Exactly 25 years ago, Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched Google. They are now working on flying taxis and AI.
What has long since become synonymous with Internet searches in today’s parlance started exactly 25 years ago in a garage in Menlo Park, California: Larry Page, 50, and Sergey Brin, 50, worked out Google together on September 4, 1998 forever changing the way people around the world access the Internet. Now, a quarter of a century after that eureka moment, their lives have changed significantly – not least because of the more than 150 billion US dollars that the two are said to be heavy together.
According to the youngest Rankings from the US business magazine “Forbes” Page’s fortune will amount to around 79 billion US dollars in 2023, putting him in 12th place in the top list. Two places below is Brin with around 76 billion US dollars on the credit side.
made room for others
As incredible as these numbers may be, a year ago the bank statements of the two tech giants looked even better: Like Jeff Bezos, 59, the two Google inventors also benefited massively from the corona pandemic, and their respective assets have since increased 111 billion (Page) and 107 billion (Brin).
Something else unites Page and Brin besides incredible wealth: Since 2019 they have largely put the fate of their company into the hands of others and withdrew from the operative business. Page resigned as CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, Brin as its president. As a result, overall responsibility was transferred to Sundar Pichai, 51, who had already acted as CEO of the subsidiary Google Inc. since 2015. However, both men remain board members and influential shareholders.
Neither of them can keep their feet still
Page had last made headlines with a failed project: Under the name “Kitty Hawk” he had financed a start-up that had set itself the task of developing flying taxis. In October of last year, however, the people behind it had to admit that this was too ambitious an undertaking.
Brin, on the other hand, is said to have increasingly intervened directly in the fortunes of Google. Only in July of this year reported the “Wall Street Journal”that he has recently been seen more and more often in the office. So he got interested in participating in the development of Google’s in-house AI called Gemini.
