What's the PhD part? What I like about Google's story is the PhD-technology-research that went into it (tho Woz wasn't a PhD student, I'd put the Apple story in a similar category).

Creating a $60B co from nothing is an astonishing achievement - but this one sounds like a business victory, not a technology victory. Although cool++, it's not a PhD-to-riches story - they just happened to be PhD students.

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html "Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations."