A couple days ago TechCrunch reported that a man named Hubert Chang claimed to be the third co-founder of Google. Yes, not just Larry and Sergey, but now, Larry, Sergey and Hubert (has a ring to it).
Here is Hubert's video:
Google truth, the truth of Google's birth from googletruth on Vimeo.
Both Google and Stanford professor Rajeev Motwani has denied that he founded Google. Here is Google's statement:
There is no substance to Hubert Chang’s claims - he had no involvement in the creation of Google. Neither Larry or Sergey have any recollection of meeting him - however, given the number of people they’ve met in the last decade it’s impossible to say categorically that they never have. Rajeev Motwani, the Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Stanford, believes he may have shared some emails from Mr. Chang with Larry and Sergey in 1997 or 1998. But in any case PageRank had already been developed by that time, and Larry and Sergey had already decided to start Google.
Here is Rajeev Motwani's statement:
To the best of my knowledge, his claims about being a founder of Google, coming up with the name and/or the business plan etc, are completely unfounded in reality. I am sure I would have noticed a third founder, if one existed, since I was working closely with Larry and Sergey at Stanford the time.I do recall receiving a couple of emails from Hubert Chang in 1997 or 1998. Its been such a long time that I don’t have any recollection of their contents but it’s probable I shared those emails with Larry and Sergey. In any case, by that time the basic idea of PageRank was already in place and there was a clear intent of building a company around this. I am pretty certain that none of the three of us actually met with Hubert Chang during that time period.
So, do you believe Hubert is a co-founder of Google? Take our poll:
Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.
