[26][25][27] Larry's parents divorced when he was eight years old, but he maintained a good relationship both with his mother Gloria and his father's long-term partner and MSU professor Joyce Wildenthal.[28]: ch.

[30] Page was an avid reader during his youth, writing in his 2013 Google founders letter: "I remember spending a huge amount of time pouring [sic] over books and magazines".

[26] Page served as the president of the Beta Epsilon chapter of the Eta Kappa Nu honor society,[37] and was a member of the 1993 "Maize & Blue" University of Michigan Solar Car team.

[39] After enrolling in a computer science PhD program at Stanford University, Page was in search of a dissertation theme and considered exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph.

"[44] Together, the pair authored a research paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine", which became one of the most downloaded scientific documents in the history of the Internet at the time.

[26][42] John Battelle, co-founder of Wired magazine, wrote that Page had reasoned that: "[the] entire Web was loosely based on the premise of citation—after all, what is a link but a citation?

"I talked to lots of research groups" around the school, Brin recalls, "and this was the most exciting project, both because it tackled the Web, which represents human knowledge, and because I liked Larry.

[45] Combining their ideas, the pair began utilizing Page's dormitory room as a machine laboratory, and extracted spare parts from inexpensive computers to create a device that they used to connect the now nascent search engine with Stanford's broadband campus network.

"BackRub already exhibited the rudimentary functions and characteristics of a search engine: a query input was entered and it provided a list of backlinks ranked by importance.

The technology allowed for books and manuscripts – originally replicated by hand – to be printed at a much faster rate, thus spreading knowledge and helping to usher in the European Renaissance [...] Google has done a similar job.

Mark Malseed wrote in a 2003 feature story:"Soliciting funds from faculty members, family and friends, Brin and Page scraped together enough to buy some servers and rent that famous garage in Menlo Park.

"[50]In 1998,[51] Brin and Page incorporated Google, Inc.[52] with the initial domain name of "Googol", derived from a number that consists of one followed by one hundred zeros representing the vast amount of data that the search engine was intended to explore.

Using the garage in their friend Susan Wojcicki's Menlo Park home for $1,700 a month, Page and Brin were able to successfully build the Google search engine.

"[11]By June 2000, Google had indexed one billion Internet URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), making it the most comprehensive search engine on the Web at the time.

[39] Before Silicon Valley's two most prominent investors, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, agreed to invest a combined total of $50 million in Google, they applied pressure on Page to step down as CEO so that a more experienced leader could build a "world-class management team."

[11] Under Schmidt's leadership, Google underwent a period of major growth and expansion, which included its initial public offering (IPO) on August 20, 2004.

He always acted in consultation with Page and Brin when he embarked on initiatives such as the hiring of an executive team and the creation of a sales force management system.

[11] Page led the acquisition of Android for $50 million in 2005 to fulfill his ambition to place handheld computers in the possession of consumers so that they could access Google anywhere.

"[60] As Google's new CEO, Page's two key goals were the development of greater autonomy for the executives overseeing the most important divisions, and higher levels of collaboration, communication, and unity among the teams.

[11] Following a more cohesive team environment, Page declared a new "zero tolerance for fighting" policy that contrasted with his approach during the early days of Google, when he would use his harsh and intense arguments with Brin as an exemplar for senior management.

[62][65] An initiative named "Kanna" previously attempted to create a uniform design aesthetic for Google's range of products, but it was too difficult at that point in the company's history for one team to drive such change.

[62] The eventual results of "Kennedy" which were progressively rolled out from June 2011 until January 2013, were described by The Verge technology publication as focused upon "refinement, white space, cleanliness, elasticity, usefulness, and most of all simplicity."

[66][67][68] With Facebook's influence rapidly expanding during the start of Page's second tenure, he finally responded to the intensive competition with Google's own social network, Google+, in mid-2011.

Governments are now afraid of the Internet because of the Middle East stuff, and so they're a little more willing to listen to what I see as a lot of commercial interests that just want to make money by restricting people's freedoms.

The presentation was scripted by Page's chief PR executive Rachel Whetstone, and Google's CMO Lorraine Twohill, and a demonstration of an artificially intelligent computer program was displayed on a large screen.

[80][81][82][83] In a November 2014 interview, Page stated that he prioritized the maintenance of his "deep knowledge" of Google's products and breadth of projects, as it had been a key motivating factor for team members.

The Bloomberg Businessweek termed the reorganization into Alphabet a clever retirement plan allowing Page to retain control over Google, at the same time relinquishing all responsibilities over it.

[99][100] On February 18, 2005, Page bought a 9,000 square feet (840 m2) Spanish Colonial Revival architecture house in Palo Alto, California, designed by American artistic polymath Pedro Joseph de Lemos, a former curator of the Stanford Art Museum and founder of the Carmel Art Institute, after the historic building had been on the market for years with an asking price of US$7.95 million.

[116] The Google+ post also revealed that Page had made a large donation to a vocal-cord nerve-function research program at the Voice Health Institute in Boston.

[126][127] A fictionalized version of Larry Page portrayed by actor Ben Feldman appeared in the Showtime drama series Super Pumped.