Hubert Chang Claims He Co-Designed Google

Who is Hubert Chang and what does he have to do with Google? Chang has emerged from obscurity this week with the audacious claim that he helped launch the search giant in 1997 along with acknowledged co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Chang posted his story on the video sharing site Vimeo and it was picked up by the Web site Weberence. It spread virally from there, even to YouTube, a Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) property.

But far from adding another legitimate chapter to Google's storied history, the video leaves many questions unanswered.

Update: Here is Google’s comment:

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 was a working prototype.

Also, Valleywag points to an archived page of Hubert’s homepage which indicates that either he believes he had influence in a lot more than just Google, or that Hubert’s just pulling pranks. Plus, TechCrunch has a statement by Stanford Professor Rajeev Motwani:

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