Wikipedia

Sergey Brin

This is thelatest accepted revision,reviewedon1 November 2024.

In this name that followsEastern Slavic naming customs,thepatronymicisMikhailovichand thefamily nameisBrin.

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 October 2024, Brin is the7th-richest person in the world,with an estimated net worth of $147 billion, according to theBloomberg Billionaires IndexandForbes.[2][3]

Sergey Brin
Сергей Брин
Brin in 2010
Born(1973-08-21)August 21, 1973(age 51)
Moscow, Soviet Union
NationalityAmerican
Education

(Unfinished PhD)

Occupations
Organizations
Known for
Spouses
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(m.2007;div.2015)​
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(m.2018;div.2023)​
Children3
Signature

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[citation needed]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 they discontinued their PhD studies to start up Google inSusan Wojcicki's garage inMenlo Park.[4]

Early life and education

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Sergey Mikhailovich Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow in theSoviet Union,[5]toRussian Jewishparents,[6]Mikhail and Eugenia Brin, both graduates ofMoscow State University(MSU).[7]His father is a retired mathematics professor at theUniversity of Maryland,and his mother is a researcher atNASA'sGoddard Space Flight Center.[8][9]

The Brin family lived in a three-room apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey's paternal grandmother.[8]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.[8]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.[8]

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.[8][10]

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.[11]In 1993, he interned atWolfram Research,the developers ofMathematica.[11]

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.[12]As of 2008,he was on leave from his PhD studies at Stanford.[13]


Search engine development

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Left to right,Eric Schmidt,Sergey Brin andLarry Page,2008

During 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 ".[14]Together, they authored a paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-ScaleHypertextualWeb Search Engine ".[15]

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.[16]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.[17]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.[16]

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.[18]

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.[16]

By early 1997, the BackRub page described the state as follows:

The mathematical website interlinking that thePageRankalgorithm facilitates, illustrated by size-percentage correlation of the circles. Thealgorithmwas named after Page himself.
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[19]

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."[20]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."[18]

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.[21]

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. "[22]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.[18]

Other interests

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Brin at theUniversity of California, Berkeleyin October 2005

In June 2008, Brin invested $4.5 million inSpace Adventures,aVirginia-basedspace tourismcompany.[23]

Brin and Page jointly own a customizedBoeing 767–200and aDassault/Dornier Alpha Jet,[24]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.[25][26]

Brin is a backer of LTA Research & Exploration LLC, anairshipmaker company.[27]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.[28]

Personal life

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Brin in 2005 at theWeb 2.0Conference

Brin was raised Jewish,[failed verification]but is not religious.[29]

In May 2007, Brin marriedbiotech analystand entrepreneurAnne Wojcickiinthe Bahamas.[30][31]They had a son in late 2008 and a daughter in late 2011.[32]In August 2013, it was announced that Brin and his wife were living separately after Brin had an extramarital affair with aGoogle Glasscolleague.[33][34][35]In June 2015, Brin and Wojcicki finalized their divorce.[36]

On November 7, 2018, he marriedNicole Shanahan,alegal techfounder.[37]They have a daughter, born in late 2018.[38]Brin and Shanahan separated on December 15, 2021, and Brin filed for divorce on January 4, 2022.[37]In summer 2023, the divorce was finalized.[39]

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.[40]According toForbes,Brin has donated over $1 billion to fund research on the disease.[41]

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.[42]They donated extensively toThe Michael J. Fox Foundationand in 2009 gave $1 million to support theHebrew Immigrant Aid Society.[10]

Brin is a donor toDemocratic Partycandidates and organizations, having donated $5,000 toBarack Obama'sreelection campaignand $30,800 to theDNC.[43]

Awards and accolades

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2002–2009

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2009–present

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  • In November 2009,Forbesnamed Brin and Page the fifth most powerful people in the world.[51]
  • 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".[52]
  • 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.[53]

  • As of September 2024, Brin is the tenth-richest person in the world according to Bloomberg, with an estimated net worth of $135 billion.[54]

Appearances in film

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Year Title Role
2013 The Internship Himself (cameo)

