How Did Sergey Brin Get Rich?
Sergey Brin is the president of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL), the parent company of the world's largest search engine, Google.com, which Brin co-founded with Larry Page in 1997. The Alphabet, Inc. umbrella houses many diverse companies, including YouTube, Google Ventures, Nest, Google X and Calico. Brin oversees the Google X lab, which manages well-publicized 'moonshoot' projects, including Google glasses, wing, loon and autonomous vehicles. With a net worth of $35.8 billion, as of July 2016, he is the world's 13th wealthiest billionaire and 10th wealthiest person in the United States. Forbes Magazine voted him 30th on its list of most powerful people in 2015.
The Early Years
Born in Moscow, Russia, on Aug. 21, 1973, Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin immigrated with his family to the United States in 1977. Brin's parents Michael and Eugenia sought to liberate their family from the religion-based oppression that was common for Jews in Russia at that time. Brin's father became a mathematics professor, while his mother was a researcher at NASA. Brin graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in computer science and mathematics in 1993. Brin attended Stanford University that same year and met Larry Page during a school orientation. They immediately clicked on an intellectual level and co-authored a paper called "The Anatomy of Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," which became the precursor blueprint for Google.com.Larry Page headed the BackRub web crawler project at Stanford, which utilized the PageRank algorithm technology. The technology differentiated itself from existing search engines by utilizing the relevance of backlinks during web searches. By 1996, BackRub had downloaded and indexed 75 million HTML URLs and 30 million HTML pages. By 1997, BackRub officially changed its name to Google Search Engine.
Google.com
Sergey Brin and Larry Page officially incorporated Google on Sept. 4, 1998, after being funded by Andy Bechtolsheim, founder of Sun Microsystems. The Google search engine achieved rapid popularity and growth, as users were impressed by the speed, accuracy and efficiency of the technology. Google surpassed Yahoo as the top search engine within two years. Microsoft Corporation (NYSE: MSFT) engaged the company for possible acquisition in October 2003. Google officially commenced its initial public offering (IPO) on Aug. 19, 2004. The offering was led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for 19.6 million shares priced at $85 per share, valuing the company at a $23 billion market capitalization. Ironically, competing search engine Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) profited handsomely on the IPO due to its 2.7 million share stake. Due to the relatively thin float, shares rocketed over 400% by August 2004.Co-founders Brin and Page became billionaires with their combined ownership stake at 30% of the outstanding shares. In order to maintain control, Brin and Page implemented a dual class share structure composed of Class A and Class B shares. Class B received 10 votes as opposed to Class A shares with a single vote. The Class B shares are only held by key insiders and do not trade on the public exchanges. Google was added to the Standard and Poor's 500 (S&P 500) index in March 2006.
Alphabet, Inc.
Google search volume annual growth rate averaged between 40 and 60% from years 2001 to 2009. As of June 2016, Google still dominates with a 70.16% global search engine market share. Google has diversified its revenue streams and projects through acquisitions and spin-offs. To provide better transparency for investors and illustrate the autonomy of the many companies that operate separately from the core search engine business, Brin and Page reorganized under parent holding company Alphabet Inc. on Oct. 2, 2015. Larry Page became CEO of Alphabet Inc., and Sergey Brin became president. Google is the largest subsidiary of Alphabet, which still owns YouTube, Android and Google Search. Some of its other subsidiaries include Google Fiber, Jigsaw, Verity, Calico, Google Ventures (GV), Google Capital, X and Sidewalk Labs. The company plans to grow to include over 26 subsidiaries.