<p>Eagle: Read my post carefully again, paying attention to the individual words. I noted that Brin was a grad student at Stanford, not an undergrad. And yes, he started working on search engines as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, not in grad school. I did omit Page, however, although I don't really know how much he did. </p>
<p>sakky:</p>
<p>Yes, Silicon Valley is like Pittsburgh of the late 1800's. Like Pittsburgh, most of its jobs (high-tech in one case, steel production in the other) will eventually go overseas.</p>
<p>This is an undeniable fact, as it's already happening now.</p>
<p>I must say I'm really suprised by that Forbes link. I might be wrong, but I only thought that Yang and Filo were millionaires, and I've been told this by several Yahoo employees. I'll reserve judgement about that one. </p>
<p>As for Yahoo's high market value in 2000, the three Stanford founders were no longer an important part of the company back then, even if they did have some lofty titles. Also, just because they have similar market caps doesn't mean Semel hasn't done a hell of a lot for the company. May 2001 was only the beginning of the huge recession, and for Yahoo! to come out virtually unscathed from all of that was incredible. </p>
<p>More importantly, Yahoo! has now branched out into search engines and bought AbuDhabi, the Asian equivalent of Ebay. They're annihliating Google in the Asian market now, and are a much more profitable company with more diverse holdings than when Semel first took over.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and Stanford had no more to do with Silicon Valley's prominence than UCLA had to do with Hollywood's success.</p>