People of the Year: Google Guys

Dec. 29, 2004 -- -- Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the brains behind Google, the world's most popular Internet search engine. It now answers over 200 million daily requests for information from people around the world.

"It's a tremendous responsibility for us to have all of the eyes focused on what we do and to give people exactly what they need when they ask for it," said Page.

"And as we go forward," added Brin, "I hope we're gonna continue to use technology to make really big advances in how people can live and work."

In August, Google went public, and big and small investors everywhere could finally buy a piece of the company. It was one of the most eagerly anticipated stock sales ever.

"I think their story sort of reminds us of the magic of the Internet," said technology writer Xeni Jardin, "and that magic is that an underdog can become an overlord in a very short amount of time."

It has been a short time, indeed. Brin and Page met as college students in the late '90s and built their first search engine in a garage. Today, they have thousands of interconnected computers and thousands of employees.

With the investment revenue, Google now has more money to spend on the future. The company is already working on ways to search and read full libraries worth of books via the Internet.

"It's an interesting fairy tale -- this story of these two guys and the relatively simple technology changing the world," said Jardin.

Who knows what next year will bring?

Said Page: "We have kind of a mantra of 'don't be evil,' which is to do the best things that we know how for our users, for our customers and for everyone. So, if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing."

ABC News' Elizabeth Vargas filed this report for "World News Tonight."