Vroom Vroom

Brandweek, Nov 27, 2000 by Sarah J. Heim

Sergey Brin's search engine, the mighty Google, is revving its way to the top.

Sergey Brin president of Google.com, recounts the tale of how he and Larry Page co-founded the search engine that's now become one of the hippest--and most powerful--destinations on the Web. They met, Brin says, in 1995, when they were both in the computers science Ph.D. program at Stanford. "He was really obnoxious," Brin recalls of their first meeting. So he liked Page, he says, right away.

After the first meeting, Brin and now-CEO Page spent the next few years working their butts offs. It's doubtful, however, that even in their widest dreams could they have imagined that Google would index 1.2 billion Web pages--more than any other search engine in the world Not could they have imagined that they would start a company backed by renowned Silicon Valley venture capital firms Sequora Capital and Kleiner Perkins. Or, best of all, that they would sit poised to become multimillionaires before their 30th birthdays.

Although two-year-old Google, based in Mountain View, Calif, has yet to turn a profit, the company recently announced that it plans to be in the black within the next year. "By Q3 2001 we'd better be profitable," says the 27-year old Brin.

A touch of sarcasm and drollery accompany many of Brin's soft-spoken one-liners Born in Russia, he emigrated with his family to the United States when he was 6. He grew up in and around College Park. Md. And attended the University of Maryland where his father teaches math.

So far, his search engine has accomplished some amazing feats. In June 2000, Google became the defaults search-result provider of Yahoo replacing Inktomi Corp. Google also powers searches for 80 additional destination portal sites in 20 different countries. According to Brin, Google makes half its profit from licensing partnerships and the other half from advertising.

The success of Google's new offering called AdWords, he explains, may sway the profit split in favor of ad revenue in the coming months. Adwords enables advertisers to purchase individualized and affordable keyword advertising. Google currently performs more than 20 million searches per day, with traffic increasing by more than 3 million queries a day each month.

Brin doesn't appear too fazed by Google's recent successes. "My lifestyle has pretty much been my workstyle since grad school," says Brin. He currently spends an average of 12 hours a day, six days a week in the office. The portion of time he spends on his personal life is still negligible, he adds, and his travel schedule will only increase now that Google has opened an office in New York and has plans to open offices in Europe and Japan after the first of the year. Brin finds time however, to attend the annual Burning Man festival (a neo-hippie music gathering) in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.

Brin notes, though that his downtown Palo Alto apartment, decorated with only "a few strategic pieces of furniture," unfortunately reflects his lifestyle. Which may be why he's so excited about a just purchased piece of bedroom furniture. "Now I have, a nightstand!" he says. "That will make a big improvement in my quality of life."