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Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin (
Russian:
Серге́й Миха́йлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American
computer scientist and
Internet entrepreneur who, with
Larry Page, co-founded
Google, one of the most profitable Internet companies.
[4] As of 2013, his personal wealth was estimated to be $24.4
billion.
[2] Together, Brin and Page own about 16 percent of the company.
Brin immigrated to the United States with his family from the
Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his undergraduate degree at the
University of Maryland, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as
computer science. After graduation, he moved to
Stanford University to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met
Larry Page, with whom he later became friends. They crammed their dormitory room with inexpensive computers and applied Brin's
data mining system to build a superior
search engine. The program became popular at Stanford and they suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in a rented garage.
The Economist newspaper referred to Brin as an "
Enlightenment Man",
and someone who believes that "knowledge is always good, and certainly
always better than ignorance", a philosophy that is summed up by
Google's motto "Organize the world's information and make it universally
accessible and useful"
[5][6] and "
Don't be evil".
Early life and education
Brin was born in Moscow, to
Russian Jewish parents, Michael Brin and Eugenia Brin, both graduates of
Moscow State University.
[7][8] His father is a mathematics professor at the
University of Maryland, and his mother a researcher at
NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center.
[1][9][10]
Childhood in the Soviet Union
In 1979, when Brin was 6 years old, his family felt compelled to emigrate to the United States. In an interview with
Mark Malseed, co-author of
The Google Story,
[11] Sergey's father explains how he was "forced to abandon his dream of becoming an
astronomer even before he reached college". Michael Brin claims
Communist Party heads barred Jews from upper professional ranks by denying them entry to universities, as Jews were excluded from the
physics
departments in particular. Michael Brin therefore changed his major to
mathematics where he received nearly straight A's. He said, "Nobody
would even consider me for
graduate school because I was Jewish."
[9] According to Brin, at
Moscow State University,
Jews were required to take their entrance exams in different rooms than
non-Jewish applicants and they were marked on a harsher scale.
[12]
The Brin family lived in a three-room apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey's paternal grandmother.
[9]
Brin told Malseed, "I've known for a long time that my father wasn't
able to pursue the career he wanted", but Brin only picked up the
details years later after they had settled in the United States. He
learned that in 1977, after his father returned from a mathematics
conference in
Warsaw,
Poland, he announced that it was time for the family to emigrate. "We
cannot stay here any more", he told his wife and mother. At the
conference, he was able to "mingle freely with colleagues from the
United States, France, England and Germany and discovered that his
intellectual brethren in the West were not 'monsters.'" He added, "I was
the only one in the family who decided it was really important to
leave."
[9]
Sergey's mother was less willing to leave their home in Moscow, where
they had spent their entire lives. Malseed writes, "For Genia, the
decision ultimately came down to Sergey. While her husband admits he was
thinking as much about his own future as his son's, for her, 'it was
80/20' about Sergey." They formally applied for their
exit visa
in September 1978, and as a result his father was "promptly fired". For
related reasons, his mother also 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 many
refuseniks. During this time his parents shared responsibility for looking after him and his father taught himself
computer programming. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.
[9]
At an interview in October 2000, Brin said, "I know the hard times that
my parents went through there and am very thankful that I was brought
to the States."
[13]
In the summer of 1990, a few weeks before his 17th birthday, his
father led a group of high school math students, including Sergey, on a
two-week
exchange program
to the Soviet Union. As Brin recalls, the trip awakened his childhood
fear of authority and he remembered that "his first impulse on
confronting Soviet oppression had been to throw pebbles at a police
car". Malseed adds, "On the second day of the trip, while the group
toured a
sanitarium
in the countryside near Moscow, Brin took his father aside, looked him
in the eye and said, 'Thank you for taking us all out of Russia.'"
[9]
Education in the United States
Brin attended
grade school at Paint Branch
Montessori School in
Adelphi, 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. In September 1990 Brin enrolled in the
University of Maryland to study computer science and mathematics, where he received his Bachelor of Science in May 1993 with honors.
[14]
Brin began his graduate study in computer science at
Stanford University on a
graduate fellowship from the
National Science Foundation. In 1993, he interned at
Wolfram Research, who were the developers of
Mathematica.
[14] As of 2008, he is on leave from his PhD studies at Stanford.
