Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (Russian:Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American computer scientist and businessman who co-foundedGoogle withLarry 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 December 2024, Brin is the7th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $164 billion, according to theBloomberg Billionaires Index andForbes.[2][3]
Brin immigrated to the United States from theSoviet Union at the age of six. He earned his bachelor's degree at theUniversity of Maryland, College Park, following in his father's and grandfather's[4][5] footsteps by studying mathematics as well as computer science. After graduation, in September 1993, he enrolled inStanford University to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met Page, with whom he built aweb search engine. The program became popular at Stanford, and he discontinued his PhD studies to start Google inSusan Wojcicki's garage inMenlo Park.[6]
The Brin family lived in a three-room apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey's paternal grandmother.[10] 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.[10] They formally applied for theirexit visa in 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.[10]
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.[10][13]
Brin attended elementary school at Paint BranchMontessori School inAdelphi, 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.[14] In 1993, he interned atWolfram Research, the developers ofMathematica.[14]
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 itscitations in other papers".[17] Together, they authored a paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-ScaleHypertextual Web Search Engine".[18]
To convert the backlink data gathered by BackRub'sweb crawler into 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 engine far superior to those existing at the time.[19] The new algorithm relied on a new kind of technology that analyzed the relevance of thebacklinks that connected one Web page to another, and allowed the number of links and their rank, to determine the rank of the page.[20] 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.[19]
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.[21]
Page and Brin used Page's basicHTML programming 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 additionalservers to process the queries. In August 1996, the initial version of Google was made available on the Stanford Web site.[19]
By early 1997, the BackRub page described the state as follows:
The mathematical website interlinking that thePageRank algorithm facilitates, illustrated by size-percentage correlation of the circles. Thealgorithm was 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 series II 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.
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."[23] 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."[21]
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.[24]
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."[25] 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.[21]
Brin is a backer of LTA Research & Exploration LLC, anairship maker company.[30] In October 2023, LTA's 124-meter long flagship, Pathfinder 1, became the largest airship since theHindenburg to receive clearance for flight testing, permitted over the boundaries ofMoffett Field and neighboringPalo Alto Airport’s airspaces, at a height of up to 460 meters.[31]
In May 2007, Brin marriedbiotech analyst and entrepreneurAnne Wojcicki inthe Bahamas.[33][34] They had a son in late 2008 and a daughter in late 2011.[35] In August 2013, it was announced that Brin and his wife were living separately after Brin had an extramarital affair with aGoogle Glass colleague.[36][37][38] In June 2015, Brin and Wojcicki finalized their divorce.[39]
On November 7, 2018, he marriedNicole Shanahan, alegal tech founder.[40] They have a daughter, born in late 2018.[41] Brin and Shanahan separated on December 15, 2021, and Brin filed for divorce on January 4, 2022.[40] In summer 2023, the divorce was finalized.[42] TheWall Street Journal reported that a reason for the breakup was a "brief affair" in 2021 between Shanahan andElon Musk.[43]
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.[44] According toForbes, Brin has donated over $1 billion to fund research on the disease.[45]
Brin and Wojcicki, although separated, 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.[46] They donated extensively toThe Michael J. Fox Foundation and in 2009 gave $1 million to support theHebrew Immigrant Aid Society.[13]
In 2002, Brin, along with Larry Page, was named in theMIT Technology ReviewTR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[50]
In 2003, both Brin and Page received anhonorary MBA fromIE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...".[51]
In 2003, Brin and Page were both Award Recipients and National Finalists for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award.[52]
In 2004, they received theMarconi Prize, and were elected Fellows of theMarconi Foundation. The two men were "cited for the invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today."[53][54]
In November 2009,Forbes named Brin and Page the fifth most powerful people in the world.[57]
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 indexing and retrieval of relevant information from the World Wide Web".[58]
he was a featured speaker at theWorld Economic Forum and the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference. ...PC Magazine has 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.[59]
As of September 2024, Brin is the tenth-richest person in the world according to Bloomberg, with an estimated net worth of $135 billion.[60]
^Bloom, Nate (September 10, 2013)."Jews in the News: Diane Von Furstenburg, Michael Kors and Barbara Hershey".Tampa Jewish Federation.Archived from 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
^"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]Archived April 14, 2015, at theWayback Machine
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