Sergey Brin developed the PageRank algorithm with Larry Page at Stanford University.
Brin and Page met while studying computer science at Stanford and began collaborating on a search-engine research project. Their 1998 paper described an approach that ranked web pages partly by analyzing links between them. They named the project Google and incorporated Google as a company in 1998.
PageRank was not the only part of Google Search, but it helped distinguish the service from many earlier search engines. Alphabet became Google’s parent company in 2015, when the corporate structure was reorganized. Sundar Pichai became Alphabet’s CEO in 2019, while Brin remained associated with the company as a co-founder and board member for much of its history.