Larry Page, born Lawrence Edward Page on March 26, 1973, in East Lansing, Michigan, is a computer scientist known for creating and founding Google. This company is one of the most popular search engines in the world today, and he founded it with his entrepreneur partner Sergey Brin.
Additionally, Page was considered by Fortune magazine as the 10th richest person in the world in their “Billionaires 2019” list.
Let’s read some interesting facts about Larry Page!
Larry Page Facts
1. Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google from their dormitory room at Stanford
Larry Page met his partner Sergey Brin at Stanford while enrolled in the doctorate program. They were both very interested in enhancing the ability to extract meaning from Internet data. Everyday information from the Internet accumulated and grew exponentially and they wanted to figure out a way to organize it.
They worked as a team from Page’s dormitory room at the university. An interesting fact about Larry Page is that this is where they created the first version of Google (called BackRub at the time). It ranked websites by tracking their backing links, which are the number of other pages that link to them.
2. Page’s parents were also computer scientists
Larry Page went to the University of Michigan and received a computer engineering degree in 1995. However, his father, Carl Victor Page was a Ph.D. in computer science also from this same university. He was also a science professor at Michigan State University.
But that is not all, his mother, Gloria, was also a scientist as well. She taught computer programming at Lyman Briggs College of Michigan State University. So, we could say that science and computers ran through his veins.
3. The name Google derived from the misspelling of the word googol, a mathematical term
Google was how Page’s and Brin’s search engine was called. Its name comes from the misspelling of the word googol. Googol is a mathematical term for the number “one” followed by 100 zeros.
4. He is ranked the 10th richest person in the world
According to Forbes, Larry Page is the 10th richest person in the world, an interesting fact about Larry Page. His business partner, Sergey Brin is considered to be the 14th richest. This magazine also estimates their worth in $50 billion dollars.
In addition, Alphabet is considered by American Business Magazine as the 17th largest public company in the world. This is a holding company from which Google is a subsidiary since 2015 and where Page was CEO until December 2019. Its estimated market value is $863 billion dollars.
5. Page is an investor in Tesla Motors
Besides being involved in Google and computer sciences, Larry Page is an investor in Tesla Motors. This enterprise develops electric vehicles based on clean energy. Also, with the help of Google.org, which is Google’s philanthropic arm, he promotes plug-in hybrid electric cars and other alternative energy investments.
6. He has suffered from vocal cord issues for more than 14 years
In May 2013, Page announced on his Google+ profile that his right vocal cord was paralyzed as a consequence of a cold he had had the previous summer. He also said that his left cord was paralyzed in 1999. In addition, he revealed at that moment that he has had issues with his vocal cords for 14 years.
Since doctors had not been unable to identify the cause, he decided to donate a large amount of money to a vocal-cord-nerve-function research program in Boston. In October of 2013, Business Insider reported that the cause for Page’s paralyzed cords was an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
7. Page believes that if you are not doing crazy things, you are doing the wrong things
Page has confessed to having a “10X” mentality. This means that he always encourages his employees to create products that are ten times better than those of the competition. However, according to an interview with Wired magazine, he said that that is the same mentality he uses for himself. He believes that “if you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things”.
8. Page and Brin raised $1 million dollars from friends, family and investors to start Google
Once Page and Brin were ready to further their search engine, they decided to raise money from family, friends and investors. They managed to collect $1 million dollars, and by September 1998, they founded Google Inc. with Page as CEO. The following year Google received $25 million dollars of venture capital funding.
9. When he was CEO of Google, he constantly worried about milliseconds
When Page was CEO of Google, he wanted the search engine to be as fast as possible so that more and more people will want to use it. An interesting fact about Larry Page is that he constantly worried about milliseconds and pushed his employees and engineers. The goal was to make search results faster and faster and to think about lag times.
This is why Google’s home page is so simple so that search results can load faster.
10. The idea of creating a search engine came to him in a dream
Page confessed during a commencement speech at the University of Michigan in 2009 that the idea of creating a search engine came to him in a dream in the middle of the night. Thankfully, he got up immediately and wrote down the ideas!
11. His salary today is of $1 dollar per year
Many internet entrepreneurs, such as Steve Jobs, and also Larry Page, only receive $1 dollar a year as a salary, an interesting Larry Page fact. But, since he is worth billions of dollars, we are sure he doesn’t mind.
Conclusion
It is hard to imagine the world as it is today if Google did not exist. We have both Larry Page and Sergey Brin to thank for that. This search engine has become so popular that it is now even a verb “to google”. You may have found yourself saying and hearing all the time things like “google it”.
We can truly say that so far, this has been Page’s largest achievement. Nonetheless, who knows what he could come up with in the future!
I hope that this article on Larry Page facts was helpful. If you are interested, visit the Historical People Facts Page!
