larry Page
- At Stanford University
- Started Alphabet
- 2015, Google's parent company
Early Life in Moscow
Sergey Brin was born in 1973 in Moscow, in what was then called the Soviet Union. His parents were both good at math, and so was he. Numbers and puzzles came easily to him from a young age.
Life in the Soviet Union was hard for Sergey's family. Jewish people there were treated unfairly, and his parents worried about the future their son would have. So when Sergey was six, the family gathered their things and moved all the way to the United States to start over.
Coming to America
Growing up in America, Sergey kept loving math, just like his mom and dad. He was the kind of kid who liked figuring out how things worked and why. That curiosity stuck with him.
He was a strong student, and he eventually made his way to Stanford University in California to study computer science. Stanford turned out to be the place where everything changed for him.
Building Google With Larry Page
At Stanford, Sergey met another student named Larry Page. The two of them didn't agree on much at first, but they couldn't stop talking. They started working together on a big question: how do you find the best pages on the whole internet?
Their answer was clever. Instead of just counting how often a word showed up on a page, they ranked pages by how many other pages linked to them. A page that lots of others pointed to was probably a good one. That idea made their search far better than anything else out there.
In 1998 they turned it into a company called Google. The name comes from "googol," a math word for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, which hinted at how much information they wanted to sort through. Google grew fast, and before long it became one of the most-used websites in the world.
What Sergey Teaches Us
In 2015, Sergey and Larry built a new parent company called Alphabet to hold Google and their other projects. It let them work on big ideas beyond search, from self-driving cars to medicine.
Sergey's story started with a family leaving everything behind for a fairer life, and a kid who loved math. He paired up with someone who challenged him, asked a question nobody had answered well, and kept at it. That mix of curiosity and a good partner built something the whole world uses every day.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who founded Google?
Google was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998. The two met while they were students at Stanford University and built a new kind of web search together.
Who is Sergey Brin?
Sergey Brin is a computer scientist and businessman who co-founded Google with Larry Page. He was born in Moscow in 1973 and moved to the United States as a child. He helped create the search engine that became one of the most-used websites in the world.
Where was Sergey Brin born?
Sergey Brin was born in 1973 in Moscow, in what was then the Soviet Union. His family moved to the United States when he was six years old to escape unfair treatment of Jewish people.
How did Sergey Brin and Larry Page meet?
Sergey and Larry met at Stanford University, where they were both graduate students. They didn't agree on much at first, but they started working together on a project to make searching the web better, and that project turned into Google.
Why is Google called Google?
The name Google comes from "googol," a math term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Sergey and Larry picked it to hint at the huge amount of information they wanted their search engine to organize.
Is Sergey Brin a billionaire?
Yes. Because Google grew into one of the biggest companies in the world, Sergey Brin became one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Most of his fortune comes from his ownership in Alphabet, Google's parent company.
When was Google founded?
Google was founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. It started from research they had been doing as students at Stanford University.
What is Alphabet?
Alphabet is the parent company that Sergey Brin and Larry Page created in 2015. It owns Google along with their other projects, which lets the company work on big ideas beyond web search.
How did Google start?
Google started as a research project at Stanford, where Sergey and Larry built a better way to search the web by ranking pages on how many other pages linked to them. They turned that idea into a company in 1998.
What did Sergey Brin invent?
Along with Larry Page, Sergey Brin helped create the search method behind Google, which ranks web pages by how many other pages link to them. That idea made web search far more useful and became the heart of Google.
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