Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are worth more than $100 billion - see how they spend it, from trapeze lessons to a 600-foot 'air yacht'
Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded Google (now owned by parent company Alphabet) in 1998 in a garage in Menlo Park, California.
Page was born in 1973 to two computer science professors at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. Even at a young age, he enjoyed taking machines apart and trying to put them back together to understand how they functioned.
Source: "Larry Page"
Page went to the University of Michigan for undergrad. While there, he was a member of the solar car team, proposed an overhaul of the school's bus system, and developed other business plans.
Source: Business Insider
Brin and Page met in 1995, when Brin toured Page around Stanford University. Brin was a second-year graduate student in Stanford's computer science department and Page was considering attending. They reportedly both found each other "obnoxious" at first, but they became classmates.
Source: Wired
Brin, the more gregarious of the two founders, was also born in 1973 to two scientists. But he was born in the Soviet Union, where his family faced anti-Semitism and couldn't pursue their careers to the fullest potential.
Brin came to the US when he was 6 and quickly proved his academic prowess. At 19, he graduated from the University of Maryland as a major in math and computer science.
Source: Moment
Despite their initial spats, Brin and Page started working together on an interesting idea Page had about cataloging every link on the internet. BackRub, as it was called in its inception as a project in 1996, took off.
After dropping out of Stanford, the two founded Google in 1998 in this garage.
Twenty years later, Google is much more than just the No. 1 website in the world and the most-used search engine. It spans video content, mobile technology, education, digital libraries, and even self-driving cars.
Source: Alexa
Alphabet, Google's parent company, is worth $762.5 billion and employs some 89,000 people around the world.
Here's how the successful duo spends their fortune ...
In 2005, Page bought a $7.2 million home in Old Palo Alto. The home, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was built from 1931 to 1941 for Bay Area artist Pedro de Lemos.
Sources: Gawker, Palo Alto Stanford Heritage
At 9,000 square feet, the two-story home was built in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. It's constructed of stucco and tile around a courtyard. Parts of the home were salvaged from a chapel that was partially destroyed during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Source: Palo Alto Stanford Heritage
In 2009, after Page bought the historic home, he started buying adjacent properties to construct an environmentally-friendly estate. The 6,000-square-foot home has a roof garden with solar panels and four bedrooms.
Source: The Mercury News
We don't know much about what Page's home looks like on the inside, but we do know that sometimes his billionaire buddy Elon Musk, who doesn't own property in Silicon Valley, sleeps over.
Source: Business Insider
"He'll e-mail and say, 'I don't know where to stay tonight. Can I come over?'" Page told Ashlee Vance for her book, "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future." "I haven't given him a key or anything yet."
Source: Business Insider
Brin has even swankier digs in New York City's tony West Village, where he's neighbors with celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker and Tiger Woods. He bought a 3,457-square-foot penthouse there for $8.5 million in 2008.
Source: Zillow Porchlight, Business Insider
The two-story, three-bedroom penthouse has a 1,200-square-foot wraparound terrace with views of lower Manhattan. The kitchen is outfitted with custom Moroccan tiles and top-of-the-line appliances.
Source: Zillow Porchlight, Zillow
Brin also lives in an estate in Los Altos Hills, California at an undisclosed location. Here's what a typical house there looks like.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
We don't know much about the Google cofounders' vacations, but we do know that they host the super-exclusive Google Camp every year in Sicily.
Source: Business Insider
Google Camp takes place at the Vendura Resort, which has a 200-foot infinity pool, a mile of private coastline on the Mediterranean, and two 18-hole golf courses.
Source: Forbes
Page and Brin could enjoy authentic cuisine at Vendura's seven restaurants with Google Campers like Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, George Lucas, and Pharrell.
Source: Business Insider
Staying at Vendura costs up to $2,000 for one night. That gets you a 1,600-square-foot villa with a private pool and dining area, two golf carts, and complimentary spa treatments upon arrival.
Source: Vendura Resort
The two cofounders have also been known to spend their fortune vacationing in Fiji.
Source: Business Insider
Meanwhile, Page's own superyacht isn't anything to sneeze at. The 60-meter vessel accommodates up to 12, has six decks, open and shaded sun decks, a gym, and Jacuzzi — as well as five Waverunners.
Source: Boat International
These guys don't just have a private plane — they also have an $82 million private airport. Google began building its own private airport near the San Jose airport in 2014.
Source: Fast Company
Page doesn't just dabble in typical aircraft. While we don't know how often Page himself is taking the products for a spin, he does fund three flying car companies.
Source: The Verge
Page and Brin both have been taken with a slightly more upscale eco-friendly vehicle: Tesla. The duo led an investment round of $40 million in Elon Musk's Tesla all the way back in 2006.
Source: Tesla Motors
Brin was the fourth person to receive a Tesla Model X Crossover SUV in 2015 when it was first released — he snagged a white one.
Source: Business Insider
Today, a Model X with seven seats, full self-driving capacity, and max performance costs $151,000.
Source: Tesla
Brin's Tesla was the subject of what was popularly speculated to be an elaborate April Fool's Day prank in 2013.
Source: Business Insider, Wired
Reportedly, some of Google's employees vinyl-wrapped Brin's Model S, added rainbow eyelashes, and a Batman decal and wings.
Source: Forbes
Page took his interest in Tesla even further in 2014 when said he would donate all of his billions to Elon Musk — rather than a charity, his family, or his own business.
Source: Business Insider
Hopefully, Page would also give some money to his two children and his wife, Lucy Page Southworth. Southworth is a biomedical informatics researcher, and their children were born in 2009 and 2011. (Page is so private that we don't even know if the younger child is a boy or a girl. The older child is a boy.)
Source: CNN
Brin also has two children with his former wife Anne Wojcicki, the cofounder and CEO of $1.5 billion personal genetics company 23andMe.
Source: Business Insider, Techcrunch
Brin's and Wojcicki's children don't exactly live in the lap of luxury that their parents' wild successes would indicate though. As Wojcicki told The New York Times last year, she wants to protect her children from the "insanity" of the billionaire lifestyle — the kids do their own laundry, for instance.
Source: The New York Times
The duo are among the most philanthropic billionaires in the US. From 2000 to 2017, Brin has donated $37.5 billion (6% of his fortune) and Page $38.5 billion (4%). (That's nothing on Warren Buffet's giving 71% of his fortune, though.)
Source: CNBC
And Brin has been reportedly building an entire flying airship at a NASA research center near Mountain View, California. The project costs between $100 and $150 million — and is funded entirely by Brin.
Source: The Guardian
The airship will measure more than 600 feet. Sources say Brin pictures the airship delivering goods and food on humanitarian missions, as well as being an "air yacht" for the billionaire's friends and family.
Source: The Guardian
Brin is a lover of roller hockey, ultimate Frisbee, gymnastics, and high-flying trapeze. He has been spotted at advanced trapeze classes at the Circus Warehouse in New York City, which costs $1,760 per month.
Source: Business Insider, Circus Warehouse
Brin pays 47 workers' salaries, who all work for him and his family — including ex-bankers who manage his philanthropy and finances, a fitness coordinator, a yacht captain, an archivist, and a photographer.
Source: Bloomberg
For these two 45-year-olds, the combined net worth of more than $100 billion is a far cry from their humble beginnings in the garage in Menlo Park where it all began.
Source: Business Insider
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