Co-Founder & Director, Google
Google founder Sergey Brin in Moscow (lost interview, May 19, 2008).
🌃 In this interview, the founder of Google shares his unique vision for the future of technology and the development of the ...
About Sergey Brin
In May and June 2025, Sergey Brin made several public appearances discussing the future of AI and Google's work. At Google IO in May 2025, Brin said he did not think "we really know what the world looks like in 10 years" due to the rate of progress in AI. He also commented on the simulation hypothesis, stating that if humans are in a simulation, the argument would apply recursively, leading to an "infinite stack of simulations" or a need for a "stopping criteria." He said he does not believe humans are "really equipped to reason about sort of one level up in the hierarchy." At an AGI House event in June 2025, Brin discussed the convergence of specialized models into general ones, noting that "increasingly our main Gemini LLMs can be the state-of-the-art for math" and other scientific questions. He defined AGI as "the idea of the AI can actually improve itself," while acknowledging that others define it as an AI that can "do anything a person can do." Brin said he felt "very good about where Gemini is" but acknowledged that Google was "a little bit late on really focusing deeply" on coding, giving kudos to competitors like GPT-5.5 for overnight coding tasks while pitching Gemini 3.5 Flash for speed. On the Moonshot Podcast, Brin reflected on X's work, saying the company was "premature at productizing" some projects like Google Glass, but that it served as a "phenomenal learning platform." He also expressed interest in Von Neumann machines, describing the concept of building something that can "build itself" and "exponentially build something."
Transcript (20 segments)
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Interviewer0:00
When you learned yesterday about the Russian team's victory over the Canadians in the World Championship final, were you happy or disappointed?
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Sergey Brin0:06
No, no, I was happy. I didn't even know about the game beforehand, but when I saw all the happy Muscovites on the streets with Russian flags and so on, it was very pleasant. I was happy, of course, and congratulations to all the Luzhniki fans.
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Interviewer0:26
Now about the internet. For many years, people have been saying that traditional media—newspapers, radio, television—will be completely replaced by the internet, but for some reason this isn't happening. Why?
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Sergey Brin0:38
I don't think they will be replaced by the internet. The internet is a different type of pipe, so to speak. I mean, there are newspapers on the internet, there are television stations on the internet. I think it's just a different outlet for them. Some things will be printed on paper, some things will be electronic, and more and more will be electronic, but we still need newspapers, we need writers, we need interviews to be conducted and so on. So I don't think one thing will end and another will begin.
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Interviewer1:12
There is an opinion that the growing video on the internet creates such a large load on computers and nodes that the internet might collapse under the strain. What do you think?
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Sergey Brin1:25
No, well, the internet has existed for over 30 years. And there have always been certain things that people wanted to do that were the biggest, that used the most bandwidth. And I think that will always be true. There will always be something that is quite large. And right now video is one such thing, but what actually happens is that people develop technology faster. And I see this happening. I think, actually, video helps the internet because it gives companies that build networks and so on an incentive to build networks faster.
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Interviewer2:09
It's commonly said that we now live in the era of Web 2.0, where users not only read but also write and create internet content. But this creates many problems. Many even say the internet has become like a dump where it's impossible to find anything properly. According to the latest statistics, nine out of ten emails are spam. How will this be fought? There is a theory that Web 3.0 will replace Web 2.0, an internet where you need a passport to enter.
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Sergey Brin2:41
I don't think you need a passport to enter. When did the web start? Actually, the first versions of the web, developed in Switzerland, were exactly as you describe Web 2.0. That is, all users could both read and write. And actually, it was only for a while that it wasn't so popular, and now it's popular again. I think it's very important to have a lot of information from many different people, from many different users. And it's the job of companies like ours and others to help people browse the best, most interesting things for them. That's why we have very good anti-spam on Gmail, for example. That's why in search it's very important to give results in the right order so there aren't such bad things. But in principle, having more information is better, because even if it's not all very good, you will also have more good information, and companies like us need to distinguish between them.
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Interviewer3:53
So you are against the internet becoming less anonymous but more secure?
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Sergey Brin3:58
I think that some sites can be less anonymous, and maybe it makes sense to know that a specific person wrote this thing, but some other things are useful to have anonymously. You need to have all possibilities.
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Interviewer4:14
Your company developed a tool that in the future will help unite all social networks. It's called Google Friend Connect, right? But some major market players, like here in Russia, we asked the owners of the major social network Odnoklassniki.ru, which is very popular, they also don't really support the idea of sharing information about their users with you. So will they continue to exist separately, or will you manage to unite them?
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Sergey Brin4:41
I hope they will unite. And, well, first of all, it's completely safe. Everything was carefully created so there wouldn't be problems with this. The main thing I've noticed in many areas is that companies initially try to be closed, but over time it always turns out that they can be more successful if they can be open, so that more other companies can work with them, so that more users can work with them. I think that over time they will see this too.
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Interviewer5:20
The internet is now rapidly penetrating mobile devices. From my cell phone, I can read email, check the TV schedule, open a map, find the right street. What is the future here? Will the internet penetrate all the way to irons and coffee makers?
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Sergey Brin5:38
I think there are already coffee makers that are on the internet. But I think you are absolutely right that mobile phones, the internet on them, is a very important thing. And right now, the internet on a phone doesn't work as well as when you're sitting at a computer on a fast connection. But in the future, I hope it will get closer and closer. And phones are becoming faster and faster. They have better and better screens. And all these things are changing. And it's very convenient to have something on you that can connect to the internet, that knows where you are. Many more people in the world have mobile phones than have computers that are on the internet. So, I think that's a big part of the future of the internet.
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Interviewer6:34
Your company is turning 10 years old this year. In just 10 years, you managed to quickly topple the search kings like Yahoo, AltaVista, and others from their pedestal thanks to your search algorithm, which is very effective and easily finds the right information on the internet. It's known that your example of earning billions of dollars with your own mind has inspired hundreds, thousands of young programmers around the world. And now they are all actively, including in Russia, trying to create a so-called Google killer, a new search engine that would better match user queries and provide even higher quality results. For example, using artificial intelligence technology. Do you think this is realistic, and in what ways can search be improved now?
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Sergey Brin7:24
I think there are many ways to improve search. And we often work with many people who improve it. In some situations, we have partners we work with. In some situations, there are scientists to whom we give money so they can improve search. In some situations, we buy small companies that have certain search technologies. We now have a fairly large system with many components, so redoing all the components is quite difficult. But it's quite possible to significantly improve a specific thing.
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Interviewer8:01
There was a joke that if you type 'more evil than Satan' into the Google search bar, it finds the Microsoft company page. You are known for your negative attitude towards Microsoft's possible monopoly. Do you use their products yourself?
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Sergey Brin8:23
First of all, it was a coincidence. It's not that we did it specially to make it happen. Sometimes there are such interesting results because, for example, many people wrote about Microsoft, that it's my Microsoft, so I want to explain this. Yes, yes, I use many different products, including Microsoft, but I also use a lot of Apple. I have my MacBook Air with me right now. I highly recommend this computer. I use Linux, and at home, of course, I use our Docs and Spreadsheets to write and so on. But I also use Microsoft products, yes, because it's important in my field to use as many different products as possible, and I don't exclude anyone.
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Interviewer9:13
You've earned a huge fortune, you're a very wealthy person. Why do you still work now?
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Sergey Brin9:21
I enjoy my work. Whether I'm rich or not, I'm happy because I enjoy what I do. And that, actually, is the main wealth.