[jll29]

Yes, and also don't forget that Rajeev Motwani's (Ph.D. supervisor and FFF investor) research field was randomized algorithms. So thinking about random walks in his group was a bread and butter thing, probably, not something that required genius. Rajeev is co-author to several seminal paper on the search engine and worked intensively with Google and joined their board. According to Prabhakar Raghavan, Sergey Brin acknowledged in a BBC Radio interview in 2009 that Google might not have been possible without Rajeev. (Tragically, he passed away in 2009 by falling into his own pool with alcohol in his blood, and he could not swim.)