[15]
Search engine development
During an orientation for new students at Stanford, he met Larry Page. In a recent interview for
The Economist,
Brin jokingly said, "We're both kind of obnoxious." They 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 in extending "the
concept of inferring the importance of a research paper from its
citations in other papers".
[6] Together, the pair authored a paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale
Hypertextual Web Search Engine".
[16]
Combining their ideas, they began "cramming their dormitory room with
cheap computers" and tested their new search engine designs on the web.
Their project grew quickly enough "to cause problems for Stanford's
computing infrastructure". But they realized they had succeeded in
creating a superior engine for searching the web and suspended their PhD
studies to work more on their system.
[6]
As Mark Malseed wrote, "Soliciting funds from faculty members, family
and friends, Brin and Page scraped together enough to buy some
servers and rent that famous garage in
Menlo Park. ... [soon after],
Sun Microsystems co-founder
Andy Bechtolsheim
wrote a $100,000 check to 'Google, Inc.' The only problem was, 'Google,
Inc.' did not yet exist—the company hadn't yet been incorporated. For
two weeks, as they handled the paperwork, the young men had nowhere to
deposit the money."
[9]
The Economist magazine describes Brin's approach to life, like
Page's, as based on a vision summed up by Google's motto, "of making
all the world's information 'universally accessible and useful
'". Others have compared their vision to the impact of
Johannes 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.[17]
The comparison was likewise noted by the authors of
The Google Story:
"Not since Gutenberg ... has any new invention empowered individuals,
and transformed access to information, as profoundly as Google."
[11]:1Also
not long after the two "cooked up their new engine for web searches,
they began thinking about information that is today beyond the web",
such as digitizing books, and expanding health information.
[6]
Personal life
Sergey Brin in 2005 at the Web 2.0 Conference
In May 2007, Brin married
Anne Wojcicki in the Bahamas. Wojcicki is a
biotech analyst and a 1996 graduate of
Yale University with a BS in
biology.
[18][19]
She has an active interest in
health information,
and together she and Brin are developing new ways to improve access to
it. As part of their efforts, they have brainstormed with leading
researchers about the
human genome project. "Brin instinctively regards
genetics as a
database and computing problem. So does his wife, who co-founded the firm,
23andMe", which lets people analyze and compare their own genetic makeup (consisting of 23 pairs of
chromosomes).
[6] Brin and Wojcicki have a son, born in December 2008, and a daughter, born in late 2011.
[20] In August 2013, it was announced Brin and his wife were living separately,
[21] apparently because of Sergey's extra-marital relations with Amanda Rosenberg, an employee at Google.
[22]
Brin's mother, Eugenia, has been diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease. In 2008, he decided to make a donation to the
University of Maryland School of Medicine, where his mother is being treated.
[23] Brin used the services of
23andMe and discovered that although Parkinson's is generally not
hereditary, both he and his mother possess a
mutation of the
LRRK2 gene (G2019S) that puts the likelihood of his developing Parkinson's in later years between 20 and 80%.
[6]
When asked whether ignorance was not bliss in such matters, he stated
that his knowledge means that he can now take measures to ward off the
disease. An editorial in
The Economist magazine states that "Mr
Brin regards his mutation of LRRK2 as a bug in his personal code, and
thus as no different from the bugs in computer code that Google’s
engineers fix every day. By helping himself, he can therefore help
others as well. He considers himself lucky. ... But Mr. Brin was making a
much bigger point. Isn’t knowledge always good, and certainly always
better than ignorance?"
[6]
Brin and his wife run The Brin Wojcicki Foundation.
[24]
Censorship of Google in China
Remembering his youth and his family's reasons for leaving the Soviet
Union, he "agonized over Google's decision to appease the communist
government of China by allowing it to censor search engine results", but
he decided that the Chinese would still be better off than without
having Google available.
[6]
On January 12, 2010, Google reported
a large cyber attack on its computers and corporate infrastructure
that began a month earlier, which included accessing two Gmail accounts
and the theft of Google's intellectual property. After the attack was
determined to have originated in China, the company stated that it would
no longer agree to censor its search engine in China and may exit the
country altogether.
David Drummond,
Google's Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, reported that
"a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of
Chinese human rights activists, but that the attack also targeted 20
other large companies in the finance, technology, media and chemical
sectors."
[25][26]
It was later reported that the attack included "one of Google's crown
jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users
worldwide".
