LAWRENCE ' LARY' PAGE:Google co-founder

Larry Page
Google's co-founder.

Larry Page was born Lawrence Page on March 26, 1973, in East Lansing, Michigan. His father, Carl Page, was a pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence, and his mother taught computer programming. After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the University of Michigan, Page decided to concentrate on computer engineering at Stanford University, where he met Sergey Brin.

As a research project at Stanford University, Page and Brin created a search engine that listed results according to the popularity of the pages, after concluding that the most popular result would often be the most useful. They called the search engine "Google" after the mathematical term "googol," which refers to the No. 1 followed by 100 zeros, to reflect their mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

After raising $1 million from family, friends and other investors, the pair launched the company in 1998. Google has since become the world's most popular search engine, receiving an average of 5.9 billion searches per day in 2013. Headquartered in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, Google held its initial public offering in August 2004, making Page and Brin billionaires.
In 2006, Google purchased the most popular website for user-submitted streaming videos, YouTube, for $1.65 billion in stock.

In September 2013, Page was ranked No. 13 on the "Forbes 400" list of the richest people in America. That October, he was ranked No. 17 on Forbes' 2013 "Most Powerful People" list. Now serving as Google's CEO, Page continues to share responsibility for the company's day-to-day operations with Brin, who now serves as director of special projects for Google, and Eric Schmidt, the company's executive chairman.