Growing up at Google

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The billionaire kids are all grown-up now.

So says Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, who presided over a press conference at the Internet giant’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters like a beaming corporate father figure.

‘The boys have grown up,’ Schmidt said before Google’s recent annual shareholder meeting.

He was talking about Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Schmidt was hired in 2001 to provide some gray-headed maturity to the Google bunch and the two ‘brilliant young founders,’ Brin, 34, and Page, 35. Those guys are a bit like the Harry Potters -- but apparently not Peter Pans -- of Internet wizardry. After so many years together (an eternity, Page wisecracked), the trio often finishes one another’s sentences.

Said Schmidt, 53: Brin and Page ‘now function in the company as the senior executives with the kinds of skills and experience...’ only to be interrupted by Page, ‘...we wish we had five years ago.’

‘They are running the company that they founded at the scale and with the insights that you would expect of people who are no longer young founders but mature business leaders,’ Schmidt said.

Brin and Page insisted that wealth and power hadn’t changed their lives. Nor has their newfound maturity changed their taste for casual clothes. But they don’t have to do their own laundry, Page said. They pull fewer all-nighters. And their toy budget is a lot bigger, Brin said.

‘I just got a new monitor,’ he boasted.

-- Jessica Guynn