Lawrence Edward Page is an American businessman, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin.
Evan "Ev" Clark Williams is an American billionaire technology entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Twitter, and was its CEO from 2008 to 2010, and a member of its board from 2007 to 2019. He founded Blogger and Medium, two of the largest blogging internet platforms. In 2014, he co-founded the venture capital firm Obvious Ventures. As of February 2022, his net worth is estimated at US$2.1 billion.
B. Kevin Turner is an American businessman and investor who is the chairman of Zayo Group and the vice chairman of Albertsons/Safeway Inc.
Google was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to market Google Search, which has become the most used web-based search engine. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, students at Stanford University in California, developed a search algorithm first (1996) known as "BackRub", with the help of Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg. The search engine soon proved successful and the expanding company moved several times, finally settling at Mountain View in 2003. This marked a phase of rapid growth, with the company making its initial public offering in 2004 and quickly becoming one of the world's largest media companies. The company launched Google News in 2002, Gmail in 2004, Google Maps in 2005, Google Chrome in 2008, and the social network known as Google+ in 2011, in addition to many other products. In 2015, Google became the main subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet Inc.
Donald Allan Mattrick is a Canadian businessman who previously was the CEO of social gaming company Zynga and the president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft in 2007, Mattrick worked at Electronic Arts for 15 years as the president of Worldwide Studios. In 1982, he founded Distinctive Software, which was later acquired by Electronic Arts in 1991 and renamed to EA Vancouver.
Amitabh Kumar "Amit" Singhal is a former senior vice president at Google Inc., having been a Google Fellow and the head of Google's Search team for 15 years.
Andrew E. Rubin is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. Rubin founded Android Inc. in 2003, which was acquired by Google in 2005; Rubin served as a Google vice president for nine years and led Google's efforts in creating and promoting the Android operating system for mobile phones and other devices during most of his tenure. Rubin left Google in 2014 after allegations of sexual misconduct, although it was presented as a voluntary departure rather than a dismissal at first. Rubin then served as co-founder and CEO of venture capital firm Playground Global from 2015 to 2019. Rubin also helped found Essential Products in 2015, a mobile phone start-up that closed in 2020 without finding a buyer. In 2019, Rubin was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame.
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. Activision Blizzard currently includes five business units: Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, King, Major League Gaming, and Activision Blizzard Studios.
Robert A. Kotick is an American businessman who served as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Activision Blizzard and previously Activision from 1991 to 2023. He became the CEO of Activision after purchasing a company stake the previous year. Kotick engineered a merger between Activision and Vivendi Games during the late 2000s, which led to the creation of Activision Blizzard in 2008 and him being named the company's inaugural CEO. He has also served on several boards, including The Coca-Cola Company from 2012 to 2022, and Yahoo! from 2003 to 2008. Following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, Kotick retired from the company on December 29, 2023.
Kevin R. Johnson is an American businessman and software engineer who was the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Starbucks Coffee Company from 2017 to 2022. Succeeding Howard Schultz as CEO, Johnson previously was the company's president and chief operating officer from 2015 to 2017. On March 16, 2022, Johnson announced that he was stepping down as CEO, Schultz would take over as CEO in the interim. Johnson joined the board of directors of Goldman Sachs in late 2022.
Pichai Sundararajan, better known as Sundar Pichai, is an Indian-born American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google.
David Carl Drummond is an American business executive and former lawyer. He served as senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer for Alphabet Inc., and, formerly, for its subsidiary, Google. Prior to joining Google, in 2002, Drummond was a partner at law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and then chief financial officer of software company SmartForce. Drummond retired from Alphabet on January 31, 2020.
Stephen Elop is a Canadian businessman who most recently worked at Australian telecom company Telstra from April 2016. In the past he had worked for Nokia as its first non-Finnish CEO and later as Executive Vice President, Devices & Services, as well as the head of the Microsoft Business Division, as the COO of Juniper Networks, as the president of worldwide field operations at Adobe Systems, in several senior positions in Macromedia and as the CIO at Boston Chicken.
Google+ was a social network that was owned and operated by Google until it ceased operations in 2019. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google products like Google Drive, Blogger and YouTube. The service, Google's fourth foray into social networking, experienced strong growth in its initial years, although usage statistics varied, depending on how the service was defined. Three Google executives oversaw the service, which underwent substantial changes that led to a redesign in November 2015.
Travis Cordell Kalanick is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of Uber. Previously he worked for Scour, a peer-to-peer file sharing application company, and was the co-founder of Red Swoosh, a peer-to-peer content delivery network that was sold to Akamai Technologies in 2007.
Hugo Barra is a Brazilian computer scientist, technology executive and entrepreneur. From 2008 to 2013, he worked in a number of product management roles at Google, including vice president and product spokesperson of its Android division. From 2013 to 2017, he worked at Xiaomi as vice president of global operations. From 2017 to 2021, he worked as vice president of Virtual Reality and head of the Oculus division at Meta Platforms. In May 2021, he left Meta to join health technology startup Detect as CEO.
Sexism in the technology industry is overt, subtle, or covert occupational sexism which makes the technology industry less friendly, less accessible, and less profitable for women. While the participation of women in the tech industry varies by region, it is generally around 4% to 20% depending on the measure used. Possible causes that have been studied by researchers include gender stereotypes, investment influenced by those beliefs, a male-dominated environment, a lack of awareness about sexual harassment, and the culture of the industry itself. Margaret O'Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington, in 2019 concluded that Silicon Valley is uniquely influential locale that is shaping our world. But she points to problematic failures regarding diversity. Male oligopolies of high-tech power have recreated traditional environments that repress the talents and ambitions of women, people of color, and other minorities to the benefit of whites and Asian males.
Thuan Q. Pham is a Vietnamese-American engineer, former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Coupang and Uber, and current CTO of Faire.
AliveCor is a medical device and AI company that develops ECG hardware and software compatible with consumer mobile devices to enable remote heart rhythm monitoring and detection of abnormal heart rhythms, or arrhythmias. AliveCor was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California, the United States.
California Department of Fair Employment and Housing v. Activision Blizzard is a current lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), now the Civil Rights Department (CRD) against video game developer Activision Blizzard in July 2021. The lawsuit asserts that management of Activision Blizzard allowed and at times encouraged sexual misconduct towards female employees, that the company maintained a "frat boy" culture, and that the company's hiring and employment practices were discriminatory against women.
