Larry Page Biography Quotes 5 Report mistakes
| 5 Quotes | |
| Born as | Lawrence Edward Page |
| Occup. | Businessman |
| From | USA |
| Born | March 26, 1973 East Lansing, Michigan, United States |
| Age | 52 years |
Lawrence Edward Page was born on March 26, 1973, in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. He grew up in a household immersed in computing and pedagogy: his father, Carl Victor Page Sr., was a pioneering computer science professor at Michigan State University, and his mother, Gloria Page, taught computer programming. Surrounded by terminals, manuals, and technical discussions, he developed an early fascination with how machines could organize information. As a teenager he experimented with electronics and mechanics, and later, at the University of Michigan, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in computer engineering, graduating with honors. There he explored human-computer interaction and built inventive projects, including a working inkjet printer made from LEGO components. Page continued to Stanford University for graduate study, pursuing a PhD in computer science and earning a Master of Science along the way. Under the guidance of his advisor, Terry Winograd, he focused on the structure of the web, leading to a pivotal research collaboration.
Stanford and the Birth of Google
At Stanford, Page met Sergey Brin, a fellow graduate student whose complementary interests and spirited debates quickly turned into cofounder chemistry. Together they probed how to rank the exploding number of web pages by analyzing link structure. The insight became PageRank, named partly for its inventor and partly for web pages themselves. Their prototype search engine, first called BackRub, demonstrated that relevance could be derived from the collective judgment embedded in links. In 1998, Page and Brin incorporated Google. An early, catalytic moment came when Sun Microsystems cofounder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $100, 000 check to "Google Inc". after a brief demo, prompting them to formalize the company to deposit it. Support from venture capital leaders John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins and Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital soon followed, providing resources and board-level guidance for rapid growth.
Building a Company and a Culture
From the outset, Page pursued a product-first ethos and relentless focus on speed and simplicity. He helped recruit core technical leadership, notably Urs Holzle to architect Google's massively scalable infrastructure. Early colleagues such as Marissa Mayer shaped user experience, Paul Buchheit spearheaded Gmail, and Salar Kamangar and Omid Kordestani were instrumental in creating and scaling ad products that would fund the company's ambitions. Susan Wojcicki, who had rented her garage to the founders in Menlo Park, later became a key executive and the long-serving head of YouTube after its acquisition. As growth accelerated, the board brought in Eric Schmidt in 2001 as CEO to provide experienced operational leadership, creating a triumvirate in which Page and Brin concentrated on product and technology while Schmidt ran day-to-day operations. This balance allowed Google to expand search globally and launch adjacent platforms such as AdWords and AdSense, while acquiring Android and YouTube to broaden the company's reach.
Return to the Helm and Alphabet
In 2011, Page reassumed the CEO role at Google, aiming to streamline decision-making and unify product efforts. He championed bold bets and tighter integration across products like Search, Android, Chrome, and Maps. Recognizing the need to separate mature businesses from experimental projects, Page led a major restructuring in 2015 that created Alphabet Inc., with himself as CEO of the parent company and Sundar Pichai becoming CEO of Google. The reorganization gave autonomy to ventures such as X (the moonshot factory led by Astro Teller), Waymo for self-driving technology, Verily for life sciences, and Calico for aging research. Ruth Porat joined as CFO, bringing financial discipline to a diverse portfolio. In 2019, Page and Brin stepped back from daily management, elevating Pichai to CEO of both Google and Alphabet, while remaining active as cofounders, major shareholders, and board members.
Moonshots, Technology, and Management Style
Page's leadership emphasized "10x" thinking: pursuing innovations that could be an order of magnitude better rather than incremental improvements. He fostered a culture that prized technical excellence, rapid experimentation, and willingness to reorganize when structures slowed progress. Through X, he supported projects such as Project Loon's stratospheric balloons and early autonomous vehicle research that later became Waymo. He also backed ambitious initiatives in clean energy efficiency, helping Google build some of the most energy-conscious data centers in the world. Outside Alphabet, he quietly financed frontier aviation efforts, helping stimulate the emerging electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) sector through companies focused on personal air mobility.
Public Profile, Health, and Philanthropy
Although the success of Google made him one of the most recognized technology leaders of his generation, Page maintained a comparatively low public profile, choosing engineering reviews over frequent media appearances. He disclosed a vocal cord condition that affected his speaking voice and supported research into voice health. With his wife, Lucinda Southworth, he has engaged in philanthropy, contributing to medical and educational causes through family foundations. Page has been recognized with major honors, including the Marconi Prize and international awards for communications and scientific innovation, often shared with Sergey Brin, reflecting the partnership at the core of Google's creation.
Legacy and Influence
Larry Page's enduring contribution lies in transforming a research insight into a global utility that organizes information at planetary scale. By pairing PageRank with an uncompromising focus on speed, relevance, and infrastructure, he helped set the standard for modern search and digital advertising, which in turn funded a wide orbit of technologies. His decisions to entrust operations to Eric Schmidt, to empower leaders such as Sundar Pichai, and to recruit and promote innovators including Susan Wojcicki, Urs Holzle, and Ruth Porat shaped both the company's resilience and its capacity to tackle long-horizon problems. The Alphabet structure formalized his conviction that mature products and speculative "moonshots" can coexist under one roof. As an engineer-founder who remained deeply engaged with the architecture of systems and the people who built them, Page influenced how technology companies think about scale, risk, and the societal role of ubiquitous computing.
Our collection contains 5 quotes who is written by Larry, under the main topics: Startup - Management - Artificial Intelligence - Internet.
Other people realated to Larry: Steve Ballmer (Businessman), John Doerr (Businessman), Walter Isaacson (Writer), Steven Levy (Journalist), Terry Semel (Businessman), Ken Auletta (Journalist), Sheryl Sandberg (Businessman)
Larry Page Famous Works
- 2001 Method for node ranking in a linked database (US Patent 6,285,999) (Non-fiction)
- 1999 The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web (Non-fiction)
- 1998 The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine (Non-fiction)
- 1996 BackRub (early Google research project) (Non-fiction)