Google cofounder Larry Page’s career Advice: Embrace technology to be more lazy

Google cofounder Larry Page delivered unconventional wisdom to University of Michigan graduates in 2009, telling them that “technology, and especially the internet, can really help you be lazy.” The billionaire tech mogul, now worth $174 billion according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, encouraged students to seek leverage through technology rather than traditional hard work.

Page’s advice came during a commencement address where he reflected on Google’s origins at Stanford University in the late 1990s. He credited his advisor’s suggestion to “work on the web for a while” as pivotal to creating the search engine that would revolutionize information access. The timing proved fortuitous, as the internet was experiencing explosive growth and investment during that period.