Sergey Brin and Larry Page are Financial Times men of the year

While, the Time magazine chose to name Bill Gates and his wife along with U2 singer Bono as the Time’s ‘Persons of the Year’, Financial Times have gone with somewhat more acceptable choices. FT has named the founders of Google Inc. Sergey Brin and Larry Page as their men of the year for the year 2005.

These two people are credited with starting what is today one of the most sough after tech companies in the United States. Google is not only the world’s most popular online search engine but has also become a part of the vocabulary as a popular verb. The company, which was founded just seven years ago, is now challenging Microsoft as they enter the next phase of the internet and Microsoft faces a strong challenge for the first time in many years in their industry.

Google’s IPO has also made big news this year as their current stock position places the net worth of the company at an amazing USD 130 billion. This brings them close to the giants of the industry IBM and is only trailed by biggest like Intel and Microsoft. However, the Google guys are not resting on their laurels, as they believe that there is much more to be done and achieved.

Brin said in a statement: “It’s clear there’s a lot of room for improvement, there’s no inherent ceiling we’re hitting up on. Google has a large computational infrastructure — that could be very useful for microbiology or computational biology. I don’t think we particularly restrict ourselves or have a 20-year vision or anything like that. I don’t think we’re averse to doing something new.”

These two great individuals beat out other potential candidates for the title in the form of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko as per the statement released by the Financial Times.