Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin
AGE: 35 and 34, respectively
OCCUPATION: Google founders and
co-presidents, gods
NUMBER OF TIME COVERS: 1
PREVIOUS APPEARANCES ON THE TIME 100: 2
PRO: No one touches their Internet dominance or ad model, and their Web-based approach to apps and services looks poised to overtake all hard-drive based operating systems (i.e., Windows Vista). And Google's stock on a bad day beats yours at the top of its game.
CON: It's been kind of a bad day. Alterations have caused Google's all-important "click-through" rate to drop, hitting its stock and its ad-dollar bottom line. The "gPhone" failed to materialize as an actual phone, and while Google's open-source phone software may yet revolutionize handhelds, tech heads felt let down. Other high-profile projects — most notably the copyright-busting Google Book search — are facing major old-media pushback. Also, Google's lost some high-profile employees to Facebook, its rival in Web cachet, if not business. Maybe it's time to install a Scrabulous button?