Achievements
Being refused by big search engines that were not interested in offering their users a better search technology, Sergey Brin co-founded a high-profitable business based on knowledge and principles: “Don't be evil” and “Be good”. The company’s capitalization in the end of 2006 was estimated to be $14.1 billion, making Sergey Brin the 26th richest person in the world and 12th richest person in the USA. Together with Google’s co-founder Larry Page, Sergey was honored with the Marconi Prize in 2004.
Career Highlights
Sergey Brin was born 1973 in Russia to a Jewish mathematician and economist. In 1979 Brin his family moved to America. Sergey expressed interest in the Internet very early on in his studies at Stanford. The defining moment for him, however, was when he met future co-president of Google, Larry Page. Together, the pair authored a paper entitled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine." The paper has since gone on to become the tenth most accessed scientific paper at Stanford University.
As a research project at Stanford University, Brin and Page created a search engine that listed results according to the popularity of the pages, after concluding that the most popular result would often be the most useful. They called the search engine Google after the mathematical term "Googol," which is a 1 followed by 100 zeros, to reflect their mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the Web.
When Sergey Brin and Larry Page created their new search technology they didn’t succeed in their afforts to find potential partners who might want to license it. Finally Brin and Page decided to grow the company themselves. After raising $1 million from family, friends and other investors, the pair launched Google Inc. in 1998.
Google has since become the world’s most popular search engine, receiving more than 200 million queries each day. Headquartered in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, Google held its initial public offering in August 2004, making Brin and Page billionaires. But Sergey is famous (as well as Larry) as “wrong billionaire” and prefers unpretentious style of life centered on his work. In 2005 and 2006 the Google Guys worked for $1 per year salaries.
Leadership Experience
Most major companies has a detailed code of corporate conduct which can be estimated at dozens of pages. Google's code of conduct can be boiled down to a mere three words: Don't be evil. "Evil," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt, "is what Sergey says is evil." Brin, in his role as Google's conscience and head policymaker, spends his days gripping the moral tiller - and in so doing, imposes his worldview on everyone else. Brin also says that it is not enough not to be evil. The company is also trying to be good.
“For example, we don’t accept ads for hard liquor, but we accept ads for wine,” says Brin. “It’s just a personal preference. We don’t allow gun ads, and the gun lobby got upset about that. We don’t try to put our sense of ethics into the search results, but we do when it comes to advertising. Our ads are more discreet and off to the side. Yes, the ads are related to what you are looking at, but that can make them more useful. It’s automated. No one is looking, so I don’t think it’s a privacy issue. We need to be protective of the mail and of people’s privacy”.
But Google succeeded not only doing good by users but also doing good by employees. The company has its own practice in retaining the best and the brightest talents. In 2007 Fortune named Google the best place to work and even key knowledge workers like Kai-Fu Lee from Microsoft jump at the possibility to work in this company. Ask one what he or she is doing, and it's never "selling ads" or "writing code." No, they're on a quest "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." That's from the actual mission statement, by the way, which employees can and do cite with cloying frequency. Googlers can play beach volleyball on campus. Other fun activities at Google include Foosball, videogames, pool tables, ping pong and roller hockey twice a week in the parking lot. At the Googleplex, it looks as though every day’s a party. Google’s founders say that they tried to use elements from different companies, but a lot is “seat-of-your-pants stuff”.
Background Links
The Google Story, David A. Wise
Google Corporate Information, Google.com
Sergey Brin Biography, Biography.com
