Sergey Brin
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Sergey Brin (born August 1973 in Moscow, Russia) is an American entrepreneur. Born in Russia, Brin studied computer science and mathematics before co-founding Google with Larry Page. Brin is the President of Technology at Google and has a net worth estimated at seven billion U.S. dollars.
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Early life
Sergey was born in Moscow, the son of Michael Brin, a mathematician and economist. In 1979, when Sergey was five, his family immigrated to Palo Alto, California in the U.S. to avoid anti-semitism in the Soviet Union. Sergey's father began work as a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, College Park where he continues to teach today. Sergey's mother currently works as a specialist at NASA.
Sergey attributes many factors to his successful career. Growing up during the microcomputer revolution, he had an interest in computers from early in his childhood. He received his first computer, a Commodore 64, as a present from his father on his ninth birthday. Sergey's natural talent for mathematics and computing was apparent during his first years of schooling. In the first grade, Sergey surprised a teacher by submitting a project in the form of a printout, at a time before computers were commonplace in the home.
Sergey, and Google co-founder Larry Page have both given credit for their success to having attended Montessori schools.
Education
Sergey attended grade school in the U.S. but received further education at home; his father nurtured his interest in mathematics and his family helped him retain his Russian language skills. In September 1990, after high school, Sergey enrolled in the University of Maryland, College Park to study Computer Science and Mathematics, where he received his Bachelors of Science in May 1993 with high honors. After graduating from Maryland, Sergey received a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, which allowed him to study for his masters degree in Computer Science at Stanford University. Sergey received his masters degree in August 1995 ahead of schedule in the process of his Ph.D. studies. Though still enrolled in the Stanford doctoral program, Sergey has suspended his Ph.D. studies indefinitely while he is working at Google.
Sergey also received an honorary MBA from the Instituto de Empresa.
Interest in Search engines
Sergey expressed interest in the Internet very early on in his studies at Stanford. He authored and co-authored various papers on data-mining and pattern extraction. He also wrote software to ease the process of putting scientific papers often written in TeX, a text processing language, into HTML form, as well as a website for film ratings.
The defining moment for Sergey, however, was when he met future co-president of Google, Larry Page. Sergey was assigned to show Larry around the university on a weekend tour. Reportedly, they did not get on well to begin with, arguing about every topic they discussed. However, they soon found a common interest: retrieving relevant information from large data sets. Together, the pair authored what is widely considered their seminal contribution, 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.
College photographs
Despite his success, Sergey has remained relatively unknown to the public eye. He is not known to be lavish with his wealth and drives an inexpensive, though environmentally friendly car — the Toyota Prius. According to his father, Sergey still rents a two-bedroom flat. However, in an ironic twist of fate, his success at facilitating information access was his own undoing. Being googled is a common phenomenon and source of frustration as people's potential employers and even dates check their names for any interesting information. In 2004 entries appeared in various weblogs pointing to photographs of Sergey taken from Archive.org's snapshot of his college website, including a picture of Sergey in drag and sporting a pair of speedos.
Sergey and "Evil"
Google is often claimed to have an over-riding motto "Don't Be Evil". When Google's CEO Eric Schmidt was asked what exactly constitutes evil, he responded by saying: "Evil is whatever Sergey says is evil".
Business
As of October 2004 Brin and Page are estimated to be worth $7 Billion apiece. He also is the world's youngest self-made billionaire along with Larry Page and Bill Gates.
Errata
Sergey has various hobbies outside of his working duties. He is an avid gymnast and has taken trapeze lessons. Like many other Google executives, Sergey often commutes about work on roller skates and plays roller hockey during breaks. Keeping strong ties with his cultural heritage, Sergey often dines in San Fransisco's many Russian restaurants, notably Katia's Russian Tea Room.
Sergey is often invited to speak at conferences and forums for academia, business and technology. He has appeared on numerous television shows and documentaries, including the Charlie Rose Show, CNBC and CNN. In 2004, he and Larry Page were named "Persons of the week" by ABC World News Tonight.
In January 2005 Sergey Brin was nominated to be one of the World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders".
See also
External links
- Sergey Brin's website (http://www-db.stanford.edu/~sergey/)
- Forbes.com: Forbes World's Richest People (http://www.forbes.com/maserati/billionaires2004/LIRD664.html)
Interviews
- Linux Journal interview (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4196) - 31 August 2000
- Net Café Television Interview (http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=netcafe&collectionid=503) - 6 October 2000. Interview starts around 18 minutes and 15 seconds in.
- Template:Fresh Air episode
- Search Engine Watch interview (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3081081) - 16 October 2003
Articles
- Forbes.com: Fortunes That Roared In 2004 (http://forbes.com/2004/12/23/cz_pn_fortuneslide_2.html)de:Sergei Michailowitsch Brin
fr:Serguei Brin nl:Sergey Brin ja:セルゲイ・ブリン ru:Брин, Сергей Михайлович