[27]
In late March 2010, it officially discontinued its China-based search
engine while keeping its uncensored Hong Kong site in operation.
Speaking for Google, Brin stated during an interview, "One of the
reasons I am glad we are making this move in China is that the China
situation was really emboldening other countries to try and implement
their own firewalls."
[28] During another interview with
Der Spiegel,
he added, "For us it has always been a discussion about how we can best
fight for openness on the Internet. We believe that this is the best
thing that we can do for preserving the principles of the openness and
freedom of information on the Internet."
[29]
Senator
Byron Dorgan stated that "Google's decision is a strong step in favor of freedom of expression and information." And Congressman
Bob Goodlatte
said, "I applaud Google for its courageous step to stop censoring
search results on Google.cn. Google has drawn a line in the sand and is
shining a light on the very dark area of individual liberty restrictions
in China."
[30] From the business perspective, many recognize that the move is likely to affect Google's profits.
The New Republic adds that "Google seems to have arrived at the same link that was obvious to
Andrei Sakharov: the one between science and freedom," referring to the move as "heroism".
[31]
Awards and recognition
In 2002, Brin, along with Larry Page, was named to the
MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
[32]
In 2003, both Brin and Page received an
honorary MBA from
IE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...".
[33] In 2004, they received the
Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering", and were elected
Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at
Columbia University.
"In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's
president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has
fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today."
In 2004, Brin received the
Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award with Larry Page at a ceremony in Chicago, Illinois.
[34]
In November 2009,
Forbes magazine decided Brin and Page were the fifth most powerful people in the world.
[35] Earlier that same year, in February, Brin was inducted into the
National 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".
[36]
In their "Profiles" of Fellows, the
National Science Foundation included a number of earlier awards:
he was a featured speaker at the World 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 a Webby 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.[37]
According to
Forbes he is the 21st richest person in the world with a personal wealth of US$24.4 billion as of September 2013.
[2]
Other interests
Brin is working on other, more personal projects that reach beyond
Google. For example, he and Page are trying to help solve the world's
energy and climate problems at Google's philanthropic arm
Google.org, which invests in the
alternative energy industry to find wider sources of
renewable energy. The company acknowledges that its founders want "to solve really big problems using technology".
[38]
In October 2010, for example, they invested in a major offshore wind power development to assist the East coast power grid,
[39] which will eventually become one of about a dozen offshore wind farms that are proposed for the region.
[40]
A week earlier they introduced a car that, with "artificial
intelligence", can drive itself using video cameras and radar sensors.
[38]
In the future, drivers of cars with similar sensors would have fewer
accidents. These safer vehicles could therefore be built lighter and
require less fuel consumption.
[41] They are trying to get companies to create innovative solutions to increasing the world's energy supply.
[42] He is an investor in
Tesla Motors,
[43] which has developed the
Tesla Roadster, a 244-mile (393 km) range
battery electric vehicle.
In 2004, he and Page were named "Persons of the Week" by
ABC World News Tonight. In January 2005 he was nominated to be one of the
World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders". He and Page are also the executive producers of the 2007 film
Broken Arrows.
[citation needed][verification needed] In June 2008, Brin invested $4.5 million in
Space Adventures, the
Virginia-based
space tourism
company. His investment will serve as a deposit for a reservation on
one of Space Adventures' proposed flights in 2011. Space Adventures, the
only company that sends tourists to space, has sent five of them so
far.
[44]
He and Page co-own a customized
Boeing 767-200 and a
Dornier Alpha Jet,
[45] and pay $1.3 million a year to house them and two
Gulfstream V jets owned by Google executives at
Moffett Federal Airfield. The aircraft have had scientific equipment installed by
NASA to allow experimental data to be collected in flight.
[46][47]
In 2012, Brin has been involved with the
Project Glass program and has demoed eyeglass prototypes. Project Glass is a research and development program by
Google to develop an
augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD).
[48] The intended purpose of Project Glass products would be the hands-free displaying of information currently available to most
smartphone users,
[49] and allowing for interaction with the Internet via
natural language voice commands.
[50]
Brin was also involved in the
Google driverless car project. In September 2012, at the signing of the California Driverless Vehicle Bill,
[51] Brin predicted that within five years, robotic cars will be available to the general public.
[52]
Brin is backing lab-grown meat and kite-energy systems.
[53][54]
Google.com
US$24.4 billion (September 2013)[2]
google.com
