Lawrence Edward ‘Larry’ Page is an American entrepreneur who co-founded the Google Internet search engine. He was co-president of Google until 2001, when he and co-founder Sergey Brin appointed an external CEO. In 2007, ‘PC World’ magazine said Page was top of their list of the most important people on the Internet. Along with Brin, Page is the world’s fourth youngest billionaire.

 

Page was born in 1973. His father was a professor of computer science and artificial intelligence and his mother was a computer programming teacher. His brother Carl is a co-founder of eGroups, which he sold to Yahoo! for half a billion dollars. Page graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering and a master’s in computer science from the prestigious Stanford University.

 

Page said the best advice he ever received was from his Ph.D. supervisor, who encouraged him to study the mathematical processes behind the world wide web. He investigated how different web pages were linked to each other. He met Sergey Brin and developed a search engine system they called Google. Their initial version of Google is still on the Stanford University Web site.

 

Page has followed other interests since stepping down as Google president. He has amassed a personal fortune of over $18 billion, but continues to look for ways to maintain Google’s innovativeness. Page is looking to the future and invested in a company that is developing greener, battery-powered cars. The World Economic Forum named him as a Global Leader for Tomorrow.