4chan founder 'Moot' joins Google, says he will bring experience from founding controversial site to search giant
Christopher Poole's creation was responsible for much of today's internet culture — for better or worse
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Google has hired the founder of the world’s most controversial chat site, apparently to help with the successors to Google+.
4chan founder Christopher Poole, better known as “Moot”, will be joining the search giant apparently to advise on its new social products. Mr Poole left 4chan last year, 12 years after founding the site at 15.
Mr Poole’s creation, 4chan, was established as a way for Manga fans to chat and would go on to create many of the most popular parts of internet culture. But it was also regularly criticised for offensive and malicious jokes that were most famously seen in the response to the leak of naked pictures of celebrities in 2014.
Now Google has confirmed that Mr Poole will go on to work with Bradley Horowitz, a Google engineer who leads streams, photos and sharing. That is Google’s names for the products that were spun out of Google+ — the social network that had trouble taking off and has since been swapped for individual products.
That work appears to suggest that the two will be working together to build Google’s next attempt at taking on social networking. After being beaten out by other companies like Facebook and Pinterest, social media is one of the very few parts of the internet that Google has had trouble breaking into.
“When meeting with current and former Googlers, I continually find myself drawn to their intelligence, passion, and enthusiasm — as well as a universal desire to share it with others,” wrote Mr Poole in a post announcing his new appointment. “I’m also impressed by Google’s commitment to enabling these same talented people to tackle some of the world’s most interesting and important problems.
“I can’t wait to contribute my own experience from a dozen years of building online communities, and to begin the next chapter of my career at such an incredible company.”
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