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Here's where Google's first 21 employees are now (GOOG, GOOGL)

Most of the original employees at Google have since left the company even founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Susan Wojcicki
  • Many early Googlers became entrepreneurs or executives at other companies. Marissa Mayer, for example, was employee No. 21 she later became CEO of Yahoo.
  • Others have stayed at Google. Susan Wojcicki, Google's 16th employee, is currently the CEO of YouTube.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .

Only a few of Google's earliest employees still work at the internet giant and that no longer includes founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

In 2015, a Quora user compiled a list of all the original Googlers and where there careers have taken them. Some early Google employees have gone on to become entrepreneurs, while others are now angel investors, and a lucky few have gone on to become top executives at other tech companies. A few are happily retired.

Here is what's become of the first 21 employees since launching their careers at Google.

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Jillian D'Onfro and Alyson Shontell contributed to previous versions of this article.

Kate Munsch/Reuters

Employed by Google: June 1999 to July 2012

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Most recent position at Google: VP of local, maps, and location services

Current company/position: Mayer served as CEO of Yahoo from July 2012 until June 2017, leaving the company after the completion of Yahoo's sale to Verizon. These days, Mayer is working on her next venture : Lumi Labs, a startup focused on building productivity apps.

Kendra DiGirolamo/LinkedIn

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Employed by Google: June 1999 to May 2001

Most recent position at Google: Advertising sales coordinator

Current company/position: DiGirolamo most recently worked as a senior business systems analyst at Driscoll's, a family-owned berry farming company.

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John Cogill/AP

Employed by Google: 1999 to at least 2005 (unknown)

Most recent position at Google: Software engineer

Current company/position: Unknown.

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James Reese/LinkedIn

Employed by Google: 1999 to 2005

Most recent position at Google: Chief operations engineer (and " Head Neurosurgeon " he was a physician before coming to Google, and jokes on his LinkedIn that he performed frontal lobotomies at the search giant on Thursday mornings only).

Current company/position: Reese currently serves as a board member for Spark Program a career exploration program for middle schoolers as well as an advisory board member of Harvard Medical School's Department of Biomedical Informatics .

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David Paul Morris/Getty Images

Employed by Google: 1999 to 2006

Mos t recent position at Google: Aigner founded Google's Zurich office in 2004 and was a member of Google's senior staff , according to his LinkedIn page. Specifically, he was in charge of the data center and internet/leased line negotiations, hardware design and purchasing, hardware and network monitoring, and performance optimizations.

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In the book "I'm Feeling Lucky," written by early Google employee Douglas Edwards, Aigner was described as "the flaming sword of frugality ... a cost-cutting obsidian blade."

Current c ompany/position: Aigner lists himself on his LinkedIn profile as an "independent internet professional" based in London. He is also listed as an adviser for Maxeler Technologies, a London-based computer support company for which he is "exploring renewable energy and wireless technologies."

Getty

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Employed by Google: April 1999 to present

Wojcicki was Google's 16th employee, and she followed Google's ninth employee, Salar Kamangar, as YouTube's CEO. In 1998, before Wojcicki even started working for the company, she and her husband rented out their garage and several rooms to the fledgling Google team for $1,700 a month.

Current position at Google: CEO of YouTube since early 2014. Before that , she was SVP of products and commerce, then SVP of YouTube.

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Paul Sakuma/AP

Employed by Google: 1999 to present

Braddi is Google's head of product partnerships and serves on the board of the biochemistry startup Profusa . In her book "Option B," Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg credits Braddi with teaching her how to become more persuasive in meetings.

Current position at Google: Braddi previously served as vice president of search services at Google; now she's vice president of product partnerships.

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Chris Skarakis/LinkedIn

Employed by Google: May 1999 to May 2005

Most recent position at Google: Director of business development

Current Company/Position: Skarakis is the founder of Blip.fm, and also cofounded Fuzz Artists and served as its executive vice president. Skarakis serves on the board of directors for Friends of the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Little Kids Rock. He was formerly on the board of directors for the Kanye West Foundation, which shut down in 2011.

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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Employed by Google: May 1999 to October 2000

Most recent position at Google: Chambers was hired as an executive assistant, and left as an ad sales coordinator.

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Current company/position: Chambers serves as director of strategy and planning at Cisco, according to LinkedIn . Prior to that, she was a program manager for Cisco on Cisco Customer Strategy and Success.

intruefashion/YouTube

Employed by Google: 1999 to 2004

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Most recent position at Google: Business development

Current Company/Position: Schimmel now does some angel investing . His startup investments include HireAthena, Crowdrise, Roozt, and Guide. He also sits on the board of Airspace Systems , a venture-backed startup that makes specialized drones, and is a director at the Joseph Campbell Foundation , which is focused on the study of mythology.

