The Guys behind Google

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are not your typical billionaires. In fact, if you type billionaire into Google, the picture that emerges — fancy cars, private jets, mansions, jewels, and supermodel girlfriends — isn't anything you'd find in the lifestyle of the Google guys. Page drives a Toyota Prius, which costs around $21,000. Brin gets around for the most part on in-line skates, and he still lives in a rented apartment.

These two young men are the brains behind Google, the world's most popular Internet search engine. It now answers over 200 million daily requests for information from people around the world.

Since taking Google public earlier this year, each is worth an estimated $6 billion. Even the way they took their company public was innovative. They let ordinary people bid on shares in their initial public offering, not just the big banks, because they thought it was fairer.

With the investment revenue, Google now has more money to spend on the future. The company is already working on ways to search and read full libraries worth of books via the Internet.

How it all began

Today both barely in their thirties, the two first met at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, where they were doing doctorates in computer sciences.

Apparently, they did not immediately hit it off, but they became friends while developing a new system of Internet search engine from their college dormitory.

Initially called BackRub, they created a software system whereby the search engine would list results according to the popularity of the pages, after realizing that more times than not the most popular result would also be the most useful.

So after changing its name to Google they dropped out of college (although Brin is officially still on leave) and the rest, as they say, is history.

Pulling together $1m from family, friends and other investors, on 7 September 1998 Google was commercially launched from a friend's garage.

Family influences

Both Page and Brin come from an academic and computer science or mathematical background.

Larry - or Lawrence - Page was born and raised in Michigan, the son of Carl Page, a pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence.

Page Senior earned a doctoral degree in computer science in 1965, back when the subject was still in its infancy, and went on to become a computer science professor at Michigan State University.

His wife, and Larry Page's mother, also worked in computers, teaching computer programming.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Larry Page says he fell in love with computers at the tender age of six.

Mr Brin is a Muscovite by birth, the son of a Soviet mathematician economist.

His family immigrated to the US in 1979. And Mr. Brin went on to get a degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland, before enrolling at Stanford University as a postgraduate.

Hippy mantra

Google today has its headquarters at Mountain View in the heart of California's famous Silicon Valley, where certain quirks are in place to keep staff happy.

These include weekly games of roller-hockey in the car park, an on-site masseuse and a piano.

And each member of the team is given one day a week to spend on their own pet projects.

In a nod to the county's former hippy past, the company's head chef is said to have formerly worked for the rock band Grateful Dead.

There is also something very 1960s California about what Page and Brin say is their philosophy.

As Page recently explained to ABC News: "We have a mantra: 'Don't be evil', which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone.

"So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing."

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