LARRY PAGE

ABOUT GOOGLE FOUNDER


Larry Page (born March 26, 1973) is Google's co-founder and CEO. Page's personal wealth is estimated to be $19.8 billion. Page was born in East Lansing, Michigan, and is married to Lucinda Southworth. The couple have one child. He is Jewish on his mother's side, and was raised without religion.



 Page's return as chief executive of the company he co-founded 13 years ago is a sign that the maturing internet giant is looking to recapture its original feel and edge. The 38-year-old, whose postgraduate research on how internet pages link to each other laid the foundations for Google in the mid-1990s, is regarded as the impatient, idea-driven force at the heart of the company. Now, some hope he will jumpstart a company that in recent years has stumbled awkwardly on emerging web trends such as social networking.

 Google has had its grip on the Internet threatened by upstart social network Facebook and local discount sites such as Groupon, which Google reportedly tried to buy for $6 bn last year. Both Facebook and Groupon are run by founders still in their 20s, which may have caused Google to reconsider the strategy of hiring an outside CEO, as it did with former Novell Inc chief Eric Schmidt in 2001.

 Page, whose style is described by industry insiders as intense but not flashy, is the heavyweight thinker whose ideas spawned the search engine that revolutionized the internet and created an advertising market that now brings it $29 bn a year.

 He went to Stanford to study computer science after getting a bachelor's degree in engineering at his local University of Michigan, where he showed an interest in solar-powered cars and built his Lego printer. He maintains an interest in environment-friendly transport, investing in electric car maker Tesla, while still driving a hybrid Toyota Prius. Page joined forces with Brin, who is a year younger, to produce the first version of their search engine -- then called 'BackRub' -- in 1996. The two went on to found Google in 1998. It was Page who gave his name to Google's trademark 'PageRank' algorithm, which ranks web pages according to how many other sites link to it.

 Page was the first CEO, from September 1998 to July 2001, when they hired Schmidt. Page and Brin, still in their 20s, put themselves in charge of products and technology respectively. Like Brin, Page pays himself only $1 a year in salary. But cash is not a problem for either, as each has voting power over about 29% of the company, which now has a market value of $202 bn.