Craig Silverstein

First director of technology at Google; dean of infrastructure at Khan Academy

• Born: 1972
• Birthplace: Guam

Primary Company/Organization: Google

Introduction

As the first employee hired by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Craig Silverstein will always have a special place in the history of the organization. Google's rapid rise was greatly assisted by Silverstein's deep computer programming skills and his commitment to providing users of the Google search engine with efficiency, accuracy, and speed.

Early Life

Craig Silverstein was born in Guam. At the age of four, he, along with his parents, Burton and Janet, who were both practicing physicians, moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The family then settled in Gainesville, Florida, two years later. In Gainesville, he attended Brentwood School, Westwood Middle School, and Gainesville High School. After receiving a perfect 1,600 on his Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), he was accepted into Harvard University in 1990, where he studied computer science. He was a highly decorated student at Harvard and received the Microsoft Technical Scholarship in 1993, along with the Derek Bok Award for Teaching Excellence in 1992 and 1993. In 1994, he graduated from Harvard with an A.B. degree in computer science.

In the summers of 1992 and 1993, Silverstein worked as a software design engineer at Microsoft Corporation in Seattle, Washington. With this job, he was offered a unique and deep glimpse into the computer software development process. With his deep academic and work experience, Silverstein was accepted in the computer science doctoral program at Stanford University. As a doctoral student, he was supervised by Rajeev Motwani. Silverstein's research focused on data mining, algorithms, and information retrieval. He became extremely proficient at organizing large data sets and, in particular, was an accomplished user of Scatter/Gather, a document-browsing tool. He complemented his research with summer work at the nearby Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC).

Life's Work

In 1996, Silverstein was shown a search engine that had been developed as a research project by friends and fellow Stanford doctoral students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Referred to as BackRub, this search engine could direct searches to the backlinks of websites. Silverstein was immediately impressed and began creating certain compression algorithms for the development of the search engine. Slowly, the search engine evolved into a tool that could navigate quickly and efficiently through the Internet. Most important, the search engine used a system called PageRank, which determined the significance of certain websites based primarily on the number of links each website possessed.

The search engine caught the eye of several Stanford professors, including Silverstein's supervisor, Motwani, and further guidance was given. After the founders received $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, a Stanford alumnus and a founder of Sun Microsystems, Google, Inc. was founded. Initially, Google was run from Sergey Brin's dormitory room, but after a few weeks the small-scale operations were moved to a garage in Menlo Park. Susan Wojcicki, the owner of the garage, rented the space to Page and Brin for $1,700 per month.

After Google was created, Silverstein became the company's first employee and was named the director of technology. Upon accepting the position, Silverstein decided to take a leave of absence from his doctoral studies. His new responsibilities centered on refining and updating Google's capabilities through new programming projects. He was also a central figure in the company's product development.

By 1999, Google had become recognized in information technology circles as a dynamic search engine. By August, the company had moved out of its garage offices and settled into a Mountain View, California, location. In 2000, Google partnered with Yahoo! and became the main search engine for Yahoo!'s directory. Soon afterward, the company, with the assistance of Silverstein, released a new index that had more than 1 billion uniform resource locators (URLs). This retrieval capability made Google the largest search engine on the World Wide Web.

The rapid success of Google did not diminish the unique company culture, which, from the outset, centered on providing a comfortable atmosphere for all of its employees. What separates Google from other major companies is an open and relaxed, if intense, environment that connects senior management with every employee in the company. The ethos of Google is centered on the belief that each employee can offer a special skill, no matter how trivial or humorous. For example, Silverstein complemented his deep programming and technology skills with baking. Once a week, Silverstein would bake a loaf of bread and share the bread with his coworkers.

Throughout the 2000s, Google rapidly progressed and became the premier online search engine. In 2002, the company's revenue was near $300 million. By 2003, nearly 150 million searches per day were being processed. The search engine remained geared toward the user and ultimately never used any banner ads. As the decade progressed and under Silverstein's quiet guidance, dynamic products were introduced. In 2003, the company started using a news service. Later in the decade, Gmail was introduced, along with Google Maps, Google Books, and the Android. These products and many other accessories assisted in Google's evolution and helped to maintain its popularity.

In 2004, the company had an initial public offering (IPO); initial valuation of the company was around $27 billion. Five years later, the value of Google was near $140 billion. Although Silverstein has never revealed his net worth to the public, financial experts in 2010 believed that his assets exceeded $800 million.

By the late 2000s, Silverstein could often be spotted giving lectures about Google at universities and other public forums. His humble and laid-back personality appealed to many, and he was known as an excellent company representative. By 2010, Silverstein was working in Google's New York office, where he was involved in a project that focused on offering to the public some of Google's internal programming codes.

By early 2012, Silverstein was at a crossroads in his Google career. After fourteeen years, he was searching for greater challenges. After being offered a programmer position with Khan Academy, a small online education company, he decided to resign from Google. Upon announcing his resignation, Silverstein emphasized in an e-mail to his fellow Google employees that his fourteen years in the company were extremely special and memorable. At Khan, Silverstein assists in the development of free online education tools for children across the world. He believes that online education offers students and educators a transparent environment for learning and is convinced that technology in the academic environment has tremendous room for advancement. Silverstein was once again faced with tackling the challenges that exist in a small start-up company.

Personal Life

Silverstein, who married Mary Obelnicki in 2012, maintains a quiet life outside his business interests. In a 2010 interview, he revealed that he was a Muppets fan and that he was a strict vegetarian.

Bibliography

Clark, Anthony. “Gainesville's Silverstein Excited about Life after Google.” Gainesville Sun 29 Feb. 2012. Web. 20 Aug. 2012. Details the departure of Silverstein from Google for Khan Academy. Provides some personal details about Silverstein.

Edmonston, Peter. “Google's I.P.O., Five Years Later.” New York Times 19 Aug. 2009. Web. 20 Aug. 2012. Analysis of the company's IPO in historical context. Examines how the company evolved after the milestone day of the offering.

Edwards, Douglas. I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59. Boston: Houghton, 2011. Print. A unique perspective on Google offered by the company's first director of marketing and brand management.

Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon, 2011. Print. An inside look at the company culture of Google. The author was given direct access to the major figures in Google; the book is thus based on numerous discussions and interviews with the leading personalities in the company.

Silverstein, Craig. “In Conversation with Craig Silverstein, Khan Academy.” Interview by Arun Saigal. Lokvani 16 Aug. 2012. Web. 20 Aug. 2012. One of the first interviews with Silverstein, published after his departure from Google. Topics covered include Silverstein's childhood, his experiences at Google, and his new role at Khan Academy.

---. “Mercury News Interview: Craig Silverstein, Google's First Employee.” Interview by Mike Swift. Mercury News 8 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Aug. 2012. Silverstein details everything from his first car to his SAT scores.

---, Hannes Marais, Monika Henzinger, and Michael Moricz. “Analysis of a Very Large Web Search Engine Query Log.” SIGIR Forum 33.1 (1999). Web. 20 Aug. 2012. A technical analysis of the query methods of the AltaVista search engine. Provides an interesting look into the query methods prevalent during the mid- to late 1990s.

Tate, Ryan. “How a Tech Non-profit Became the Hottest Ticket in Silicon Valley.” Wired 25 June 2012. Web. 20 Aug. 2012. Covers the evolution of the start-up Khan Academy and provides insight into why Silverstein decided to join the company.

Vise, David A., and Mark Malseed. The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media and Technology Success of Our Time. New York: Delacorte, 2008. Print. An in-depth description of Google's rise. Emphasis is on Larry Page and Sergey Brin.