August 21: “Don’t Be Evil”

Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, was born on this date in Russia in 1973. The family moved to the U.S. in 1979 because of the limited career opportunities that confronted his father, a scientist and mathematician, because he was Jewish. (His mother, too, is a scientist, now at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.) It was as a graduate student in computer science at Stanford that Brin met his collaborator, Larry Page, and developed what they called in a paper “a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.” Google has been compared to Gutenberg’s printing press as a transformational information technology, and Brin has been rewarded with great wealth (he is ranked the 24th richest person in the world), awards and honors, including induction into the National Academy of Engineering. He is applying both his know-how and resources to the alternative energy industry, electric cars, outer-space tourism, and many other enterprises. Among his company’s mottos: “Don’t be evil.”

“I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical, and ultimately making a big difference in the world.” —Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin talks about Google Glass at Ted 2013 and explains why cell phones are “emasculating”: