larry-page

Who Is Larry Page?

Larry Page is an American entrepreneur, computer scientist, and business magnate who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998 and, to these days, is the main shareholder with Brin.

Page showed an early interest in computers and technology and went on to study computer engineering at the University of Michigan. After completing his undergraduate degree with honors, he then pursued a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University.

Page and the World Wide Web

At Stanford, Page selected human-computer interaction pioneer Terry Winograd as his advisor. He considered around 10 ideas for his dissertation but found himself attracted to the emergent World Wide Web. 

While many others were interested in the Web for its ability to make them rich, Page was more interested in its mathematical characteristics. With each computer a node and each link on a Web page a connector of nodes, Page theorized that the Web was the largest graph ever created and was growing at breakneck speed.

During his research, Page discovered that while it was trivial to follow links from one page to another, it was less trivial to follow the links back. That is, when he looked at a page, he had no idea what pages linked back to it. 

This bothered Page for some reason and he believed it would be useful information to know. He then launched a project called BackRub based on academic citations and their ability to build on previous knowledge, emphasize important information, and increase credibility.

Page teams up with Brin

Page first met Brin in the summer of 1995 while the latter was a second-year grad student. Larry believed Sergey to be arrogant, while Sergey thought Larry was obnoxious. But the two would later share a mutual love of backlinks and their arguments enabled them to bounce innovative ideas off each other.

Page had come up with the idea of weighted rankings, but he needed a math prodigy like Brin to help him crawl the Web and determine its link structure. Working in tandem, they created a system that rewarded links from important sources and penalized those that were not. Their breakthrough came with the development of PageRank, an algorithm that considered the number of links to a site and the number of links to each of those linking sites.

As they tinkered with the data, the pair realized their work may have implications for the way people search for information on the internet. In fact, Page later noted that their results were better than those produced by AltaVista and Excite: โ€œThey were only looking at text and not considering this other signalโ€, he once recalled.

Google is born

Realizing PageRank could scale as the internet grew in size, Page and Brin named the new engine Google after the term googol โ€“ or the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Google was incorporated as a company in 1998 with Page initially serving as CEO. 

He stepped down from CEO in 2001 and was replaced by Eric Schmidt, but Page nevertheless remained involved with Google’s product development and strategic direction. He also played a key role in Google Maps and Google Books.

When Google held an IPO in 2004, he became a billionaire at the age of 30.

Page returns as CEO

In April 2011, Page returned to the CEO role at Google and replaced Schmidt who became executive chairman of Google’s board. 

His return to the CEO role was marked by a renewed focus on innovation and a willingness to take risks on new products and technologies. Page also instituted CEO-like managers at the top of the company’s most important divisions such as Google Search, YouTube, and AdWords.

Early in his second tenure as CEO, Page responded to the popularity of Facebook with Googleโ€™s own social platform Google+. He also announced that Google would acquire Motorola Mobilities for $12.5 billion to secure Android-related patents and protect it from lawsuits instigated by companies such as Apple.

His โ€œ10xโ€ mentality also became a key part of Googleโ€™s culture of innovation.

Other interests

Page is an EV advocate who has invested in Tesla and other renewable energy technology via Google.org. He has also backed Opener, a startup and developer of aerial transportation services for consumers.

Page is also interested in the impact of AI and it can be used to create abundance in society. In other words, how it will shorten the workweek, provide for peopleโ€™s needs, and reduce the negative impact of technological unemployment.

Key takeaways:

  • Larry Page is an American entrepreneur, computer scientist, and business magnate who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998.
  • While others were interested in the Web for its ability to make them rich, Page was more interested in its mathematical characteristics. He researched the link structure of Web pages and devised a way to rank them by drawing inspiration from citations in academic journals.
  • Working in tandem, Page and Brin created a system that rewarded links from important sources and penalized those that were not. Their breakthrough came with the development of PageRank which later became Google. Page was the companyโ€™s first CEO before leaving and then returning to the position in 2011. 

