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Find out more about Google’s Sergey Brin in an interview with Mark Malseed, author of The Story of Sergey Brin.

We admit it: After Moment’s February’07 cover story on Google cofounder Sergey Brin was posted, we Googled ourselves! The results revealed that Mark Malseed’s profile of the 33-year-old Moscow-born entrepreneur was the talk of the blogosphere. There was surprise in Silicon Valley that Sergey was (gasp!) Jewish and on Russian-language sites a stormy debate ensued questioning the veracity of the anti-Semitism that drove the Brin family to leave the USSR.  More than a few of our readers wrote in complaining that Google cofounder Larry Page (who is also Jewish) didn’t get his share of space. In this online exclusive, Malseed talks to assistant editor Nonna Gorilovskaya about those missing Larry Page pages, how discrimination shaped Sergey’s work, the controversy over the video-sharing site YouTube and which of his parents Sergey most resembles. 

You wrote a whole book on Google. Did you learn anything from working on this profile that surprised you? 
This article gave me the opportunity to spend a lot more time learning about Sergey’s background and some of the important early influences on him—foremost, his parents and the struggles that they had. It was fairly well-known that Sergey was born in Moscow and his family fled because of anti-Semitism and discrimination to the United States. What wasn’t known to me or to anyone else, really, were the specific stories of what the Brins were facing in Moscow that drove Dr. Michael Brin, Sergey’s father, to say, “We have to go, now,” for his future and for Sergey’s.  

You spent quite a bit of time talking to the Brins about the discrimination that the family faced. Is there a story about Sergey’s parents that really struck you?  
The challenge of being a qualified student. Michael Brin was an outstanding math student who went to a magnet high school for math and tried to get into Moscow State University, the most prestigious in the country. Because it was known that he was Jewish, he faced an uphill road and was subject to harsher grading on the entrance exams. He was really only able to get in through the help of some people that he knew.

At the time, the discrimination was so thorough in the math and physics departments of Moscow State that they knew the fractions of Jewish blood in people’s backgrounds. It was that much of a concern to the high officials at the university and the Communist Party who were dictating this! There was actually a joke that the entire math department contained “one and a quarter Jews.”

What’s the Brin house like?  
It’s kind of like the lottery winners, where they go from being very ordinary, educated middle-class Americans to suddenly finding themselves part of enormous wealth. They are very generous people and have been able to do much for charity.
When I was at their house, the visible signs of wealth were few. They haven’t changed their lives in any way that was apparent to me. Dr. Brin likes to wear his Google gear. Every time I met him, he was wearing a hat or a shirt or something with “Google” stamped on it.

How has anti-Semitism and Sergey’s immigrant experience shaped the way that he approaches his work?  
That was one of the revelations to me in writing this story. I had always wondered where his entrepreneurial side, his business acumen, came from because his parents were both steeped in the academic world. Well, as it turned out, Dr. Brin showed quite a bit of ingenuity: First, in gaining admission to the university, graduating and then finding a way to earn a Ph.D. when it was nearly impossible for any Jew to gain acceptance to a doctoral program. Then, he found a way to hold a job and looked for an opportunity to leave the country when he discovered that there was a whole other world beyond the Iron Curtain. Dr. Brin spied a lot of opportunities and found a way to make them work.  I think that there is the entrepreneurial spirit—of seeing something and going after it.

Dr. Brin and Sergey look very much alike. Are they alike in character?  
I might venture that he looks more like his mother than his father…
Sergey resembles each of his parents in a way. He has his father’s challenging, argumentative, prove-it-to-me style, but he also has this nurturing side that he gets from his mother, which is shown in the interest that he has taken in cultivating a great work environment at Google. For instance, he has made sure that expecting and new mothers are cared for and have spaces for themselves and that food and other services are being provided.

What’s new with Google since the story ran?  
Most of the focus on Google since the story came out has been on their $1.5-billion acquisition of YouTube and the legal questions surrounding YouTube’s use of copyrighted videos.

Can you explain YouTube’s sudden influence?
YouTube is an online video service. Users can upload their clips of home videos or post videos captured from TV and movies. For a while, it was the go-to place for finding clips of commercials or TV shows that you missed the first time around. Most of YouTube’s popularity came from pirated clips of things like The Daily Show.

Some of the content owners—television networks and others—have complained that Google doesn’t own the copyright to these clips and shouldn’t be showing them. This is subject to a major lawsuit right now and Google is in negotiations with the networks to try to come to some agreement. Google sees online video as the wave of the future and a new, potentially very lucrative source of advertising revenue, both for Google and, if they strike agreements, with the networks and their creative artists.

