Lawrence Edward Page is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of the co-founders of Google, along with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until August 2001 then from April 2011 until July 2015 when he moved to become CEO of Alphabet Inc., a post he held until December 4, 2019. He remains an Alphabet board member, employee, and controlling shareholder. Creating Google built a significant amount of wealth. Page is the co-creator and namesake of PageRank, a search ranking algorithm for Google. He received the Marconi Prize in 2004 with co-writer Brin.
Some of the best quotes from Larry Page are listed below.
- “Almost everyone who has had an idea that’s somewhat revolutionary or wildly successful was first told they’re insane.” – Larry Page
- “Always deliver more than expected.” – Larry Page
- “Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting.” – Larry Page
- “Anything you can imagine probably is doable, you just have to imagine it and work on it.” – Larry Page
- “As a precaution, we’re making machines extremely heavy with very tiny legs.” – Larry Page
- “Basically, our goal is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful.” – Larry Page
- “Being negative is not how we make progress, and the most important things are not zero sum.” – Larry Page
- “Deep knowledge from your manager goes a long way toward motivating you. And I have a pretty good capability for that.” – Larry Page
- “Every story I read about Google is about us vs some other company, or something else, and I really don’t find that interesting. We should be building great things that don’t exist. Being negative is not how we make progress.” – Larry Page
- “Excellence matters. I’ve pushed hard to increase our velocity, improve our execution, and focus on the big bets that will make a difference in the world.” – Larry Page
- “Find the leverage in the world so you can be truly lazy.” – Larry Page
- “For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.” – Larry Page
- “Have a healthy disregard for the impossible and actually build new solutions.” – Larry Page
- “How exciting is it to come to work if the best you can do is trounce some other company that does roughly the same thing?” – Larry Page
- “I do think there is an important artistic component in what we do. As a technology company I’ve tried to really stress that.” – Larry Page
- “I feel like my job as CEO is always to be pushing people ahead.” – Larry Page
- “I have always believed that technology should do the hard work – discovery, organization, communication – so users can do what makes them happiest: living and loving, not messing with annoying computers! That means making our products work together seamlessly.” – Larry Page
- “I like to ask a lot of questions to my employees, to learn about what they do and how they do.” – Larry Page
- “I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. I know that sounds completely nuts. But, since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. There are so few people this crazy that I feel like I know them all by first name. They all travel as if they are pack dogs and stick to each other like glue. The best people want to work the big challenges.” – Larry Page
- “I think part of the reason we are successful so far is that originally we didn’t really want to start a business.” – Larry Page
- “I used to have this debate with Steve Jobs, and he would always say, ‘You guys are doing too much stuff.’ He did a good job of doing one or two things really well. We’d like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.” – Larry Page
- “I want to push the envelope for what’s possible for an innovative company with large resources.” – Larry Page
- “I would rather have people think we’re confused than let our competitors know what we’re going to do.” – Larry Page
- “If we are not trusted, we have no business.” – Larry Page
- “If we were motivated by money, we would have sold the company a long time ago and ended up on a beach.” – Larry Page
- “If you look at the people who have high impact, they have pretty general knowledge. They don’t have a really narrowly focused education.” – Larry Page
- “If you’re changing the world, you’re working on important things. You’re excited to get up in the morning.” – Larry Page
- “If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.” – Larry Page
- “Invention is not enough. Tesla invented the electric power we use, but he struggled to get it out to people. You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people.” – Larry Page
- “It is a tremendous responsibility for us to have all the eyes focused on what we do and give people exactly what they need when they ask for it.” – Larry Page
- “It seems like the world is crumbling out there, but it is actually a really great time in your life to get a little crazy, follow your curiosity and be ambitious about it.” – Larry Page
- “It’s important that the company be a family, that people feel that they’re part of the company, and that the company is like a family to them. When you treat people that way, you get better productivity.” – Larry Page
- “It’s very hard to fail completely if you aim high enough.” – Larry Page
- “Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future.” – Larry Page
- “Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future. I try to focus on that: What is the future really going to be? And how do we create it? And how do we power our organization to really focus on that and really drive it at a high rate?” – Larry Page
