Even from Google’s inception, cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin considered the company’s potential for astronomical growth. Named after “googol,” the term for the numeral 1 with 100 zeros behind it, Google, then just a search engine founded in 1998, would become as large as the internet would allow.
The company has far exceeded the parameters of just the internet. Valued at about $1.9 trillion, Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, ranks No. 1 on Fortune’s 2026 Most Innovative Companies list. Broken into four segments, Alphabet’s reach spans from services like Search and Youtube, to cloud computing, to Waymo, to private equity, to its DeepMind AI research
Page, the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of about $295 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has certainly reaped the rewards of Alphabet’s success. With stints as CEO of Google from 1997 to 2001 and 2011 to 2015, and of Alphabet until 2019, Page remains a board member and shareholder of his company, effectively controlling it alongside cofounder Brin, who has gotten increasingly involved again in the company’s AI charge. Brin is the world’s fourth-wealthiest person, with a net worth of $274 billion.
