Lawrence “Larry” Page (born March 26, 1973) is a computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Google Inc. with Sergey Brin and currently serves as CEO of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc.
After stepping down as CEO in August 2001 in favor of Eric Schmidt, Page resumed the role in April 2011. In July 2015, it was announced that he would step down again to become CEO of Alphabet, where Google’s various assets were reorganized. Under Page’s leadership, Alphabet has aimed to deliver major breakthroughs across multiple industries. Page is the inventor of PageRank, best known as Google’s search ranking algorithm. He is a board member of the XPRIZE Foundation and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004. He also received the Marconi Prize in 2004.
His father, Carl Vincent Page, earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Michigan in 1965—when the field was just emerging—and was described by BBC reporter Will Smale as a “pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence.” He was a professor of computer science at Michigan State University. Larry’s mother, Gloria, taught computer programming at Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University. Though his mother is Jewish, Page was not raised in a religious household.
In an interview, Page recalled his childhood, noting that his home “was usually a mess, with computers, science and technology magazines, and Popular Science magazines all over the place”—an environment he became immersed in. Page was an avid reader in his youth, writing in Google’s 2013 Founders’ Letter: “I remember spending a huge amount of time poring over books and magazines.” According to writer Nicholas Carlson, the combined influence of his household environment and attentive parents “fostered creativity and invention.” Page also played the saxophone and studied musical composition growing up. He has mentioned that his musical education inspired his impatience and obsession with speed in computing: “In a sense, I feel like music training led to the high-speed legacy of Google for me.” In an interview, Page said, “In music, you have to be very conscious of time. Time is like the main thing,” adding, “if you think about it from the perspective of music, if you’re a percussionist, you hit something, and it has to happen in milliseconds, fractions of a second.”