You’ve probably heard the myth a thousand times. Two geniuses in a garage. One day they just decided to organize the world's information, and boom—now we have Gmail and self-driving cars.
But honestly? It wasn't that clean.
When you look into the founder of Google, you're actually looking at a collision of two very different, very stubborn personalities that almost didn't happen. Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't even like each other at first. When they met at Stanford in 1995, Page was considering the school for grad studies, and Brin was the guy assigned to show him around. They argued about everything. Literally everything.
It’s funny to think about now. If they had actually agreed on where to get lunch that day, the entire landscape of the modern internet might look completely different.
The Backstory of the Google Founder Duo
Larry Page was the son of computer science pioneers. He grew up in Michigan with computers literally falling out of the closets. He was quiet, obsessed with how things worked, and had this weird idea that you could rank the entire web based on who was "linking" to whom.
Sergey Brin was the math prodigy. His family fled the Soviet Union when he was six to escape anti-Semitism. He was the outgoing one, the guy who would do handstands in the office or rollerblade through the halls later on.
They weren't trying to build a multi-billion dollar company. They were trying to solve a math problem.
💡 You might also like: Why Everyone Is Talking About the Gun Switch 3D Print and Why It Matters Now
At the time, search engines like AltaVista or Excite looked for keywords. If you searched for "Bill Clinton," they looked for the page that said "Bill Clinton" the most times. It was easy to game. People would just hide words in white text on a white background to trick the system.
Page and Brin realized that a link was basically a "vote" of confidence. If a lot of people link to a site, it’s probably good. This was the birth of PageRank. They named their initial search engine BackRub. Yes, BackRub. Can you imagine saying, "Let me BackRub that real quick"? Thankfully, they pivoted to Google—a play on "googol," the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.
Why the Google Founder Legacy is Complicated
Most people think of Larry and Sergey as a single unit. But they played very different roles.
Larry Page was the dreamer. He’s the one who pushed for the "moonshots"—the wild projects like Google Glass or trying to cure death with Calico. He was the CEO for a while, then he wasn't, then he was again. He hated meetings. He famously tried to fire all the project managers in 2001 because he thought engineers shouldn't be managed by non-engineers. It was a disaster, obviously, but it shows how his mind worked.
Sergey was the intellectual engine. He spent a lot of time in "Google X," the secret lab. He was more about the immediate, high-level math and the social impact of what they were doing.
The $100,000 Check That Almost Didn't Get Cashed
There’s a legendary story in Silicon Valley about Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Larry and Sergey showed him a demo on a porch in Palo Alto. He was in a rush. He didn't even see the whole thing. He just wrote a check for $100,000 to "Google Inc."
📖 Related: How to Log Off Gmail: The Simple Fixes for Your Privacy Panic
The problem? "Google Inc." didn't exist yet.
They had no bank account. No legal entity. They had to keep the check in a drawer for weeks while they scrambled to incorporate so they could actually deposit the money. That’s the reality of being a founder of Google in the early days. It was chaotic.
What Happened to the Founders?
By 2015, things got too big. Google wasn't just a search engine anymore; it was a sprawling empire of maps, video, phones, and experimental medicine. They created Alphabet Inc. as a parent company.
Then, in 2019, they basically walked away.
They stepped down from their executive roles, handing the keys to Sundar Pichai. They wrote a letter saying Google was no longer a "twenty-something" and it was time for it to "leave the roost."
But don't get it twisted. They didn't really leave.
👉 See also: Calculating Age From DOB: Why Your Math Is Probably Wrong
- Voting Power: Between them, they still control the majority of voting power.
- Board Seats: They still sit on the board.
- The "Shadow" Presence: When ChatGPT blew up in late 2022 and early 2023, reports surfaced that Larry and Sergey were called back in for "code red" meetings.
They aren't "gone" in the way most retired founders are. They are the ultimate backstop.
The Dark Side of the Innovation
It’s easy to paint them as the quirky billionaires who did no evil (their original motto was literally "Don't be evil"). But their legacy is messy.
The data collection practices they pioneered created the "surveillance capitalism" we live in today. Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard professor, has written extensively about how the founder of Google model shifted from providing a service to extracting human experience as raw material for ads.
They also faced massive internal revolts. From the handling of sexual harassment claims to "Project Maven" (AI for the military), the company they built became a lightning rod for controversy. Some say they stepped down because they didn't want to deal with the Congressional hearings and the public anger. It’s a valid perspective. Running a search engine is one thing; running the world’s most powerful information gatekeeper is another.
Lessons from the Google Founders
If you're looking at Larry Page and Sergey Brin for inspiration, don't look at the money. Look at the approach.
- Iterate on existing ideas. They didn't "invent" search. They just found a better way to rank it. You don't have to be first; you just have to be right.
- Scale matters. Page was obsessed with things that "10x" your life, not just 10%. If it wasn't a massive shift, he wasn't interested.
- Find a foil. Larry needed Sergey. Sergey needed Larry. The solo founder is a myth—or at least, a much harder path.
Next Steps for Future Founders:
If you're trying to build the next big thing, start by looking at "dead" data. That’s what Larry and Sergey did. They looked at the links that everyone else was ignoring and realized those links were a map of human value.
- Audit your "unstructured" data: What information is sitting around that nobody is organizing?
- Build a prototype first: Forget the business plan. Get the demo working on a porch.
- Incorporate early: Don't get stuck with a $100k check you can't cash because you forgot the paperwork.
The story of the founder of Google is really a story about two kids who stayed in school just long enough to break it. They didn't follow the rules of business because they didn't know them. They just knew the math.