Larry Page Just Got Even Richer: His Obscene Net Worth, Who He Passed, and Why Anyone Cares
Alright, let's get one thing straight: Another billionaire waltzing around with Scrooge McDuck money ain't exactly news, is it? But Larry Page, creeping up to the #2 spot on the "World's Richest" list with a cool $272 billion? That’s… well, it's a symptom. A big, flashing, neon sign pointing to the tech bubble 2.0 – or is it 3.0 now? I've lost count.
The AI Hype Train & Page's Rocket Ride
So, Page is suddenly richer than Croesus because Alphabet's stock is doing the lambada. Why? AI, of course. Google’s new Gemini 3 model is supposedly the bee's knees, beating out ChatGPT. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is even tweeting about it. Give me a break. When rival CEOs start cheerleading your product, it’s either legit amazing or… everyone's just trying to pump up the stock price. Probably the latter.
Shares of Alphabet jumped 6.3% on the news, pushing Page’s net worth up by nearly $15 billion in one session. Let's be real, that's more than most countries' GDP. And it's all built on… what, exactly? A chatbot that can write slightly better marketing copy? A promise of AI chips Meta might use in 2027?
Don't get me wrong, AI is a big deal. But the market's reaction feels like that time everyone bought Pets.com stock. Remember that sock puppet? Probably not, because you've repressed the memory. But the point is, hype doesn't equal long-term value. So, is Gemini really that revolutionary, or is it just the shiny new toy that's distracting everyone from the fact that Google still makes most of its money from… ads?
The Ellison Eclipse: A Sign of the Times?
Page dethroning Oracle's Larry Ellison is the real kicker here. Ellison, the king of databases and enterprise software, the guy who practically invented the modern tech mogul. Now he's playing second fiddle to the Google guy? It's symbolic. It's like watching the old guard get steamrolled by the new.
Ellison’s net worth has been sliding as Oracle shares take a nosedive. Is it because Oracle is suddenly irrelevant? No. It’s because the market is obsessed with AI, and anything that isn’t AI is suddenly old news. This is a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire.
It's a zero-sum game. For Page to gain, someone else has to lose. And right now, it seems like anyone not riding the AI wave is getting left behind.
The Questionable Ascent
Let's not forget who Larry Page is. Larry Page education and career path: The Stanford grad and Google founder who is now the world’s third-richest person, Stanford grad, co-founder of Google with Sergey Brin back in '98. He stepped down as CEO of Alphabet in 2019, but still pulls the strings. And now, thanks to the AI frenzy, he's sitting on a quarter of a trillion dollars.
But what has Page actually done lately? Flew off to some private island somewhere? Invested in flying cars that probably won't ever work? I mean, good for him, I guess. But there's something deeply unsettling about this level of wealth accumulation, especially when so many people are struggling just to make rent.
And what about the bigger picture? Google's dominance in search, its control over information, its influence on… well, everything. Should one person, even a brilliant one, really have that much power? And is it healthy for the economy when so much wealth is concentrated in the hands of so few?
Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. Maybe I'm just jealous that I didn't invent a search engine.