References

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  1. ^"Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepping down as CEO and president".ABC News.Archivedfrom the original on December 4, 2019.RetrievedApril 14,2020.
  2. ^"Bloomberg Billionaires Index: Sergey Brin".Bloomberg.Archivedfrom the original on May 13, 2022.RetrievedOctober 31,2024.
  3. ^"Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires List: Sergey Brin".Forbes.RetrievedOctober 31,2024.
  4. ^"Larry Page and Sergey Brin paid $1,700 a month to rent the garage where Google was born".Business Insider.Archivedfrom the original on October 18, 2018.RetrievedOctober 17,2018.
  5. ^Jimison, Robert (July 31, 2019)."Nine immigrants who helped make America great".CNN.Archivedfrom the original on August 18, 2019.RetrievedAugust 18,2019.
  6. ^"Sergey Brin".Archivedfrom the original on March 21, 2019.RetrievedFebruary 20,2020.
  7. ^Rolnik, Guy (May 22, 2008)."'I've Been Very Lucky in My Life'".Haaretz.Archivedfrom the original on November 12, 2019.RetrievedMarch 10,2020.
  8. ^abcdeMalseed, Mark (February 2007)."The Story of Sergey Brin".Moment Magazine.Archived fromthe originalon January 21, 2013.
  9. ^Smale, Will (April 30, 2004).Profile: The Google foundersArchivedDecember 10, 2017, at theWayback Machine,BBC News. Retrieved January 7, 2010.
  10. ^abStrom, Stephanie (October 24, 2009)."Billionaire Aids Charity That Aided Him".The New York Times.Archivedfrom the original on October 31, 2018.RetrievedOctober 31,2018.
  11. ^abBrin, Sergey (January 7, 1997)."Resume".Archivedfrom the original on March 22, 2008.RetrievedMarch 9,2008.
  12. ^Henderson, Harry (2009).Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology(Revised ed.). Facts On File. p. 57.ISBN978-0-8160-6382-6.
  13. ^"Sergey Brin: Executive Profile & Biography".Business Week.Archived fromthe originalon March 8, 2009.RetrievedMarch 9,2008.He is currently on leave from the PhD program in computer science at Stanford university...
  14. ^"Enlightenment Man".The Economist.December 6, 2008.Archivedfrom the original on February 3, 2009.RetrievedFebruary 20,2020.
  15. ^Brin, S.;Page, L.(1998)."The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine"(PDF).Computer Networks and ISDN Systems.30(1–7): 107–17.CiteSeerX10.1.1.115.5930.doi:10.1016/S0169-7552(98)00110-X.ISSN0169-7552.S2CID7587743.Archived(PDF)from the original on September 27, 2015.RetrievedAugust 28,2015.
  16. ^abcJohn Battelle (August 13, 2005)."The Birth of Google".Wired.Archivedfrom the original on November 7, 2012.RetrievedFebruary 12,2018.
  17. ^Moschovitis Group.The Internet: A Historical Encyclopedia,ABC-CLIO, 2005.
  18. ^abc"Enlightenment man".The Economist.December 4, 2008.Archivedfrom the original on April 4, 2018.RetrievedFebruary 2,2015.
  19. ^Downloaded 11 – February 2009.Backrub.c63.be. Retrieved May 29, 2011.ArchivedJune 13, 2013, at theWayback Machine
  20. ^"Wired 13.08: The Birth of Google".wired.August 2005.Archivedfrom the original on July 9, 2015.RetrievedFebruary 13,2015.
  21. ^"Google the Gutenberg"ArchivedJanuary 19, 2015, at theWayback Machine.Information Technology.October 1, 2009
  22. ^Vise, David,andMalseed, Mark.The Google Story,Delta Publ. (2006)
  23. ^Schwartz, John (June 11, 2008)."Google Co-Founder Books a Space Flight".The New York Times.Archivedfrom the original on April 25, 2013.RetrievedJune 11,2008.
  24. ^Helft, Miguel (October 23, 2008)."Dornier Alpha Jet for Google's Founders".The New York Times.Archivedfrom the original on October 4, 2012.RetrievedSeptember 29,2012.
  25. ^Helft, Miguel (September 13, 2007)."Google Founders' Ultimate Perk: A NASA Runway".The New York Times.Archivedfrom the original on April 25, 2009.RetrievedSeptember 13,2007.
  26. ^Kopytoff, Verne (September 13, 2007)."Google founders pay NASA $1.3 million to land at Moffett Airfield".San Francisco Chronicle.Archivedfrom the original on May 16, 2012.RetrievedSeptember 13,2007.
  27. ^"Sergey Brin Has a Secret Plan to Put Airships Back in the Skies".Bloomberg.May 25, 2023.Archivedfrom the original on May 29, 2023.RetrievedMay 29,2023.
  28. ^Harris, Mark."EXCLUSIVE: Google Founder's Airship Gets FAA Clearance - IEEE Spectrum".IEEE.
