Google co-founder Sergei Brinn left the Soviet Union when he was five years old, but was able to communicate something of the Stakhanovite work ethic to his co-founder US-born Larry Page.

Page wanted no telephones to be installed near the employees, lest they waste valuable company time making phone calls. This, and more, we learn from a New York Times feature on the company published on Sunday.

The boy wonders Page and Brinn created Google as a research project at Stanford University, but when the two scamps entered the real world, their dorm room eccentricities continued.

It was Page, we learn, who ordered telephones banned from the Google office as he thought they posed a potential distraction to the cubicle-bound staff. He was thwarted by local safety regulations, and as the Times reports "The building now has a phone system."

In the article, Page and Brinn are pictured in the now traditional setting - surrounded by infantile baubles and colorful toys - an innocent Michael Jackson world, where a magical Segway ride is a grasp away.

Full Article:
TheRegister