20 Fascinating Facts About Sergey Brin, Co-founder Of Google

1. Sergey Brin (°1973), Co-Founder Of Google, Moved With His Family From the Soviet Union To The US In 1979

Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin was born in the Soviet Union on 21 August, 1973. His family immigrated to the United States when he was only six years old and set up a new life in Maryland.

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2. Sergey Brin’s Father, Michael Brin, Wanted To Be An Astronomer

Sergey’s father, Michael Brin had always dreamed of being an astronomer. His dream was cut short when he realized further studies in physics would be hampered because of unofficial anti-Semitic policies at his university. Michael Brin took on Mathematics, and at a math conference in Warsaw, Poland, met people from ‘the West’. Realizing they were not the ‘wrong people’ the government made them out to be, Michael Brin decided it was time to take him family to the US and start a new life.

3. Met Larry Page At Stanford University

Sergey continued in his father’s footsteps, studying math, as well as taking on computer science at the University of Maryland. He later moved to Stanford University for his doctorate. Here he made a new friend, Larry Page and the two started working in a cramped dorm room on a new search engine ((c) William Mercer McLeod).

4. The Wojcicki Sisters

Google is yet another invention that began in the basement of a simple neighborhood. Two computer geniuses spent nights at work in Susan Wojcicki’s basement and came up with an internet sensation. Susan Wojcicki is now serving as Senior Vice President, Advertising and her sister Anne Wojcicki is married to Sergey Brin (in picture).

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5. From BackRub To Googol: 10,000,00,000, … 

The first search engine Brin and Page launched was called BackRub. This operated on Stanford servers throughout 1996 until it began to take up too much bandwidth for the university servers to handle. In 1997, Sergey and Larry decided to rename their search engine after a play on the word googol. This was a number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeroes (one googol = 1.0 × 10¹⁰⁰). Thus, Google came to be, a name representing the endless possibility of information.

6. Google, Founded In 1998 With $1 Million

With the support of family, friends, and outside investors (including Stanford professor David Cheriton, who wrote one of the first cheques of $100,000) Sergey Brin and Larry Page were able to raise $1 million and launched the company Google, Inc in 1998. Since that time, the Google search engine is the most popular of its kind and receives more than 300 million hits a day.

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7. Sergey Brin, Enlightenment Man

The Economist magazine has called Sergey Brin an ‘Enlightenment Man’ because of his belief in the importance of knowledge and its superiority to ignorance. This goes perfectly in hand with Google’s mission to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’.

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8. One Of The Most Powerful People In The World

In November 2009, Sergey Brin and Larry Page were named the fifth most powerful people in the world by Forbes magazine.

9. A Multi-Billionaire, In The Top 25 Worldwide

At a whopping US$ 18.7 billion, Sergey Brin’s personal wealth placed him as the 24th richest person in the world in 2012.

10. Special Party For Sergey Brin & Anne Wojcicki’s First Child

Larry Page and Sergey Brin continued their close friendship over the years. In 2008 Larry Page threw a whacky diaper themed party to celebrate Brin and Wojcicki’s first child. The party was held in a large warehouse in San Francisco and guests were required to wear baby attire. This included adult diapers and footie pajamas for all.

11. Sergey Brin Spotted On The NYC Subway, Wearing Google Glass

In early 2013, New Yorkers were in for a treat when Sergey Brin was spotted on the NYC Subway wearing Google Glass. These ‘augmented reality glasses’ consist of a small screen sitting on the right lens along with a microphone and speakers attached to a camera. In essence, when connected to the internet, one could readily receive information about individuals passing down the street.

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12. The Brin Wojcicki Foundation

Sergey Brin and his wife Anne Wojcicki founded and run The Brin Wojcicki Foundation. The foundation has pledged and donated money to many different causes ranging from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for a Parkinson’s cure, to $500,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation in costs for Wikipedia.

13. Among The Biggest Charitable Donors In The World

In 2011 The Brin Wojcicki Foundation was number twenty five in The Chronicles Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest charitable donors. The year 2013 includes a $61.9 million to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. In the year 2012 The Brin Wojcicki Foundation was ranked the fifth most charitable organization in the United States in the 2012, putting in $223 million to their causes.

14. Anne Wojcicki Co-Founded DNA Company ’23andMe’

Sergey Brin’s wife, Anne Wojcicki co-founded 23andMe in 2006 and produced a retail DNA Test Kit, named as Time magazine’s ‘2008 Invention of the Year’. All this simple kit required is one’s saliva to be mailed back to the organization, and 600,000 genetic markers are read for individuals to view their own genomes. Whereas similar kits can be priced up to US$ 1000, Wojcicki and her business partner price their DNA kit starting at an affordable $99.

15. Children’s DNA Donated To 23andMe For Research

Sergey Brin and wife Anne Wojcicki have a son, Benji, born in November 2009 and a daughter born in early 2012. They have donated their children’s DNA to Anne’s genetics-testing company 23andMe for science. Their goal is to discover a little more about the children’s genes and find out if there may be any tendencies to develop a disease that they can get a head start on with prevention or treatment, such as Parkinson’s which is hereditary in Sergey’s family history (photo courtesy: Joachim Angeltun).

16. Google’s Philosophy

Google’s success has always been seen in the simplicity it has to offer. Both in its business products and social networking options, Sergey Brin has been recorded as saying that technology has complicated products for many people and Google aims to provide an easy, user friendly option that people have chosen over the chaotic multiple options of its competitors. To put it in his own words: “We are focused on features, not products. We eliminated future products that would have made the complexity problem worse. We don’t want to have 20 different products that work in 20 different ways. I was getting lost at our site keeping track of everything. I would rather have a smaller set of products that have a shared set of features” (Business 2.0, How to Succeed). This is also in line with Google’s philosophy ‘Ten things we know to be true‘.

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17. Google.org

Sergey Brin has made a tremendous contribution to society with his company’s charitable efforts through Google.org, which works to solve world problems associated with energy, poverty, disease, climate and the environment. They claim to want to help in solving the “really big problems” that exists in the world.

18. Executive Producer Of The 2007 Movie ‘Broken Arrows’

Sergey Brin was an executive producer of the 2007 film Broken Arrows, with writing and directing accolades to Reid Gershbein, this film was a tale about free will, love and destiny. The movie was described as: “A story of love and a struggle over the virtues of free will versus destiny. It follows the journey of Reese, who becomes a hitman after he loses his wife and unborn child, as he confronts the forces of love, faith, and destiny.”

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19. The First Google Doodle, At The Burning Man Festival

Google Doodle began in 1998 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin attended the Burning Man Festival. Page and Brin, while playing around with a Google logo made a stick figure with the second ‘o’ representing their attendance of the festival (notifying users of their absence in case the servers crashed). Thus began the idea to observe notable events around the world on their given dates.

20. Sergey Brin’s Invests In Space Tourism

In 2008, Sergey Brin invested $4. 5 million in a company named Space Adventures. This is a US company for space tourism that sends tourists into orbit. His investment is seen as part of a future ticket for his flight into outer space (Photo courtesy: etoday).