Related To Google

Google Business Model

google-business-model
Google is an attention merchant that – in 2022 – generated over $224 billion (almost 80% of revenues) from ads (Google Search, YouTube Ads, and Network sites), followed by Google Play, Pixel phones, YouTube Premium (a $29 billion segment), and Google Cloud ($26.2 billion).

Who Owns Google

who-owns-google
Google is primarily owned by its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have more than 51% voting power. Other individual shareholders comprise John Doerr (1.5%), a venture capitalist and early investor in Google, and CEO, Sundar Pichai. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has 4.2% voting power. The most prominent institutional shareholders are mutual funds BlackRock and The Vanguard Group, with 2.7% and 3.1%, respectively.

Google Other Bets

google-other-bets
Of Google’s (Alphabet) over $282 billion revenue for 2022, Google also generated over a billion dollars from a group of startup bets, which Google considers potential moonshots (companies that might open up new industries). Those Google’s bets also generated a loss for the company of over $6 billion in the same year. In short, Google is using the money generated by search and betting it on other innovative industries. Of Google’s (Alphabet) over $282 billion revenue for 2022, Google also generated over a billion dollars from a group of startup bets, which Google considers potential moonshots (companies that might open up new industries). Those Google’s bets also generated a loss for the company of over $6 billion in the same year. In short, Google is using the money generated by search and betting it on other innovative industries. 

Google Cloud Business

google-cloud-business-model

How Big Is Google?

how-big-is-google
Google is an attention merchant that โ€“ in 2022 โ€“ generated $224 billion (almost 80% of its total revenues) from ads (Google Search, YouTube Ads, and Network sites), followed by Google Play, Pixel phones, YouTube Premium (a $29 billion segment), and Google Cloud ($26.3 billion).

Google Traffic Acquisition Costs

traffic-acquisition-cost
The traffic acquisition cost represents the expenses incurred by an internet company, like Google, to gain qualified traffic – on its pages – for monetization. Over the years, Google has been able to reduce its traffic acquisition costs and, in any case, to keep it stable. In 2022 Google spent 21.75% of its total advertising revenues (over $48 billion) to guarantee its traffic on several desktop and mobile devices across the web.

How Does Google Make Money

google-revenue-breakdown
Alphabet generated over $282B from Google search and others, $32.78 billion from the Network members (Adsense and AdMob), $29.2 billion from YouTube Ads, $26.28B from the Cloud, and $29 billion from other sources (Google Play, Hardware devices, and other services).

YouTube Business Model

how-does-youtube-make-money
YouTube was acquired for almost $1.7 billion in 2006 by Google. It makes money through advertising and subscription revenues. YouTube advertising network is part of Google Ads, and it reported more than $29B in revenues by 2022. YouTube also makes money with its paid memberships and premium content.

Google vs. Bing

google-vs-bing

Google Profits

google-income

Google Revenue Breakdown

google-revenue
In 2022, Google generated over $282 billion in revenues, of which over $162 billion from Google Search, over $29 billion from YouTube Ads, and almost $33 billion from Network Members’ properties. In addition, Google generated over $29 billion in other revenue, over $26 billion from Google Cloud, and over a billion dollars from other bets.

Google Advertising Revenue

how-much-money-does-google-make-from-search

Apple vs. Google

apple-vs-google

Google Employees Number

google-employees-number

Google Ad vs. Facebook Ad

google-ad-vs-facebook-ad

YouTube Ad Revenue

youtube-ad-revenue
YouTube, by 2022, generated over $29 billion in advertising revenues.

About The Author

Larry Page

Lawrence “Larry” Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. On April 4, 2011, he took on the role of chief executive officer of Google, replacing Eric Schmidt. As of 2012, his personal wealth is estimated to be $20.3 billion, ranking him #13 on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. He is the inventor of PageRank, which became the foundation of Google’s search ranking algorithm.

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