7 Sergey Brin and Larry Page 7In 2006 Google acquired YouTube, the Web’s most pop-
ular site for user-submitted streaming video, for $1.65 billion
in stock. The move reflected the company’s efforts to expand
its services beyond Internet searches. That same year Google
was criticized for agreeing to comply with the Chinese gov-
ernment’s censorship requirements—blocking Web sites
extolling democracy, for example, or those covering the 1989
demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Brin defended the
decision, saying that Google’s ability to supply some, albeit
restricted, information was better than supplying none.
Larry Page
Lawrence Edward Page, whose father was a professor of
computer science at Michigan State University, received
a computer engineering degree from the University of
Michigan (1995) and entered into the doctorate program
at Stanford, where he met Brin. Working from Page’s dor-
mitory room, they began to devise their revolutionary search
engine technology, which they initially dubbed BackRub.
Most search engines simply returned a list of Web sites
ranked by how often a search phrase appeared on them. Brin
and Page incorporated into the search function the number
of links each Web site had—i.e., a Web site with thousands of
links would logically be more valuable than one with just a
few links, and the search engine thus would place the heavily
linked site higher on a list of possibilities. Further, a link
from a heavily linked Web site would be a more valuable
“vote” than one from a more obscure Web site. Meanwhile,
the partners established an idealistic 10-point corporate
philosophy that included “Focus on the user and all else will
follow,” “Fast is better than slow,” and “You can make money
without doing evil.” In 1990 the two founded Google, with
Page the new company’s president of products. Google,
Inc.’s, IPO in 2004 netted Page more than $3.8 billion.