Chairman of Microsoft Corporation and Google Founder

Bill Gates

William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft had revenues of US$51.12 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2007, and employs more than 78,000 people in 105 countries and regions.

On June 15, 2006, Microsoft announced that effective July 2008 Gates will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After July 2008 Gates will continue to serve as Microsoft’s chairman and an advisor on key development projects. The two-year transition process is to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities. Effective June 2006, Ray Ozzie has assumed Gates’ previous title as chief software architect and is working side by side with Gates on all technical architecture and product oversight responsibilities at Microsoft. Craig Mundie has assumed the new title of chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft and is working closely with Gates to assume his responsibility for the company’s research and incubation efforts.

Sergey Brin
Co-Founder and President, Technology

Sergey Brin, a native of Moscow, received a bachelor of science degree with honors in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park. He is currently on leave from the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, where he received his master’s degree. Sergey is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship as well as an honorary MBA from Instituto de Empresa. It was at Stanford where he met Larry Page and worked on the project that became Google. Together they founded Google Inc. in 1998, and Sergey continues to share responsibility for day-to-day operations with Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.

Sergey’s research interests include search engines, information extraction from unstructured sources, and data mining of large text collections and scientific data. He has published more than a dozen academic papers, including Extracting Patterns and Relations from the World Wide Web; Dynamic Data Mining: A New Architecture for Data with High Dimensionality, which he published with Larry Page; Scalable Techniques for Mining Casual Structures; Dynamic Itemset Counting and Implication Rules for Market Basket Data; andBeyond Market Baskets: Generalizing Association Rules to Correlations.

Awards and recognition

Sergey Brin

In November 2009, Forbes magazine decided Brin and Larry Page were the fifth most powerful people in the world. Earlier that same year, in February, Brin was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, which is "among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer ... [and] honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice...". He was selected specifically, "for leadership in development of rapid indexing and retrieval of relevant information from the World Wide Web.

In 2003, both Brin and Page received an honorary MBA from IE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...".And in 2004, they received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering", and were elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. "In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today." They joined a "select cadre of 32 of the world's most influential communications technology pioneers...

In their "Profiles" of Fellows, the National Science Foundation included a number of earlier awards:

"he has been a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum and the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference. ... PC Magazine has praised Google [of] the Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines (1998) and awarded Google the Technical Excellence Award, for Innovation in Web Application Development in 1999. In 2000, Google earned a Webby Award, a People's Voice Award for technical achievement, and in 2001, was awarded Outstanding Search Service, Best Image Search Engine, Best Design, Most Webmaster Friendly Search Engine, and Best Search Feature at the Search Engine Watch Awards.

According to Forbes he and Larry Page are currently tied as the 24th richest person in the world with a personal wealth of US$17.5 billion in 2010.

Larry Page

Co-Founder and President, Product

Larry Page was Google’s founding CEO and grew the company to more than 200 employees and profitability before moving into his role as president of products in April 2001. He continues to share responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations with Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin. 

The son of Michigan State University computer science professor Dr. Carl Victor Page, Larry’s love of computers began at age six. While following in his father’s footsteps in academics, he became an honors graduate from the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering, with a concentration on computer engineering. During his time in Ann Arbor, Larry built an inkjet printer out of Lego™ bricks. While in the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, Larry met Sergey Brin, and together they developed and ran Google, which began operating in 1998. Larry went on leave from Stanford after earning his master’s degree. In 2002, Larry was named a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow. He is a member of the National Advisory Committee (NAC) of the University of Michigan College of Engineering, and together with co-founder Sergey Brin, Larry was honored with the Marconi Prize in 2004. He is a trustee on the board of the X PRIZE, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004.

Awards and recognition
In 2003, both Brin and Page received an honorary MBA from IE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...."And in 2004, they received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering," and were elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. "In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today." They joined a "select cadre of 32 of the world's most influential communications technology pioneers...." In 2005, Brin and Page were elected Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
PC Magazine has praised Google as among the Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines (1998) and awarded Google the Technical Excellence Award, for Innovation in Web Application Development in 1999. In 2000, Google earned a Webby Award, a People's Voice Award for technical achievement, and in 2001, was awarded Outstanding Search Service, Best Image Search Engine, Best Design, Most Webmaster Friendly Search Engine, and Best Search Feature at the Search Engine Watch Awards."

In 2004, Page and Brin were named "Persons of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight.

Page received an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan on May 2, 2009 during the commencement ceremony exercises of the class of 2009.

In 2009, he was ranked 26th on the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires and as the 11th richest person in America, despite his compensation of one dollar annually.

In 2009, Brin and Page were ranked fifth on Forbes' "The World's Most Powerful People" list. Page and Brin have combined a net worth of more than $36billion making them some of the richest people in the world.