{"id":194580,"date":"2026-08-19T16:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T16:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/194580\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T16:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T16:56:07","slug":"after-larry-page-founded-alphabet-steve-jobs-told-him-he-was-doing-too-much-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/194580\/","title":{"rendered":"After Larry Page founded Alphabet, Steve Jobs told him he was doing too much"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even from Google\u2019s inception, cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin considered the company\u2019s potential for astronomical growth. Named after \u201cgoogol<\/a>,\u201d the term for the numeral 1 with 100 zeros behind it, Google, then just a search engine founded in 1998, would become as large as the internet would allow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The company has far exceeded the parameters of just the internet. Valued at about $1.9 trillion, Alphabet<\/a> Inc., Google\u2019s parent company, ranks No. 1 on Fortune\u2019s 2026 Most Innovative Companies list<\/a>. Broken into four segments<\/a>, Alphabet\u2019s reach spans from services like Search and Youtube, to cloud computing, to Waymo, to private equity, to its DeepMind AI research<\/p>\n

Page, the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of about $295 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index<\/a>, has certainly reaped the rewards of Alphabet\u2019s success. With stints as CEO of Google from 1997 to 2001 and 2011 to 2015, and of Alphabet until 2019, Page remains a board member and shareholder<\/a> of his company, effectively controlling it alongside cofounder Brin, who has gotten increasingly involved again in the company\u2019s AI charge. Brin is the world\u2019s fourth-wealthiest person, with a net worth of $274 billion.<\/p>\n

Wednesday marks the 22nd anniversary of Google\u2019s IPO, and while the company has grown immensely over that time, it was Apple<\/a> cofounder Steve Jobs who imparted some prescient wisdom about the its future, which now boasts the second-largest<\/a> market capitalization in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Page visited Jobs toward the end of Jobs\u2019 life in 2011 to receive some frank advice from his mentor: \u201cThe main thing I stressed was focus,\u201d Jobs said, according to Walter Isaacson<\/a>, author of Jobs\u2019 biography. \u201cIt\u2019s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they\u2019re dragging you down. They\u2019re turning you into Microsoft<\/a>. They\u2019re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was right,\u201d Page told Fortune\u2018s former CEO Alan Murray<\/a> at Fortune\u2019s Global Forum in 2015, just days after Alphabet\u2019s October founding. \u201cI mean, he did fine as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking Jobs\u2019s advice<\/p>\n

Page did listen to his advice at first, telling employees to focus on Android products and the now-defunct Google+. But the growth of Alphabet suggested the company was poised for bigger things, and more of them.<\/p>\n

Alphabet was designed as a container for Google\u2019s future ventures, even its more esoteric ideas such as glucose-monitoring contact lenses<\/a>. While Page conceded that Jobs was correct on some level, he also believed that Alphabet\u2019s ventures were interconnected and that energy, telecommunications, and transportation all fit under its umbrella.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI always thought it was kind of stupid if you have this big company, and you can only do, like, five things,\u201d Page said in a 2014 fireside chat<\/a> with Khosla Ventures, taking a jab at Jobs.<\/p>\n

Page and Brin were so certain of Alphabet\u2019s name and purpose that they didn\u2019t even market test it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to have a name that people would be proud to work for,\u201d Page said. \u201cBut [I] actually didn\u2019t want it to be too catchy because the idea really wasn\u2019t to have a consumer brand in the way that Google is, but really a brand for companies to be part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alphabet was a brand for its employees and investors, Page said. But he doesn\u2019t take credit for the name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI chose Google, so [Sergey] chose Alphabet.\u201d<\/p>\n

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on March 26, 2024.<\/p>\n

More on Alphabet:<\/p>\n

Elon Musk delivers \u2018totally nuts<\/a>\u2019 plan for moon robots and $1 trillion revenue target, but capex tanks SpaceX on debut earnings<\/p>\n

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai\u2019s new $692 million compensation package<\/a> hinges on the success of two Google moonshots that aren\u2019t making any money<\/p>\n

Google, Meta<\/a>, and Oracle<\/a> are on a $1 trillion borrowing spree<\/a> and there will be \u2018winners and losers in this environment,\u2019 bond fund manager says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even from Google\u2019s inception, cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin considered the company\u2019s potential for astronomical growth. Named…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[166],"tags":[2104,864,767,13789,812,816,614,1021,2862],"class_list":["post-194580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-larry-page","tag-alphabet","tag-cloud-computing","tag-evergreen-refresh","tag-fortune-global-forum","tag-google","tag-larry-page","tag-sergey-brin","tag-steve-jobs","tag-waymo"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117123231664472078","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}