Success Stories: Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin (born August 21, 1973) is a Soviet-born American computer scientist best known as the co-founder of Google, Inc., the world’s largest Internet company, based on its search engine and online advertising technology. Brin immigrated to the United States at the age of six. Earning his undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, he followed in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics, double-majoring in computer science. After graduation, he moved to Stanford to acquire a Ph.D in computer science. There he met Larry Page, whom he quickly befriended. 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 Ph.D studies to start up Google in a rented garage.

The Economist magazine referred to Brin as an "Enlightenment Man", and someone who believes that "knowledge is always good, and certainly always better than ignorance", a philosophy which is summed up by Google’s motto of making all the world’s information "universally accessible and useful" and "Don't be evil"