Hassan, Scott Suitable Willow Garage
<p>Oct 31, 2010 12:37 PM
pronouned HASS (as in BASS) - en.</p>
<p>
<b>Scott Hassan, early Google architect, now robotics advocate</b>
<b>In 1996, Hassan was a doctoral computer science student at Stanford University</b> when he crossed paths with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were also working on the Stanford Integrated Digital Libraries project under a National Science Foundation grant. At the time, Page and Brin were also working on a side project--developing the predecessor to Google. Hassan helped Page with the code; as thanks, the<b> Google founders later gave Hassan a large chunk of shares after Hassan started eGroups (bought by Yahoo for $412 million in 2000).</b>
Lore has it that Hassan owned close to a percentage point of Google, acquired through the early shares and later through a hefty investment in a company <b>called Neotonic, which Google bought in 2003</b>. With that large stake in Google, Hassan's wealth could stretch to the high hundreds of millions of dollars or more than $1 billion.
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Hassan keeps a low profile. He lives with his wife and kids in a multimillion-dollar house in Palo Alto. He keeps a personal Web site (password-protected), which includes lists of people he might write a reference for, including Page and Brin, movies he's seen, and poems. He said in an e-mail that he only wants to talk about his current venture--a year-old robotics think tank called <a href="http://www.news.com/Start-up-warms-up-personal-robots/2100-11394_3-6214965.html">Willow Garage</a>.
Willow Garage, based in Menlo Park, Calif., stands out in Silicon Valley because it has no immediate ambition to make money. Rather, the mission is to make<b> Willow Garage a hub for robotics development in the areas of personal assistants, autonomous boats, and driverless cars-</b>-with the hopes of attracting talent and partnerships across the country. The company is collaborating with Stanford in the robotics field, having donated $850,000 to its computer science lab. With Hassan's fortune, Willow Garage has plenty of time to develop new markets for robots.</p>