FADE IN:
“Coming from the Soviet Union, I have a great deal of appreciation for the freedoms we have in this country. The ability to do what you want, to think what you want — that is priceless.” — Sergey Brin
ONE
EXODUS
EXT. MOSCOW, SOVIET UNION — DAY — 1978
A gray Moscow street. MICHAEL BRIN (30), a mathematician, walks with his wife EUGENIA (28) and their son SERGEY (5). Michael carries two suitcases. Everything they own is in those suitcases. Sergey holds a small toy airplane.
They approach a government office. A line of people snakes around the block — families waiting for exit visas. Some have been waiting for years. Many will be denied. Those denied will lose their jobs, their apartments, their futures. They are called “refuseniks.”
EUGENIA
(whispering)
Michael, are you sure? If they refuse us, you'll lose your position at the institute. We'll lose everything.
MICHAEL
I've already lost everything that matters. I cannot teach what I want. I cannot research what I want. I cannot think what I want. That is not a life. That is a prison with better food.
Sergey looks up at his father. He doesn't understand the politics. But he understands the fear on his mother's face and the resolve on his father's.
SERGEY (V.O.) (breaking the fourth wall)
I was five when we left. I don't remember much — fragments. Gray buildings. The smell of my grandmother's cooking. My father pacing the apartment at night. What I remember most is the airport. My mother was crying. My father was not. He was a mathematician. He had calculated the odds and decided that freedom was worth any risk. That calculation shaped everything I would become.
INT. MOSCOW AIRPORT — DAY — OCTOBER 1979
The Brin family at passport control. A SOVIET OFFICER examines their documents with deliberate slowness. Michael holds Sergey's hand tightly. Eugenia clutches their papers.
The officer stamps the passports. One by one. The ink hits the paper with a sound that means everything.
They walk through the gate. Michael exhales. His hands are shaking. Outside, on the tarmac, a plane waits to take them to Vienna, then Paris, then America.
MICHAEL
(kneeling to Sergey)
Sergey. Remember this moment. We are free now. Never forget what that cost, and never take it for granted.
The Brin family emigrated to the United States in 1979. Michael became a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland. Eugenia became a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
INT. ADELPHI, MARYLAND — ELEMENTARY SCHOOL — DAY — 1982
SERGEY (9) sits in a classroom, bored. The teacher explains basic multiplication. Sergey has already finished the worksheet and is building a polyhedron out of folded paper. A CLASSMATE whispers.
CLASSMATE
Where are you from? You talk funny.
YOUNG SERGEY
Russia. The Soviet Union. We left because my dad couldn't do math there.
CLASSMATE
They don't have math in Russia?
YOUNG SERGEY
They have math. They don't have freedom. It's hard to explain.
At home, Michael gives Sergey a Commodore 64. Sergey takes to it instantly — not just as a tool, but as a portal. Within months, he is writing programs. Within a year, he is teaching his father new functions.
INT. STANFORD UNIVERSITY — COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT — DAY — 1993
Sergey (20) has entered Stanford's PhD program. He is the youngest student in his cohort. He is also the most restless — he studies everything, takes courses across departments, and does gymnastics in the gym at midnight.
Stanford University. 1993. Sergey Brin enters the PhD program in computer science at age 20 on a National Science Foundation fellowship.
INT. STANFORD CAMPUS — GATES BUILDING — DAY — 1995
Sergey leads a campus tour for prospective students. LARRY PAGE (22) is among them. They disagree about everything — the campus layout, the weather, the best programming language. But underneath the bickering, a connection forms. They think at the same speed.
SERGEY
You argue about everything.
LARRY
Only when I'm right.
SERGEY
Which is when?
LARRY
Always.
SERGEY
(grinning)
This is going to be a problem. Or it's going to be incredible.
CUT TO:
TWO
THE SEARCH
INT. LARRY'S DORM ROOM — STANFORD — NIGHT — 1996
Larry and Sergey are surrounded by hard drives. They have crawled and indexed millions of web pages. Larry has the ranking algorithm — PageRank. Sergey has the data mining expertise to make it scale. Together, they are building BackRub, the prototype search engine.
SERGEY
The results are better than anything on the market. AltaVista, Excite, Lycos — they're all keyword matching. We're doing structural analysis of the entire web. It's like the difference between reading a book and understanding a library.
LARRY
We need to scale it. We need servers. Lots of them.
SERGEY
I called every tech company in the Valley. Yahoo, Excite, AltaVista. Offered to sell the technology for a million dollars.
LARRY
And?
SERGEY
They all said no. Excite said our search was too good — it would send users away from their portal too fast.
They look at each other. The same thought crosses both faces simultaneously.
SERGEY
I guess we build a company.
LARRY
I guess we do.
INT. GOOGLE OFFICES — MOUNTAIN VIEW — DAY — 2002
Google is growing fast. Sergey walks through the engineering floor, a Red Bull in one hand, doing cartwheels between desks. Engineers don't even look up — this is normal. He stops at a whiteboard and writes: “Don't Be Evil.”
ENGINEER
What's that?
SERGEY
Our motto. Our constraint. Every decision we make has to pass this test. If it's evil, we don't do it.
ENGINEER
How do you define evil?
SERGEY
You know it when you see it. And more importantly, you know it when you feel it. That feeling in your stomach when you're about to do something wrong? That's the detection algorithm.