NASDAQ via Getty Images

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Employed by Google: January 1999 to August 2015

Most recent position at Google: Chief business officer and senior adviser

Current company/position: Kordestani left Google in October 2015 to join Twitter as executive chairman. He bought nearly $2 million worth of Twitter stock in 2016.

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Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Employed by Google: 1999 to present

Kamangar served as CEO of YouTube until February 2014, when he stepped down, supposedly in favor of finding a new challenge at Google. Susan Wojcicki took his place.

Current position at Google : SVP of YouTube and video, according to LinkedIn .

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Imo.im

Employed by Google: 1999 to 2005

Most recent position at Google: Harik most recently served as product management director. Harik was one of Google's first 10 employees and was responsible for product and strategy around Gmail, Google Talk, Google Video, Picasa, and more. He was also behind AdSense and the AdWords Online system and was the director of Googlettes, a start-up incubator inside Google.

Current company/position: Harik is now a cofounder of messaging app imo.im , cofounder of hslabs, and an angel investor. He also previously served as an adviser to GV, Alphabet's venture capital arm.

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Matt Weinberger/Business Insider

Employed by Google: 1999 to present

Current position at Google : Hlzle is SVP of technical infrastructure, which means he oversees the design, installation, and operation of Google's servers, networks, and data centers. Before he joined Google in 1999, Holzle was a computer science professor at the UC Santa Barbara.

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Holzle is also on the board of the World Wildlife Fund .

Reuters

Employed by Google: 1999 to unknown

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Most recent position at Google: Though we couldn't find Patel's most recent title, Steven Levy's book "In The Plex " offers some interesting details about him. Patel was instrumental in highlighting the value of Google's search logs. He also asked Eric Schmidt if he could share his office, shortly after Schmidt had joined the company as CEO (Schmidt said yes because he thought it would be "un-Googley" to say no).

Current Company/Position: Unknown.

WashU Engineering/YouTube

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Employed by Google: January 1999 to December 2004

Most recent position at Google: Cheung served as a software engineer at Google. His nickname used to be Harry "Spider-Man" Cheung because he was a "crawl" engineer, monitoring the progress of Google's "spiders" as they indexed the web.

Current company/position: These days, Cheung is an angel investor in startups including Caviar, Qwiki, Badgeville, and PrePay. He's also a founder at Roostify, a home-lending startup, according to LinkedIn .

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Hertz Foundation/YouTube

Employed by Google: January 1999 to March 2003 (he left about 18 months before the IPO, which made him quite wealthy).

Most recent position at Google: Software engineer

Current company/position: Sidney is the co-owner of The Residences at The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain as well as Big George Ventures , a sustainable real-estate developer. He's also a triathlete and an amateur pilot, and he once donated $1 million to help launch a public bus service near Lake Tahoe, according to CNET .

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Bloomberg/YouTube

Employed by Google: 1998 to 2005

Most recent position at Google: Cairns was an HR manager who hired Google's first 200 employees.

Current company/position: Cairns was previously an angel investor who provided funding for women-led companies that are pursuing social ventures. Her LinkedIn now lists her as the president of Coastal Streets, a small real-estate development company in Massachusetts.

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Jillian D'Onfro/Business Insider

Employed by Google: 1998 to 2012

Most recent position at Google: Silverstein worked on various projects, including mentoring engineers and serving as technology director . As Google's third employee, he helped actually build the search engine.

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Current company/position: Silverstein now serves as dean of infrastructure at Khan Academy. He and his wife, Mary Obelnicki, have signed the Giving Pledge , which states that they'll give away the majority of their wealth in their lifetime or in their wills.

Kimberly White/Getty Images

Employed by Google: 1998 to December 2019

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Current position at Google : Besides any cofounder duties, Sergey Brin was overseeing Google X, the company's "moonshot factory," until Google's reorganization in August 2015. After the reorganization, Brin became president of Alphabet, Google's new parent company.

In December 2019, Brin stepped down from his role at Alphabet. He remains a member of the company's board of directors.

Getty / Justin Sullivan

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Employed by Google: 1998 to present

Current position at Google : Page helped found Google. After Google's reorganization, Page became CEO of Google's parent company, Alphabet.

In December 2019, Page stepped down from his role , along with Brin.

"We've never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there's a better way to run the company. And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President," the founders wrote in a blog post at the time.

Page remains on the company's board of directors. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has taken over Page's CEO duties.

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See Also:

SEE ALSO: The most unusual, extravagant ways tech executives like Larry Ellison and Elon Musk have spent their money

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