Page back on top amid Google soulsearching

Yet as he becomes takes the helm tomorrow, the Google co-founder must prove that his aloofness, rebellious streak and affinity for pursuing wacky ideas won't alienate investors or lead the company astray. Page is taking over amid emerging threats from rapidly growing rivals and much more vigilant regulators.

Investors used to Google's consistency in exceeding financial targets worry that new leadership will bring more emphasis on long-term projects that take years to pay off. And many people still aren't sure he has enough management skills to steer the internet's most powerful company. Page has learned already that brains alone won't make him a great leader. Although he impressed Google's early investors with his ingenuity, they still insisted that he step down in 2001 as Google's first chief executive officer. He turned over the job to Eric Schmidt, a veteran executive who began working in Silicon Valley in the early 1980s while Page was still in high school.

Page's admirers say that at 38, he is more mature and less apt to be chronically late for meetings or tune out of conversations that don't stimulate his intellect - habits that he fell into during his first stint in charge.

"There are parts of being CEO that don't fit Larry's personality," said Craig Silverstein, the first employee that Page and Google's other founder, Sergey Brin, hired when they started the company in 1998. "You wear a lot of different hats when you're CEO. Some of them are very interesting to Larry and some of them, presumably, are less interesting."

True to his taciturn form, Page hasn't said much publicly since Google made its stunning announcement in January that he would replace Schmidt at the top.

Page, though, has left little doubt about his top priority: to dissolve the bureaucracy and complacency that accompanied the company's rapid transformation into a 21st-century empire. Google is expected to end the year with more than 30,000 employees and $35 billion (22bn) in annual revenue.

In Page's mind, the 13-year-old company needs to return to thinking and acting like a feisty startup. Rising Internet stars such as Facebook, Twitter and Groupon, all less than eight years old, are developing products that could challenge Google and make its dominance of internet search less lucrative.

Page has drawn comparisons to two high-tech geniuses who are even more accomplished: Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Like those two pioneers in personal technology, Page invented and cultivated a product that changed the world.

But Page has yet to match them in this respect: as CEOs, Gates and Jobs brought out the best in the companies that they created, delighting stockholders as their investments soared in value.

Page doesn't fit the CEO mould, even by the standards of Silicon Valley's free-wheeling culture. He dropped out of graduate school at Stanford to start Google and doesn't have a business degree.

His late father, Carl, was a computer scientist and pioneer in artificial intelligence, and his mother taught computer programming. Page began working on PCs when he was just six in 1979, when home computers were a rarity. The geeky impulses carried into his adulthood, leading him to once build an inkjet printer out of Lego.

Page is better prepared to be CEO after a decade as Schmidt's apprentice, said Douglas Merrill, who worked with both executives before leaving Google in 2008 as vice-president of engineering.

"Larry has grown over time," Merrill said. "He has learned how to make projects work. He has learned how to make sure things happen on time and in a predictable fashion. Larry is a sort of a learning machine."