Do as I say, not as I do. University of Michigan Class of 2009 graduates might have left their commencement ceremony with that thought in mind after hearing from Larry Page, the cofounder of Google and their class speaker, who encouraged them to seek out avenues of laziness.
Page explained to the graduates that when he was in grad school, he had at least a handful of other ideas he was toying with—along with what would become Google. (In the late 1990s, Page founded the ubiquitous search giant alongside Sergey Brin while the two were earning their PhDs at Stanford.) Their guiding ethos in developing Google, they have said, was to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
“Thank goodness my advisor said, ‘Why don’t you work on the web for a while?’” Page recalled. That was “seriously good advice,” because the web was booming with activity, interest, and investment back then, in the mid-1990s. To Page’s mind, that’s because “technology, and especially the internet, can really help you be lazy.”
To clarify: “A group of three people can write software that then millions can use and enjoy. Can three people answer the phone a million times?” he said, illustrating the point. He encouraged the graduates to, like he did, “Find the leverage in the world, so you can be more lazy!”
Monday marks the 20-year anniversary of Google’s IPO. Safe to say, neither Page nor any of that founding team have been lazy. The stock price on that day in August 2004 was $85 per share, which was the low end of its expected $85-to-$95 range. That day, Google sold nearly 20 million shares, notching a valuation of just over $23 billion.
Anyone could tell you about just how far the humble search engine has come in the years since. Its parent company, Alphabet Inc., currently boasts a $1.9 trillion valuation, tops Fortune’s 2024 Most Innovative Companies, and is in eighth place on the Fortune 500 list of largest companies by revenue. In 2023, Alphabet was the world’s second-largest tech company by revenue.
Page, 51, is currently worth an estimated $156 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He served as Google’s CEO for two separate stints; first between 1997 and 2001, and then again from 2011 to 2015—and led Alphabet until 2019, when current CEO Sundar Pichai took the reins. Today, alongside Brin, Page remains a controlling shareholder and prominent board member. And maybe laziness is less of a virtue now than it was in the ’90s, or indeed in 2009.
“Overall, I know it seems like the world is crumbling out there, but it is actually a great time in your life to get a little crazy, follow your curiosity, and be ambitious about it,” Page said in closing at Michigan. “Don’t give up on your dreams. The world needs you all!”