INT. GOOGLE — SERGEY'S OFFICE — DAY — 2004
Sergey paces. On his desk: plans for Gmail, Google Maps, Google Scholar. But he keeps returning to a different folder. The label reads: MOONSHOTS.
SERGEY
Search is solved. Or it will be, with incremental improvements. But what about the things that aren't incremental? What about the things that change the physical world?
He pins photos to his wall: a self-driving car concept, a high-altitude balloon, a contact lens that measures glucose, a neural network diagram.
SERGEY
This is what I want to work on. The crazy stuff.
CUT TO:
THREE
X
INT. GOOGLE X LAB — MOUNTAIN VIEW — NIGHT — 2010
A secret lab within Google. The sign outside says simply: X. Sergey walks through the lab. ASTRO TELLER (40), the head of X, accompanies him. Around them: prototypes of self-driving cars, delivery drones, and internet-beaming balloons.
Google X (later just X). Google's semi-secret research lab. Mission: build technologies that solve huge problems using breakthrough technology.
ASTRO
Project Loon. High-altitude balloons that beam internet to remote areas. We've tested in New Zealand. The stratospheric winds are predictable enough to use as a navigation system.
SERGEY
How many people could we connect?
ASTRO
Hundreds of millions. The entire developing world.
SERGEY
(eyes lighting up)
My family left the Soviet Union because information was controlled. The internet should be free for everyone. Everywhere. If we can put that in the sky — we do it.
EXT. GOOGLE SELF-DRIVING CAR — MOUNTAIN VIEW — DAY — 2012
Sergey sits in the passenger seat of a Google self-driving car — a modified Prius with a spinning LIDAR sensor on the roof. The car navigates traffic with no human input. Sergey's hands are behind his head. He is grinning.
SERGEY
This is going to save a million lives a year. A million. Car accidents are the leading cause of death for young people. We can end that.
ENGINEER
The regulatory challenges are —
SERGEY
Solvable. Every challenge is solvable if the technology is good enough. Make the technology undeniable and the regulations will follow.
INT. UNDISCLOSED HANGAR — NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTER — NIGHT — 2015
A massive hangar. Inside: an airship — not a blimp, but a rigid airship, like a modern Zeppelin. Sergey walks around it, running his hand along the envelope. This is his secret project — a lighter-than-air craft designed for humanitarian aid delivery.
Sergey Brin quietly funded the development of the world's largest airship at a hangar leased from NASA.
SERGEY
(to an engineer)
The airship doesn't need runways. It can hover. It can deliver supplies anywhere — disaster zones, islands, places with no infrastructure. And it runs on helium and electricity. Zero emissions.
ENGINEER
People will think you're crazy. Airships? After the Hindenburg?
SERGEY
The Hindenburg used hydrogen. This uses helium. Big difference. And yes, people will think I'm crazy. They thought I was crazy about search, too.
SERGEY (V.O.) (breaking the fourth wall)
People ask why I fund airships, self-driving cars, and moonshots instead of just enjoying being rich. The answer goes back to Moscow. To that apartment where my father couldn't study what he wanted. Freedom isn't just the absence of oppression. It's the presence of possibility. I want to expand what's possible. For everyone. That's the immigrant's debt. You got out. Now you pull others forward.
INT. SERGEY'S HOME — LOS ALTOS HILLS — EVENING — 2019
Sergey sits with his two children. They are doing homework. He helps them with math — the same way his father helped him. The same patience. The same joy.
SERGEY'S DAUGHTER
Dad, what did you do before Google?
SERGEY
Before Google? I came from Russia. My family left everything so we could live here. Your grandfather was a mathematician. Your grandmother worked at NASA.
SERGEY'S DAUGHTER
Why did you leave Russia?
SERGEY
(pause)
Because the most important thing in the world is being able to think freely. And in Russia, we couldn't.
EXT. STANFORD UNIVERSITY — EVENING — PRESENT DAY
Sergey walks across the Stanford campus alone. He passes the Gates Building where he met Larry. He passes the spot where they argued about the tour. He passes the dorm where they downloaded the entire internet.
He stops at a bench and sits. The sun is setting. Students pass by, phones in hands, searching for things effortlessly. They don't know who he is. They don't need to.
He pulls out his phone. Calls his father.
SERGEY
Papa? It's me. I was thinking about Moscow. About the airport. Do you remember what you told me?
We hear Michael's voice on the other end — older now, but warm.
MICHAEL
(on phone)
I told you to never forget what freedom cost.
SERGEY
I haven't, Papa. I never will.
He hangs up. Sits in the fading light. A man worth $120 billion, sitting on a university bench, grateful for the most basic thing of all: that his father had the courage to leave.
FADE TO BLACK.
Sergey Brin co-founded Google in 1998. The company now processes 8.5 billion searches per day and is worth over $2 trillion. He stepped down from day-to-day operations in 2019 but remains one of Alphabet's controlling shareholders. He is one of the wealthiest people alive. He has used his fortune to fund research in Parkinson's disease (he carries a genetic marker for it), self-driving cars, airships, and renewable energy. His father Michael Brin is a retired mathematics professor at the University of Maryland. The Brin family left the Soviet Union in 1979 with two suitcases.
Suggested Director: ALFONSO CUARON — lyrical, personal, the immigrant experience rendered in breathtaking visual language. Suggested Composer: THOMAS NEWMAN — warm, hopeful, with undertones of melancholy. The sound of a boy who remembers where he came from.
THE END