Google's billionaire cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page dropped a surprise visit on a Ph.D. student who sits in Page's old office at Stanford

• The Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin paid a surprise visit to a Stanford Ph.D. student on Friday night.
• The student occupies what used to be Page's office when he was working on his own Ph.D. at Stanford, where he met Brin in 1995.
• The student said the tech billionaires told him they were taking "a trip down memory lane" after stepping down from their roles at Alphabet, Google's parent company.
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A Ph.D. student at Stanford got a big surprise on Friday night.

Jacob Ritchie, who's getting a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford, tweeted a picture over the weekend showing that the Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had dropped by his office on Friday night.

"Larry and Sergey were visiting Stanford to 'take a trip down memory lane' after stepping down on Tuesday from their roles at Google and Alphabet," Ritchie said in a follow-up tweet.

Page and Brin met in 1995 while working on computer-science Ph.D.s at Stanford and went on to found Google in 1998. The pair announced last week that they would step down from their roles at Alphabet, Google's parent company — but remain two of the richest people on the planet.

As it happens, Ritchie occupies what used to be Page's office, which Page got after Brin "illicitly" gave him the master key to the building early, allowing him to choose the best desk.

Ritchie said Page and Brin knocked on his door while he was working late, "on the off chance that there was someone inside," adding that the surprise visit was "an incredibly surreal and amazing experience."

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