  29. ^Bloom, Nate (September 10, 2013)."Jews in the News: Diane Von Furstenburg, Michael Kors and Barbara Hershey".Tampa Jewish Federation.Archivedfrom the original on November 5, 2019.RetrievedNovember 5,2019.Brin's Jewish parents left the former Soviet Union in 1979, tired of the anti-Semitism which had impeded their respective academic careers and despairing of the prospects for their son. Brin wed biologist Wojcicki in 2007 and the couple now have two children. Neither Brin nor Wojcicki (whose mother is Jewish) are religious, but they did have some Jewish touches at their secular wedding: a chuppah-- and Brin stepped on a glass
  30. ^Argetsinger, Amy; Roberts, Roxanne (May 13, 2007)."Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts – Oprah Winfrey's Degrees of Communication at Howard".The Washington Post.Archivedfrom the original on August 21, 2011.RetrievedOctober 20,2007.
  31. ^"Anne Wojcicki Marries the Richest Bachelor".Cosmetic Makovers. Archived fromthe originalon October 28, 2007.RetrievedOctober 20,2007.
  32. ^"The Way I Work: Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe".Inc.May 29, 2012.Archivedfrom the original on March 1, 2013.RetrievedMarch 16,2013.
  33. ^Liz Gannes,"Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin and 23andMe Co-Founder Anne Wojcicki Have Split"ArchivedAugust 28, 2013, at theWayback Machine,All Things Digital, August 28, 2013
  34. ^Alan Farnham, "Google: Men Apparently Do Make Passes At Girls Who Wear Glasses"ArchivedMarch 27, 2019, at theWayback Machine,ABC News, September 3, 2013.
  35. ^Grigoriadis, Vanessa (March 12, 2014)."Sergey Brin and Amanda Rosenberg: Inside the Google Co-Founder's Romance with the Google Glass Marketing Manager".Vanity Fair.Archivedfrom the original on October 26, 2018.RetrievedApril 24,2018.
  36. ^Grigoriadis, Vanessa."Sergey Brin and Amanda Rosenberg: Inside the Google Co-Founder's Romance with the Google Glass Marketing Manager".Vanity Fair.Archivedfrom the original on October 26, 2018.RetrievedAugust 10,2018.
  37. ^abPrice, Rob; Langley, Hugh (June 17, 2022)."Court filings reveal details of Google cofounder Sergey Brin's divorce from his wife, attorney Nicole Shanahan".Insider.Archivedfrom the original on June 17, 2022.RetrievedJune 17,2022.
  38. ^Leskin, Paige (October 3, 2019)."Google's Sergey Brin has been married to the founder of a legal tech startup since 2018".Business Insider.Archivedfrom the original on December 23, 2019.RetrievedApril 10,2020.
  39. ^Davis O’Brien, Rebecca (February 12, 2024)."Meet the Woman Who Helped Pay for That R.F.K. Super Bowl Ad".The New York Times.RetrievedFebruary 18,2023.
  40. ^Helft, Miguel (September 19, 2008)."Google Co-Founder Has Genetic Code Linked to Parkinson's".The New York Times.Archivedfrom the original on December 13, 2017.RetrievedSeptember 18,2008.
  41. ^Dolan, Kerry A. (December 9, 2022)."Google Cofounder Sergey Brin Has Quietly Donated More Than $1 Billion Toward Parkinson's Disease".Forbes.Archivedfrom the original on December 9, 2022.
  42. ^Maria, Di Mento (February 13, 2023)."The Philanthropy 50".Chronicle of Philanthropy.RetrievedFebruary 26,2024.
  43. ^"OpenSecrets".Open Secrets.Archivedfrom the original on March 27, 2019.RetrievedMarch 11,2019.
  44. ^"2002 Young Innovators Under 35: Sergey Brin, 28".Technology Review.2002.Archivedfrom the original on September 3, 2011.RetrievedAugust 14,2011.
  45. ^Brin and Page Awarded MBAsArchivedFebruary 26, 2009, at theWayback Machine,Press Release, September 9, 2003
  46. ^"15 Local Business Leaders Receive Awards for Their Success in Business and the Community." 15 Local Business Leaders Receive Awards for Their Success in Business... PR NewsWire, June 23, 2003. Web. April 10, 2015.[1]ArchivedApril 14, 2015, at theWayback Machine
  47. ^"Sergei Brin, 2004".The Marconi Society.The Marconi Society.RetrievedOctober 5,2024.
  48. ^"Lawrence Page, 2004".The Marconi Society.The Marconi Society.RetrievedOctober 5,2024.
  49. ^"Sergey Brin Biography and Interview".achievement.org.American Academy of Achievement.Archivedfrom the original on February 5, 2019.RetrievedApril 1,2019.
  50. ^"Great Immigrants, Great Americans".Carnegie Corporation of New York.RetrievedFebruary 21,2024.
  51. ^"The World's Most Powerful People: #5 Sergey Brin and Larry Page"ArchivedJuly 29, 2017, at theWayback MachineForbes,November 11, 2009
  52. ^National Academy of EngineeringArchivedMarch 12, 2011, at theWayback Machine,Press Release, February 6, 2009
  53. ^National Science FoundationArchivedMay 13, 2011, at theWayback Machine,Fellow Profiles
  54. ^"Bloomberg Billionaires Index".Bloomberg.September 4, 2024.RetrievedSeptember 4,2024.
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