Sergey Mikhailovich Brin(Russian:Сергей Михайлович Брин;born August 21, 1973) is an American computer scientist and businessman who co-foundedGooglewithLarry 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 November 2024, Brin is the7th-richest person in the world,with an estimated net worth of $153 billion, according to theBloomberg Billionaires IndexandForbes.[2][3]
Sergey Brin | |
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Сергей Брин | |
Born | Moscow, Soviet Union | August 21, 1973
Nationality | American |
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Children | 3 |
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Brin immigrated to the United States from theSoviet Unionat the age of six. He earned his bachelor's degree at theUniversity of Maryland, College Park,following in his father's and grandfather's[4][5]footsteps by studying mathematics as well as computer science. After graduation, in September 1993, he enrolled inStanford Universityto acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met Page, with whom he built aweb search engine.The program became popular at Stanford, and he discontinued his PhD studies to start up Google inSusan Wojcicki's garage inMenlo Park.[6]
Early life and education
editSergey Mikhailovich Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow in theSoviet Union,[7]toRussian Jewishparents,[8]Mikhail and Eugenia Brin, both graduates ofMoscow State University(MSU).[9]His father is a retired mathematics professor at theUniversity of Maryland,and his mother is a researcher atNASA'sGoddard Space Flight Center.[10][11]
The Brin family lived in a three-room apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey's paternal grandmother.[10]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.[10]They formally applied for theirexit visain 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 manyrefuseniks.In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.[10]
The Brin family lived in Vienna and Paris while Mikhail Brin secured a teaching position at the University of Maryland with help fromAnatole Katok.During this time, the Brin family received support and assistance from theHebrew Immigrant Aid Society.They arrived in the United States on October 25, 1979.[10][12]
Brin attended elementary school at Paint BranchMontessori SchoolinAdelphi, 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 attendedEleanor 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.[13]In 1993, he interned atWolfram Research,the developers ofMathematica.[13]
Brin began his graduate study in computer science atStanford Universityon agraduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation,receiving an M.S. in computer science in 1995.[14]As of 2008[update],he was on leave from his PhD studies at Stanford.[15]
Search engine development
editDuring an orientation for new students at Stanford, he metLarry 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 itscitationsin other papers ".[16]Together, they authored a paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-ScaleHypertextualWeb Search Engine ".[17]
To convert the backlink data gathered by BackRub'sweb crawlerinto a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed thePageRank algorithm,and realized that it could be used to build asearch enginefar superior to those existing at the time.[18]The new algorithm relied on a new kind of technology that analyzed the relevance of thebacklinksthat connected one Web page to another, and allowed the number of links and their rank, to determine the rank of the page.[19]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.[18]
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.[20]
Page and Brin used the former's basicHTMLprogramming 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 additionalserversto process the queries. In August 1996, the initial version of Google was made available on the Stanford Web site.[18]
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 runningLinux.The primary database is kept on aSun Ultra seriesII 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 Pagepagecs.stanford.edu[21]
- BackRub is written in Java and Python and runs on several Sun Ultras and Intel Pentiums runningLinux.The primary database is kept on aSun Ultra seriesII 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.
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."[22]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."[20]
Some compared Page and Brin's vision to the impact ofJohannes Gutenberg,the inventor of modern printing:
In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg introduced Europe to the mechanical printing press, printing Bibles for mass consumption. The technology allowed for books and manuscripts—originally replicated by hand—to be printed at a much faster rate, thus spreading knowledge and helping to usher in the European Renaissance... Google has done a similar job.[23]
The comparison was also noted by the authors ofThe Google Story:"Not since Gutenberg... has any new invention empowered individuals, and transformed access to information, as profoundly as Google. "[24]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.[20]
Other interests
editIn June 2008, Brin invested $4.5 million inSpace Adventures,aVirginia-basedspace tourismcompany.[25]
Brin and Page jointly own a customizedBoeing 767–200and aDassault/Dornier Alpha Jet,[26]and pay $1.3 million a year to house them and twoGulfstream Vjets owned by Google executives atMoffett Federal Airfield.The aircraft has scientific equipment installed byNASAto allow experimental data to be collected in flight.[27][28]
Brin is a backer of LTA Research & Exploration LLC, anairshipmaker company.[29]In October 2023, LTA's 124-meter long flagship, Pathfinder 1, became the largest airship since theHindenburgto receive clearance for flight testing, permitted over the boundaries ofMoffett Fieldand neighboringPalo Alto Airport’s airspaces, at a height of up to 460 meters.[30]
Personal life
editBrin was raised Jewish,[failed verification]but is not religious.[31]
In May 2007, Brin marriedbiotech analystand entrepreneurAnne Wojcickiinthe Bahamas.[32][33]They had a son in late 2008 and a daughter in late 2011.[34]In August 2013, it was announced that Brin and his wife were living separately after Brin had an extramarital affair with aGoogle Glasscolleague.[35][36][37]In June 2015, Brin and Wojcicki finalized their divorce.[38]
On November 7, 2018, he marriedNicole Shanahan,alegal techfounder.[39]They have a daughter, born in late 2018.[40]Brin and Shanahan separated on December 15, 2021, and Brin filed for divorce on January 4, 2022.[39]In summer 2023, the divorce was finalized.[41]
Brin's mother, Eugenia, has been diagnosed withParkinson's disease.In 2008, he decided to make a donation to theUniversity of Maryland School of Medicine,where his mother has received treatment.[42]According toForbes,Brin has donated over $1 billion to fund research on the disease.[43]
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.[44]They donated extensively toThe Michael J. Fox Foundationand in 2009 gave $1 million to support theHebrew Immigrant Aid Society.[12]
Brin is a donor toDemocratic Partycandidates and organizations, having donated $5,000 toBarack Obama'sreelection campaignand $30,800 to theDNC.[45]
Awards and accolades
edit2002–2009
edit- In 2002, Brin, along with Larry Page, was named in theMIT Technology ReviewTR100,as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[46]
- In 2003, both Brin and Page received anhonoraryMBA fromIE Business School"for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...".[47]
- In 2003, Brin and Page were both Award Recipients and National Finalists for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award.[48]
- In 2004, they received theMarconi Prize,and were elected Fellows of theMarconi Foundation.The two men were "cited for the invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today."[49][50]
- In 2004, Brin received theAmerican Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award with Larry Page at a ceremony in Chicago, Illinois.[51]
- In 2006, Brin was one of the inaugural class of winners of theGreat Immigrants Awardnamed byCarnegie Corporation of New York.[52]
2009–present
edit- In November 2009,Forbesnamed Brin and Page the fifth most powerful people in the world.[53]
- Earlier that same year, in February, Brin was inducted into theNational Academy of Engineering,which is "among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer... [and] honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice...". He was selected specifically, "for leadership in development of rapid inde xing and retrieval of relevant information from the World Wide Web".[54]
- In their "Profiles" of Fellows, theNational Science Foundationincluded a number of earlier awards:
he was a featured speaker at theWorld Economic Forumand the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference....PC Magazinehas praised Google in 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 aWebby 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.[55]
- As of September 2024, Brin is the tenth-richest person in the world according to Bloomberg, with an estimated net worth of $135 billion.[56]
Appearances in film
editYear | Title | Role |
---|---|---|
2013 | The Internship | Himself (cameo) |
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- ^"Michael Brin's page".University of Maryland, Department of Mathematics.RetrievedNovember 18,2024.
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