1996
Larry Page and Sergey Brin named their early project BackRub because it used backlinks to rank web pages.
“They decide that they're going to call the project BackRub, since it uses backlinks for ranking web pages.”
Topic
Larry Page
10 facts from 7 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
1997
Excite nearly licensed BackRub for about $1 million in 1997, but the deal collapsed after Excite's CEO objected that better search would reduce time spent on the site.
“Excite is going to license this back rub search technology from the two of them for about a million dollars.”
2004
The host says Google was the first major tech company to use a dual-class share structure giving founders super-voting control.
“Google was the first tech company to do this.”
2009
Larry Page set a self-driving benchmark of about 1,000 miles of difficult California roads, known as the Larry 1000.
“He comes up with these 10 stretches of road in California that he thinks will be very difficult to drive. It's about 1,000 miles.”
2014
Google's order of 40,000 NVIDIA GPUs, costing $130 million, was personally approved by Larry Page over finance's objections.
“That's a big enough price tag that the request gets elevated to Larry Page, who personally approves it, even though finance wanted to kill it.”
2015
In August 2015 Google reorganized under the parent company Alphabet, with Larry Page as Alphabet CEO and Sundar Pichai as Google CEO.
“Google is becoming Alphabet in August of 2015, and Larry Page will be the CEO of this new Alphabet holding company.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora recalled Larry Page telling him that technology companies die when they stop focusing on product.
“if you look at technology companies over time, technology companies die when they stop focusing on product and start focusing on other things.”
Undated
Arora says Larry Page talked about Google answering a user's intent rather than the literal words typed, and that he also talked about AI.
“He used to talk about getting to a point where you answer my question, answer my intent, as opposed to answer what I type.”
Undated
Fradin says old interviews show Larry Page planning for Google to one day have a million employees.
“You can find old interviews of Larry Page talking about his plan for how Google was gonna have a million employees one day.”
Undated
Elon Musk said he gave an early Tesla prototype test ride to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who later made a small investment.
“I remember in the early days giving a test ride to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google.”
Episodes
- 6 Oct 2025Google Part III: The AI Company4h 4m
- 26 Aug 2025Google Part II: Alphabet4h 10m
- 30 Jun 2025Google Part I: Origins of Search3h 37m
- 24 Mar 2026#415 How Elon Thinks51m
- 9 Apr 2025Palo Alto Networks CEO: Global Cyber Threats, Digital Safety, and Tech Leadership51m
- 4 Oct 2025The Impact of AI, from Business Models to Cybersecurity, with Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora58m
- 1 Dec 2025The $700 Billion AI Productivity Problem No One's Talking About58m