Computing Blog

Hubert Chang has claimed that, alongside co founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, he created Google in 1997. Chang has recorded a video explaining that he was indeed part of the creation team, giving his reasons as to why he has never been recognised for this feat of genius. The video was uploaded back in 2007, but has started circulating tech sites in a big way since last Tuesday. In the clip, Chang explains, "After viewing this tape, some people might think I'm lying, some might think I'm crazy, some might be upset, while others will consider I'm honest. But the tape has to be made." Chang also speaks of how he was introduced to Page and Brin in 1997 by Stanford computer science professor Rajeev Motwani, he claims it was shortly after this introduction that the three of them began to collaborate on the search engine. However, when Larry and Sergey asked him in September 1997 if he would like to put his name on the academic paper that first described Google's ...

So where were the quants? NYSE(Credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times) That’s what has been running through my head as I watch some of the oldest and seemingly best-run firms on Wall Street implode because of what turned out to be really bad bets on mortgage securities. Before I started covering the Internet in 1997, I spent 13 years covering trading and finance. I covered my share of trading disasters from junk bonds, mortgage securities and the financial blank canvas known as derivatives. And I got to know bunch of quantitative analysts (”quants”): mathematicians, computer scientists and economists who were working on Wall Street to develop the art and science of risk management. They were developing systems that would comb through all of a firm’s positions, analyze everything that might go wrong and estimate how much it might lose on a really bad day. We’ve had some bad days lately, and it turns out Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and maybe some others bet far too much. Their quant...