Larry Page Biography: Google Co-Founder and Former Alphabet CEO

November 10, 2026

Daniel Reed

Larry Page biography: Lawrence Edward Page is the American computer scientist who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998. Page invented the PageRank algorithm, served twice as Google’s chief executive, created Alphabet in 2015, and stepped down as its chief executive in 2019. He is now one of the world’s richest people, worth an estimated $239 billion.

Quick facts

Full name: Lawrence Edward Page
Born: 26 March 1973, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
Nationality: American
Occupation: Computer scientist, entrepreneur, Google co-founder
Known for: Co-founding Google; inventing PageRank; creating Alphabet Inc.
Education: BSE in computer engineering, University of Michigan (1995); MS in computer science, Stanford University (1998)
Spouse: Lucinda Southworth (married 2007)
Children: Two, born in 2009 and 2011
Current role: Co-founder, board member and controlling shareholder of Alphabet Inc.

Early life and background

Larry Page was born on 26 March 1973 in East Lansing, Michigan, into a household built around computers: his father was a computer science professor at Michigan State University and his mother taught programming at its Lyman Briggs College. At six he got his first computer; by twelve he had decided he would one day start a company. He also studied music at Interlochen in the summers, later saying it shaped his obsession with speed in computing.

Page graduated from East Lansing High School in 1991 and earned a degree in computer engineering, with honours, from the University of Michigan in 1995, where he built a Lego-brick inkjet printer and joined the solar car team. He then entered Stanford’s computer science PhD programme, where he met Sergey Brin.

Founding Google with Sergey Brin

At Stanford, Page set out to study the Web’s link structure as a giant graph. His supervisor, Terry Winograd, encouraged the idea, and Brin joined the project, nicknamed “BackRub”. Their insight: a page’s importance could be judged by the number and quality of pages linking to it, as academic citations signal a paper’s value. The pair turned that idea into the PageRank algorithm and published “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”. An early version went live on Stanford’s website in August 1996, running on computers built from spare parts in his dormitory room.

In September 1998, Page and Brin incorporated Google Inc. Andy Bechtolsheim of Sun Microsystems had written a $100,000 cheque before the company existed, and they raised about $1 million from family, friends and investors. They set up in a garage at Susan Wojcicki’s Menlo Park home. The name “Google” came from a misspelling of “googol”, the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. In 1999 it raised $25 million from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital and was already handling 500,000 searches a day. By June 2000 it had indexed one billion web pages, the most comprehensive search engine on the web.

Leading Google and creating Alphabet

Page was Google’s first chief executive, serving from the founding until August 2001, when investors insisted on more experienced leadership and Eric Schmidt took over. Page moved to president of products, still approving every new hire. Google went public in August 2004, making Page a billionaire at 31; his stake was worth more than $3.8 billion. Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock in 2006, and Page led the $50 million acquisition of Android in 2005, the future world’s most popular mobile operating system.

Page returned as chief executive on 4 April 2011, with Schmidt becoming executive chairman. He reorganised the company around its biggest products, shutting down dozens of overlapping services. In August 2011 he announced the $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, mainly to secure patents to defend Android; Google sold the handset business to Lenovo for $2.9 billion in 2014. He also launched Calico, a biotechnology company focused on health and ageing, in September 2013.

On 10 August 2015 Page announced Alphabet Inc., a holding company with Google as its largest subsidiary. He became Alphabet’s chief executive and Sundar Pichai became chief executive of Google. Page said it would make Google “cleaner and more accountable” and give far-flung projects room to run independently. On 3 December 2019 Page and Brin stepped down, with Pichai taking charge of both companies. Page remains an Alphabet board member, an employee and, with Brin, one of its two controlling shareholders.

Larry Page biography: major achievements and awards

Page’s achievements centre on two things: an algorithm and a company. PageRank turned the web’s link structure into a ranking system and became the foundation of Google. As chief executive he oversaw the Android and YouTube acquisitions, the creation of Alphabet, and Google’s expansion from search into phones, video, cloud and artificial intelligence.

His honours include the Marconi Prize in 2004, awarded jointly with Brin for PageRank, election to the National Academy of Engineering, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2009. Fortune named him its “Businessperson of the Year” in 2014. Beyond Google he invested early in Tesla, backed the flying-car startups Kitty Hawk and Opener, and in 2023 founded Dynatomics, a startup using AI to improve manufacturing.

In November 2026 Page was back in the headlines after Elon Musk praised his “accurate predictions” on X. Page had predicted that 99.999% of computing — “five nines” — would eventually move into orbit. Musk had said in October 2026, of Page’s prediction that self-replicating probes could explore the galaxy by 2100: “Larry Page might be right. He has correctly predicted many things.”

Personal life

Page married research scientist Lucinda Southworth in 2007 on Necker Island, Richard Branson’s Caribbean island. The couple have two children, born in 2009 and 2011. In May 2013 he revealed that his left vocal cord had been paralysed since 1999 and his right cord since 2012, keeping him from earnings calls; he donated to vocal-cord nerve research in Boston.

Through the family foundation named after his father, Page and his wife gave $15 million to the Ebola response in West Africa in November 2014. He holds a New Zealand resident’s visa and spent part of the COVID-19 pandemic living in Fiji. In 2026 he bought $188 million of real estate in Miami, Florida, including a $101.5 million estate in Coconut Grove, as he left California.

Net worth snapshot

Larry Page’s net worth is estimated at $239 billion as of November 2026, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list, which ranks him the third-richest person in the world. Almost all of his fortune is his roughly 3.2% stake in Alphabet, Google’s parent company. For the full breakdown, see Larry Page’s net worth. He sits behind Elon Musk’s net worth of about $893 billion on the same Forbes list.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Larry Page?

Larry Page is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998. He invented the PageRank search algorithm, served twice as Google’s chief executive, created the holding company Alphabet in 2015, and led it until stepping down in December 2019. He remains an Alphabet board member and one of its controlling shareholders.

How did Larry Page co-found Google?

Page met Sergey Brin while both were computer science PhD students at Stanford University. They built a search project called BackRub in Page’s dormitory room, turned it into the PageRank algorithm, and incorporated Google Inc. in September 1998 with about $1 million raised from family, friends and investors, including a $100,000 cheque from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim.

Why did Larry Page step down as Alphabet CEO?

Page stepped down as Alphabet’s chief executive on 3 December 2019, saying that Alphabet and Google were well established and no longer needed two chief executives and a president. Google chief executive Sundar Pichai took over both roles. Page and Brin said they had never wanted to hold on to management roles when there was a better way to run the company.

What is Larry Page’s net worth in 2026?

Larry Page’s net worth is estimated at $239 billion as of 10 November 2026, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list, which ranks him the third-richest person in the world. His wealth comes almost entirely from his roughly 3.2% stake in Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The figure moves daily with Alphabet’s share price; Forbes put it at $233 billion on 1 November 2026 after Alphabet shares fell about 18% in October.