The IEEE is honoring Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page with the IEEE Computer Society’s 2018 Computer Pioneer Award, as shared in a recent press statement. The award acknowledges Brin and Page “for the creation of the Google search engine and leadership in creating ambitious products and research initiatives.” Brin is currently serving as president of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, with Page as CEO.
The two developed the PageRank algorithm used to build Google’s search engine, the most-used search engine in the world. The following are the heavily cited papers that describe their early work:
- Brin et al., “The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web,” 1999
- Brin and L. Page, “Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” Seventh International World Wide Web Conference, 1998
Also recognized is their broad technical work associated with steering Google and Alphabet’s technical portfolio of products and research projects. Viewed as tough challengers of Google’s engineering staff, the two are known for achieving success on projects initially viewed as implausible or infeasible. Notable are Google Street View, Google Books, and Google’s self-driving car project.
Brin received degrees in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland and Page earned a degree in engineering from the University of Michigan. They are Fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and both are recipients of the Marconi Foundation Prize and members of the National Academy of Engineering.
