The big news on Wall Street last year was the initial public offering of Internet search engine Google. If you were a visitor from another planet, you might be asking yourself, What big, sophisticated, high-technology company is behind the success of Google? Could it be IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Oracle, SAP, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Dell, Xerox, Sun Microsystems, Philips or Siemens? Of course not. The brains behind Google are two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who launched the Web site in 1998. Some six years later, the two founders are worth billions.

All the advantages:

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