Class of 2009! First I’d like you to get up, wave and cheer your supportive family and friends! Show your love!
It is a great honor for me to be here today.
Now wait a second. I know: that’s such a cliché. You’re
thinking: every graduation speaker says that – It’s a great honor. But, in my
case, it really is so deeply true – being here is more special and more
personal for me than most of you know. I’d like to tell you why.
A long time ago, in the cold September of 1962, there was a
Steven’s co-op at this very university. That co-op had a kitchen with a ceiling
that had been cleaned by student volunteers every decade or so. Picture a
college girl named Gloria, climbing up high on a ladder, struggling to clean
that filthy ceiling. Standing on the floor, a young boarder named Carl was
admiring the view. And that’s how they met. They were my parents, so I suppose
you could say I’m a direct result of that kitchen chemistry experiment, right
here at Michigan. My Mom is here with us today, and we should probably go find
the spot and put a plaque up on the ceiling that says: "Thanks Mom and
Dad!"
Everyone in my family went to school here at Michigan: me,
my brother, my Mom and Dad – all of us. My Dad actually got the quantity
discount: all three and a half of his degrees are from here. His Ph.D. was in
Communication Science because they thought Computers were just a passing fad.
He earned it 44 years ago. He and Mom made a big sacrifice for that. They
argued at times over pennies, while raising my newborn brother. Mom typed my
Dad’s dissertation by hand. This velvet hood I’m wearing, this was my Dad’s. And this diploma, just
like the one you’re are about to get, that was my Dad’s. And my underwear, that
was… oh never mind.
My father’s father worked in the Chevy plant in Flint,
Michigan. He was an assembly line worker. He drove his two children here to Ann
Arbor, and told them: That is where you’re going to go to college. Both his
kids did graduate from Michigan. That was the American dream. His daughter,
Beverly, is with us today. My Grandpa used to carry an "Alley Oop"
hammer – a heavy iron pipe with a hunk of lead melted on the end. The workers
made them during the sit-down strikes to protect themselves. When I was growing
up, we used that hammer whenever we needed to pound a stake or something into
the ground. It is wonderful that most people don’t need to carry a heavy blunt
object for protection anymore. But just in case, I have it here.
My Dad became a professor at uh… Michigan State, and I was
an incredibly lucky boy. A professor’s life is pretty flexible, and he was able
to spend oodles of time raising me. Could there be a better upbringing than
university brat?
What I’m trying to tell you is that this is WAY more than
just a homecoming for me. It’s not easy for me to express how proud I am to be
here, with my Mom, my brother and my wife Lucy, and with all of you, at this
amazing institution that is responsible for my very existence. I am thrilled
for all of you, and I’m thrilled for your families and friends, as all of us
join the great, big Michigan family I feel I’ve been a part of all of my life.
What I’m also trying to tell you is that I know exactly what
it feels like to be sitting in your seat, listening to some old gasbag give a
long-winded commencement speech. Don’t worry. I’ll be brief.
I have a story about following dreams. Or maybe more
accurately, it’s a story about finding a path to make those dreams real.
You know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the
night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don’t have a pencil and pad
by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning?
Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I
suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and
just keep the links and… I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is
important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night
scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work. Soon after, I
told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download
the web – he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise
enough to not tell me. The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I
had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn’t even on the radar.
But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking webpages to make a
really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream
shows up, grab it!
When I was here at Michigan, I had actually been taught how
to make dreams real! I know it sounds funny, but that is what I learned in a
summer camp converted into a training program called Leadershape. Their slogan
is to have a "healthy disregard for the impossible". That program
encouraged me to pursue a crazy idea at the time: I wanted to build a personal
rapid transit system on campus to replace the buses. It was a futuristic way of
solving our transportation problem. I still think a lot about transportation –
you never loose a dream, it just incubates as a hobby. Many things that people
labor hard to do now, like cooking, cleaning, and driving will require much
less human time in the future. That is, if we "have a healthy disregard
for the impossible" and actually build new solutions.
