Something about Sergey Brin

Mark Malseed has an interesting story about Sergey Brin, his family and their early life. You'll also find an insightful description of the office shared by Sergey and Larry at the Plex.

It takes a bit of searching to find Sergey Brin's office at the Googleplex. Tucked away in a corner of Building #43 on this sprawling campus near the southern tip of San Francisco Bay, past rows of colorfully decorated cubicles and dorm-like meeting spaces, Office 211 has a nondescript exterior and sits far from the public eye. Although it takes several twists and turns to get there, his office is not protected—as you would expect for the cofounder of a $150-billion company—by a Russian nesting doll's worth of doors and gatekeepers.

Sergey, 33, shares the space with his Google cofounder, fellow Stanford Ph.D. dropout and billionaire pal, 34-year-old Larry Page, an arrangement that began eight years ago in the company's first humble headquarters in a Menlo Park, California, garage. (...)

Trim and boyishly handsome, with low sloping shoulders that give him a perpetually relaxed appearance, Sergey bounces around the Googleplex with apparently endless energy. He has dark hair, penetrating eyes and a puckish sense of humor that often catches people off guard. A typical workday finds him in jeans, sneakers and a fitted black T-shirt, though his casual manner belies a serious, even aggressive sense of purpose. This intensity emerges during weekly strategy meetings, where Sergey and Larry—who share the title of president—command the last word on approving new products, reviewing new hires and funding long-term research.

We also find out that Eugenia Brin, Sergey's mom, is still surprised about Google's success: "It's hard to comprehend, really. He was a very capable child in math and computers, but we could have never imagined this. Google has saved more time for more people than anything else in the world."

"I don't feel comfortable being one of the crowd. It's kind of interesting — I really liked the schools that I went to, but I never rooted for the sports teams. I was never one of the crowd supporting something or not. I like to maintain my independence," Sergey says.

{ Photo by Duncan Davidson, licensed as Creative Commons Attribution. }