Scott Hassan is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur who was the main programmer of the original

Google Search Google Search (also known simply as Google or Google.com) is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search for information on the World Wide Web, Web by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze an ...

engine, then known as BackRub. He was research assistant at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

at the time, after working at Washington University's Medical Libraries Group (having been recruited out of SUNY Buffalo for the summer). Hassan left before

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

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 A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. Mailing lists are often rented or sold. If rented, the renter agrees to use the mailing list only at contra ...

management web site. He owned 5.7% of eGroups in March 2000 when the company filed a

Form S-1 Form S-1 is an SEC filing used by companies planning on going public to register their securities with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as the "registration statement by the Securities Act of 1933". The S-1 contains the basic ...

. eGroups was later bought by

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

for $432m in August 2000 in a stock deal and became

Yahoo! Groups Yahoo! Groups was a free-to-use system of Electronic mailing list, electronic mailing lists offered by Yahoo!. Prior to February 2020, Yahoo! Groups was one of the world's largest collections of online discussion boards. It allowed members to s ...

. In 2006 Hassan started

Willow Garage Willow Garage was a robotics research lab and technology incubator devoted to developing hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications. The company was best known for its open source software suite Robot Operating Syste ...

, 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 Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs. Born in 1983 in Elizabeth ...

and President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

. Suitable failed to become profitable and filed for bankruptcy in 2020, having lost $50 million between 2013 and 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hassan, Scott American computer businesspeople American technology company founders American information technology businesspeople Businesspeople in software Google employees Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Stanford University alumni