I think it is often easier to make progress on
mega-ambitious dreams. I know that sounds completely nuts. But, since no one
else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. There are so few
people this crazy that I feel like I know them all by first name. They all
travel as if they are pack dogs and stick to each other like glue. The best
people want to work the big challenges. That is what happened with Google. Our
mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally
accessible and useful. How can that not get you excited? But we almost didn’t
start Google because my co-founder Sergey and I were too worried about dropping
out of our Ph.D. program. You are probably on the right track if you feel like
a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm! That is about how we felt after we maxed
out three credit cards buying hard disks off the back of a truck. That was the
first hardware for Google. Parents and friends: more credit cards always help.
What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard
on something uncomfortably exciting!
As a Ph.D. student, I actually had three projects I wanted
to work on. Thank goodness my advisor said, "why don’t you work on the web
for a while". He gave me some seriously good advice because the web was
really growing with people and activity, even in 1995! Technology and
especially the internet can really help you be lazy. Lazy? What I mean is a
group of three people can write software that millions can use and enjoy. Can
three people answer the phone a million times a day? Find the leverage in the world,
so you can be more lazy!
Overall, I know it seems like the world is crumbling out
there, but it is actually a great time in your life to get a little crazy,
follow your curiosity, and be ambitious about it. Don’t give up on your dreams.
The world needs you all!
So here’s my final story:
On a day like today, you might feel exhilarated — like
you’ve just been shot out of a cannon at the circus – and even invincible.
Don’t ever forget that incredible feeling. But also: always remember that the
moments we have with friends and family, the chances we have to do things that
might make a big difference in the world, or even to make a small difference to
someone you love — all those wonderful chances that life gives us, life also
takes away. It can happen fast, and a whole lot sooner than you think.
In late March 1996, soon after I had moved to Stanford for
grad school, my Dad had difficultly breathing and drove to the hospital. Two
months later, he died. And that was it. I was completely devastated. Many years
later, after a startup, after falling in love, and after so many of life’s
adventures, I found myself thinking about my Dad. Lucy and I were far away in a
steaming hot village walking through narrow streets. There were wonderful
friendly people everywhere, but it was a desperately poor place – people used
the bathroom inside and it flowed out into the open gutter and straight into
the river. We touched a boy with a limp leg, the result of paralysis from
polio. Lucy and I were in rural India – one of the few places where Polio still
exists. Polio is transmitted fecal to oral, usually through filthy water. Well,
my Dad had Polio. He went on a trip to Tennessee in the first grade and caught
it. He was hospitalized for two months and had to be transported by military
DC-3 back home – his first flight. My Dad wrote, "Then, I had to stay in
bed for over a year, before I started back to school". That is actually a
quote from his fifth grade autobiography. My Dad had difficulty breathing his
whole life, and the complications of Polio are what took him from us too soon.
He would have been very upset that Polio still persists even though we have a
vaccine. He would have been equally upset that back in India we had polio virus
on our shoes from walking through the contaminated gutters that spread the
disease. We were spreading the virus with every footstep, right under beautiful
kids playing everywhere. The world is on the verge of eliminating polio, with
328 people infected so far this year. Let’s get it done soon. Perhaps one of
you will do that.
My Dad was valedictorian of Flint Mandeville High School
1956 class of about 90 kids. I happened across his graduating speech recently,
and it blew me away. 53 years ago at his graduation my Dad said: "…we are
entering a changing world, one of automation and employment change where
education is an economic necessity. We will have increased periods of time to
do as we wish, as our work week and retirement age continue to decline. … We
shall take part in, or witness, developments in science, medicine, and industry
that we can not dream of today. … It is said that the future of any nation can
be determined by the care and preparation given to its youth. If all the youths
of America were as fortunate in securing an education as we have been, then the
future of the United States would be even more bright than it is today."
If my Dad was alive today, the thing I think he would be
most happy about is that Lucy and I have a baby in the hopper. I think he would
have been annoyed that I hadn’t gotten my Ph.D. yet (thanks, Michigan!). Dad
was so full of insights, of excitement about new things, that to this day, I
often wonder what he would think about some new development. If he were here
today – well, it would be one of the best days of his life. He’d be like a kid
in a candy store. For a day, he’d be young again.
Many of us are fortunate enough to be here with family. Some
of us have dear friends and family to go home to. And who knows, perhaps some
of you, like Lucy and I, are dreaming about future families of your own. Just
like me, your families brought you here, and you brought them here. Please keep
them close and remember: they are what really matters in life.
Thanks, Mom; Thanks, Lucy.
And thank you, all, very much.
By: Google Press
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