10 entrepreneurs who changed the world

From Starbucks to Home Depot, here are 10 of the businesses – and their leaders – that author John A. Byrne counts as 'World Changers.'

10. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google

AFP Photo/Google

Page and Brin met at Stanford University when Brin was given the task of showing prospective grad student Page around campus. After Page decided to attend the two became friends and together created a search engine. At first Google was available only to the school. Page says the background and expertise he and Brin had on search engines was invaluable to the company's creation. "We worked on Google together for many years at Stanford before we started the company," he said. "That was a pretty nice position to be in. We understood all aspects of search. We talked to all the search companies. We really knew a lot about what was going on. You can do that pretty cheaply.... [Y]ou can invest a year or two and you can learn something really well before you start having hundreds of people working on the problem."

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