- “Many leaders of big organizations, I think, don’t believe that change is possible. But if you look at history, things do change, and if your business is static, you’re likely to have issues.” – Larry Page
- “My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society. As a world, we’re doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow that.” – Larry Page
- “Optimism is important. You have to be a little silly about the goals you are going to set. You should try to do things that most people would not do.” – Larry Page
- “Optimism is important. You have to be a little silly about the goals you are going to set.” – Larry Page
- “Our goal is long-term growth in revenue and absolute profit – so we invest aggressively in future innovation while tightly managing our short-term costs.” – Larry Page
- “Sergey and I founded Google because we’re super optimistic about the potential for technology to make the world a better place.” – Larry Page
- “Serving our end users is at the heart of what we do and remains our number one priority.” – Larry Page
- “Small groups of people can have a really huge impact.” – Larry Page
- “The idea that everyone should slavishly work so they do something inefficiently so they keep their job – that just doesn’t make any sense to me. That can’t be the right answer.” – Larry Page
- “The moments that we have with friends and family, the chances that we have to make a big difference in the world or even to make a small difference to the ones we love, all those wonderful chances that life gives us, life also takes away. It can happen fast and a whole lot sooner than you think.” – Larry Page
- “The ultimate search engine would basically understand everything in the world, and it would always give you the right thing. And we’re a long, long ways from that.” – Larry Page
- “There are basically no companies that have good slow decisions. There are only companies that have good fast decisions.” – Larry Page
- “There is a phrase I learned in college called, ‘having a healthy disregard for the impossible.’ That is a really good phrase. You should try to do things that most people would not do.” – Larry Page
- “There’s many, many more exciting and important things you could do that you just can’t do because they are illegal or they are not allowed by regulation.” – Larry Page
- “We don’t have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many.” – Larry Page
- “We have a mantra: don’t be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.” – Larry Page
- “We have always believed that it’s possible to make money without being evil.” – Larry Page
- “We have always tried to concentrate on the long term, and to place bets on technology we believe will have a significant impact over time. It’s hard to imagine now, but when we started Google most people thought search was a solved problem and that there was no money to be made apart from some banner advertising. We felt the exact opposite: that search quality was very poor, and that awesome user experiences would clearly make money.” – Larry Page
- “We really care about our brand. We really want it to stand for high quality. We want people to be excited about it, for it to be fun.” – Larry Page
- “We should be building great things that don’t exist.” – Larry Page
- “We want to build technology that everybody loves using, and that affects everyone. We want to create beautiful, intuitive services and technologies that are so incredibly useful that people use them twice a day. Like they use a toothbrush. There aren’t that many things people use twice a day.” – Larry Page
- “We’re at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity… Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That’s boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don’t exist.” – Larry Page
- “What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!” – Larry Page
- “You can be serious without a suit.” – Larry Page
- “You can make an internet company with 10 people and it can have billions of users. It doesn’t take much capital and it makes a lot of money – a really, really lot of money – so it’s natural for everyone to focus on those kinds of things.” – Larry Page
- “You can try to control people, or you can try to have a system that represents reality. I find that knowing what’s really happening is more important than trying to control people.” – Larry Page
- “You don’t need to have a 100 person company to develop that idea.” – Larry Page
- “You know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know that if you don’t have a pencil and pad by the bed, it will be completely gone by the next morning. Sometimes it’s important to wake up and stop dreaming. When a really great dream shows up, grab it.” – Larry Page
- “You may think using Google’s great, but I still think it’s terrible.” – Larry Page
- “You need to get one thing done well, or else you don’t have permission to do anything else.” – Larry Page
- “You need to invent things and you need to get them to people. You need to commercialize those inventions. Obviously, the best way we’ve come up with doing that is through companies.” – Larry Page
- “You never lose a dream, it just incubates as a hobby.” – Larry Page
- “You treat people with respect, they tend to return the favor to the company.” – Larry Page
- “You’re probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm. The best people want to work the big challenges.” – Larry Page
