The Biography of Sergey Brin: Childhood, Net Worth, and time at Alphabet

Sergey Brin, an American entrepreneur, and computer scientist is the co-founder of Google, and was the President of Alphabet Inc. until 3^rd December 2019, but has since remained a majority shareholder and a board member of the company. He is the right-hand man of Larry Page, and together they have fostered the growth of Google and Alphabet Inc. He ranks No.10 on the Forbes 2020 World's Billionaires list.

Early life and education

Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin was born on 21^st August 1973 to the Eugenia and Mikhail Brin in Moscow, Russia. Born in Russia, Brin and his parents relocated to the U.S. in 1979 due to socio-political issues at the time. After attending Paint Branch Montessori School, and Eleanor Roosevelt High School for his elementary and high school education respectively, he later enrolled at the University of Maryland where his father, Mikhail Brin works as a professor at the mathematics department. Sergey graduated with double honors in computer science and mathematics in 1993. He was also, awarded a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation to study computer science at Stanford University.

Net worth

$61.4B as of May 27, 2020.

 

Career/ Encounter with Larry Page

Brin’s first encounter with Larry Page was at Stanford University during their orientation. The two had not particularly picked interest in each other until a while later after discovering each person’s specialty. Brin was more particular about developing data mining systems while Page was more concerned with the mathematical components and speed of the internet. Page’s interest pushed him into an attempt to reverse engineer the World wide web. To this end, Page and Sergey authored a paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". Page nicknamed the research project "backrub" a program written in python and Java and worked together with Sergey Brin.

 Sergey, a polymath who had jumped from project to project without settling on a thesis topic was convinced by the idea's complexity and scale to take on the job because he found the premise behind BackRub fascinating. Sergey also added that he accepted to be part of the project because he liked Larry.

A new algorithm "Pagerank" was developed to analyze the relevance of the backlinks generated from Backrub that connected one Web page to another, and allowed the number of links and their rank, to determine the rank of the page. Brin's dorm room was converted into an office and programming center, where they tested their new search engine designs on the Web and Page room housed equipment.

On August 29th,1996 this project was uploaded on Stanford's main Website. The two developed the device further and arrived at 'googol’ mathematics signifying '1 followed by 100 zeros'. After the sum of $1million had been raised by them they started the google franchise in 1998 at the heart of California's Silicon Valley.

 

Alphabet Inc

Alphabet Inc. was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page as a parent company for Google and other companies which include Nest, X Development, CapitalG, Makani, GV, Fiber, Calico, Verily, and Malta. Through Alphabet Inc., Page and Brin can engage in providing other non-internet related computer services to their customers. Though many companies are registered under the Alphabet Inc. conglomerate, Google still remains its largest subsidiary and main attraction. Page has this to say about their intention for Alphabet Inc., “Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things. Alphabet will also include our X lab, which incubates new efforts like Wing, our drone delivery effort. We are also stoked about growing our investment arms, ventures and capital, as part of this new structure.”

In 2016, Alphabet Inc. beat one of its greatest competitors. Apple to become the most valuable publicly-traded company globally. However, it was short-lived as Apple topped the list a few days later. In its 2017 annual report, Alphabet Inc. reported that 86% of its revenues were generated from performance advertising—Adsense and Google Ads, and Brand advertising. By 2017, it was shown that the company was the most active investor due to its multiple investments and acquisitions at the time.

Other interests

There’s more to Sergey Brin beyond Google and Alphabet Inc., in 2017, it Brin’s intention to build a hi-tech airship in Silicon Valley was revealed, and he intends for it to be the largest aircraft in the world about 200 meters long. He also intends the aircraft to serve as a vehicle for delivering supplies and food to remote locations for humanitarian purposes. Yet, serve as a luxury travel vehicle for his family and friends. It was reported in 2014 that Brin had contacted Alan Weston, a former director of programs at NASA and aerospace engineer, to research further into airship technology that could both accommodate his humanitarian and luxury travel intentions at higher speeds. Through one of the Google subsidiary companies, Planetary Ventures, Brin was able to get a 60-year lease at the Moffet Field airbase providing Brin and his airship team with enough space for testing the airship. By 2015, Brin permitted Weston to go ahead with the first airship design, and the flight tests went well. The construction of a full-size airship has since been under construction.

Sergey also shows interest in solving the problems of energy by working & investing through the philanthropy arm of google into alternative and renewable energy solutions. In 2010 He was revealed as a major investor in the Tesla motors development of artificial intelligence vehicles also with close deep interest and contribution to space tourism and development (June 2008).

Brin is also involved in project glass and the google driverless project which represents his desire to improve access to information and technology.