HUMBLE START: Larry Page and Sergey Brin incorporated Google on Sept. 7, 1998, after unsuccessfully trying to sell their search engine for a couple of million dollars. They set up shop in their Stanford dorm rooms with just four computers before moving their headquarters to a garage owned by Brin's future sister-in-law.
HUGE IMPACT: Google has become an indispensable tool for millions of people and an advertising gold mine. The company has a market value of about $150 billion, making Brin and Page the world's richest people under 40.
NEXT ACT: Google is determined to become even more ingrained in everyday life during the next decade as it expands its services on cell phones and other media while trying to engineer improvements in energy, medical records and computing. |