Photo: Danny Robinson from west VANCOUVER, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons²⁰

Scott Hassan

American computer scientist

Scott Hassan is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur who was the main programmer of the original Google Search engine, then known as BackRub. He was research assistant at Stanford University at the time, after working at Washington University's Medical Libraries Group (having been recruited out of SUNY Buffalo for the summer).²

From Wikipedia’s article on Scott Hassan (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born 1970.¹

About

Hassan left before Google was officially founded as a company. He bought 160,000 Google shares for $800 when the company was founded in 1998, which would be valued at more than $200 million when Google went public in 2004, and more than $13 billion as of 2021.

In 1997 Hassan founded FindMail, later renamed to eGroups.com, an email list management web site. He owned 5.7% of eGroups in March 2000 when the company filed a Form S-1. eGroups was later bought by Yahoo! for $432m in August 2000 in a stock deal and became Yahoo! Groups.

In 2006 Hassan started Willow Garage, a robotics research lab and technology incubator. The organization created the open source robotics software suite ROS (Robot Operating System). Willow Garage shut down in early 2014.

In 2011 Hassan spun off Suitable Technologies from Willow Garage. The new company made a video-conferencing robot which saw use by figures such as Edward Snowden and President Barack Obama. Suitable failed to become profitable and filed for bankruptcy in 2020, having lost $50 million between 2013 and 2018.

From Wikipedia’s article on Scott Hassan, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.²

Companies

Willow GarageFounder¹⁹

Early life and education

1992University at Buffalo Bachelor of Science^{3 4}
Date not recordedStanford University Master of Science^{3 4}

Career

Occupation: venture capitalist, computer scientist, businessperson, researcher, entrepreneur.¹¹

Date not recordedWorked at Alexa Internet^{5 6}
Date not recordedWorked at Google^{5 7}
Date not recordedWorked at Stanford Digital Library Project^{5 8}
Date not recordedFounded Willow Garage⁹
Date not recordedFounded eGroups¹⁰

Personal life

Born1970, San Francisco¹²
CitizenshipUnited States¹³
SpouseAllison Huynh^{14 15}

Awards

Date not recordedXPRIZEs^{8 16}

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

1
WikidataScott Hassan on Wikidata
2
WikipediaScott Hassan on Wikipedia
3
WikidataScott Hassan: education, on Wikidata
4
Wikidataeducation, as reported by NNDB
5
WikidataScott Hassan: Worked at Alexa Internet, on Wikidata
6
WikidataWorked at Alexa Internet, as reported
7
WikidataWorked at Google, as reported
8
WikidataWorked at Stanford Digital Library Project, as reported
9
WikidataScott Hassan: Founded Willow Garage, on Wikidata
10
WikidataScott Hassan: Founded eGroups, on Wikidata
11
WikidataScott Hassan: occupation, on Wikidata
12
WikidataScott Hassan: place of birth, on Wikidata
13
WikidataScott Hassan: citizenship, on Wikidata
14
WikidataScott Hassan: spouse, on Wikidata
15
Wikidataspouse, as reported by The New York Times
16
WikidataScott Hassan: award, on Wikidata
17
WikidataScott Hassan: Instagram, on Wikidata
18
WikidataScott Hassan: LinkedIn, on Wikidata
19
WikidataWillow Garage, Founder
20
Wikimedia CommonsScott Hassan photo by Danny Robinson from west VANCOUVER, CC BY 2.0