"Larry, Sergey and Me": Third Google "Founder" Emerges

Sam Gustin writes: First there was the fifth Beatle. Now someone has stepped forward saying they helped create Google with co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997.

A man identifying himself as Hubert Chang has recorded a video claiming that he was present at the creation -- and indeed instrumental in the development -- of Google, the internet juggernaut with a $135 billion market capitalization.

"Google was designed by Larry, Sergey and me, in February 1997," Chang says in the video, which appears to have been uploaded in December 2007, but began to circulate widely on tech blogs late Tuesday. "The design includes the search engine algorithm, the business model (also called AdSense and AdWords), the name of the company, the outline of the system architecture, a corporation culture like a grad school, and Google's growing path."

"After viewing this tape, some people might think I'm lying, some might think I'm crazy, some might be upset, while others will consider I'm honest. But the tape has to be made," Chang adds.

Chang says he was introduced to Page and Brin in January 1997 by Stanford computer science professor Rajeev Motwani, who had visited NYU, where Chang was a student, the previous year. The three men soon began to collaborate on the search engine, Chang says.

"It was an intensive and interesting collaboration," Chang says, but when Larry and Sergey asked him in September 1997 if he would like to put his name on the academic paper that first described Google's Web page ranking system, Chang declined, in order to focus on his Ph.D dissertation at NYU.

"It may seem unwise now, but it made sense then," Chang says, adding that "it was an uncomfortable and difficult decision."

Chang says he finished his Ph.D in late 2002 -- it appears to have actually been awarded in 2003 -- and then tried to contact Page and Brin.

"The initial contact was promising, but without any warning, it was off and on, and finally stopped," Chang says. "The responses were always from a third person and not directly from Larry and Sergey."

"Since last contact, I have been agonizing with about whether or not to talk about it. Probably, Larry and Sergey were busy. They didn't communicate with their employee well, or their employee didn't communicate with them well. Or they were indecisve about how to place or position me. Or they were in a status that is awkward to fully acknowledge the past. I do not know which. It's been ten years, and I think this information needs to be known."

Chang says he doesn't have the original email exchanges with Page and Brin from 1997 because "my email quota was small at the time and I often exceeed the quota, so I didn't save it."

I've reached out to Google to try to confirm Chang's tale -- as well as Chang himself to try to understand why he waited so long to come forward.

UPDATE: Google responds, saying, "Though many people were involved with Google in its early days, it has been well documented over the past decade that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company in September 1998."