The question is whether, if the courts say this material has to be removed or there are injunctions,YouTube can sustain its popularity.

Of course, Google has for a long time been pushing the bounds of copyright with their book scanning project.

What is the book project?  
Google Book Search began as a project to work with publishers like Random House, Simon & Schuster and others to, with their permission, to scan books into digital format, so they can be searched and viewed through the Google search engine. They then extended it to also scan books from major libraries including Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Michigan and The New York Public Library. This is a massive project entailing millions of dollars and a lot of workers hired to physically scan the books. Ultimately, it will provide a great repository of information for researchers and ordinary folks around the world. Though Google has taken the position that their scanning is a fair use of copyrighted material, there have been challenges from the Authors Guild and publishers saying, “Well, this is not really fair use because you don’t own the copy.” Google is moving forward with the project but a few of the aspects related to scanning of copyrighted books are on hold because of lawsuits.

Google has faced criticism over submitting to government censorship in China, with some suggesting that the company has not lived up to its own ethical standards. What do you think?
Google has set a very high bar for itself by publicly declaring its motto as “Don’t be Evil.”  I think that they are serious about the intention to operate in a different way, in a way that serves the consumer. But, now that they are a public company, there is a fiduciary responsibility they have to their shareholders for earning profits.

The China episode, which isn’t over, shows that there will be issues. China is an interesting case because Google is not the dominant market leader there—a homegrown Chinese search engine called Baidu is. Looking at China as the second largest Internet market in the world in terms of the number of users that are online everyday—and it will soon eclipse the United States as the largest—Google knows it needs to have a presence there. So they have justified their opening an office and proceeding as they have by saying, “We need to be there, we have a good product, and people ultimately will be well-served by our operating there even if we have to at first comply…” I think they do believe that they have to give in now but that over time, they may be able to break down some of these censorship regimes.

What does the China case tell us about how Google will approach other ethical quandaries in the future?
I think Sergey and Larry and Eric Schmidt, the CEO recognized that there was a public backlash. They were viewed somewhat as hypocrites for putting up this idea that they were going to operate differently and then doing the same as Yahoo, Microsoft and other companies that have gone into China. So it was a wake-up call, and they have backed off a little bit in their comments and allowed that maybe it was not the most principled move. But I think most business analysts would agree it was a necessary business maneuver.

Some of our readers wrote in demanding the Larry part of the story.  What can you tell us about Larry? How is he different from Sergey?
I would love to know more of Larry’s story myself...

Larry is a product of computer scientists, his father Carl Victor Page, who passed away, was a Ph.D and a pioneer in the field. Larry’s mother, who is Jewish, is still alive. Her father—Larry’s grandfather—left the United States and made aliyah, though Larry really grew up in the mold of his father whose focus was solely on technology. Larry was not bar mitzvahed and does not readily identify with his Jewish background.

As far as personalities go, Larry is as forceful an intellect as Sergey is, though he has a quieter style. He is more of an engineer in the pure sense of the word—he’s fascinated with numbers.

Are there Jewish influences on Google’s corporate campus, the Googleplex and in the way Google is run?
As for outward signs of Sergey’s or Larry’s Jewish backgrounds having any kind of real influence, you don’t see that. But a number of the early Google employees were Jewish and there was a certain shared spirit there. From early on, they had Jewish holidays celebrations at the Googleplex—there was no Christmas tree that very first year.

When you go to lunch at Googleplex the diversity is reflected in the food choices, and they try to be accommodating to the many nationalities represented there. Their Passover seder grows larger every year, as does the company.

For those of us who haven’t been to the Googleplex, give us a tour…
The core of the Googleplex is four buildings around a central courtyard, housing the main cafeteria. They are famous for having volleyball courts, swimming pools and other game and recreational facilities. But, really, the most memorable elements of the Googleplex are the workspaces and the interactions in the hallways. You see people who are really excited about the work they’re doing and there is a real sense of creativity and youthful energy there. It’s among the highest-energy workplaces I’ve ever seen.

Anything else people should keep in mind about Sergey and Google? 
Sergey is a new breed of immigrant mogul. Andrew Carnegie and Louis Mayer came to the country and found success here, and Sergey represents a new generation with that same spirit. He and his colleagues have a really grand vision for changing the world and making information more accessible. It will be interesting to see whether they can balance the business pressures—now that they are a 10,000-person company closely scrutinized by everyone around the world—and continue developing innovative products and making good on their mission. They’ve had a very successful streak so far. It will be interesting to see if it continues.

 

 

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