Agreed. The fact that Page and Brin were both smart and made many good decisions early (well, decisions that later seemed to pay off from them, which is approxi

Agreed. The fact that Page and Brin were both smart and made many good decisions early (well, decisions that later seemed to pay off from them, which is approximately equivalent, but not exactly the same) was a major contributor. But I find it hard to believe that the fact that one of them had a brother who sold a business for $432 million did not help them significantly as well. In two ways: yes the connections, but also the fact you could potentially go to a brother rather than a total stranger and get millions of dollars to invest. Unlike a lot of current Lean/Agile/Web2.0 startups, Google couldn't exactly just rent computing nodes from EC2 at the time, they had to buy or build them, which costs lots of cash upfront. "Carl, remember that time I promised not to tell mom about who really broke her vase? I'm calling that in now." Yeah it does remind me of Bill Gates a lot too. Smart guy, smart decisions, but also a family with wealth and powerful connections.