Google ‘founder’ produced revenge site in opposition to estranged spouse

In 2018, Google shirked off its unofficial motto, “Don’t be evil.” Probably that was a indication.

Scott Hassan, 51, who wrote a lot of the first code that powers the look for huge, is embroiled in a unpleasant divorce fight that has raged for 7 yrs and requires thousands and thousands of dollars, claims of treating his small children unfairly — and even a surprising online revenge marketing campaign.

His ex wife, Allison Huynh, a senior study fellow at Stanford University’s Robotics Laboratory, statements Hassan is withholding a fortune that her lawyer claims she is lawfully entitled to.

“In 2018, the [couple’s] estate was valued at $1.8 billion and [Hassan] needed to give her a minuscule fraction,” Huynh’s attorney Pierce O’Donnell claimed in a statement to The Publish. “His court position is that she gets nothing at all: Zero, zip, nada. Every settlement meeting, he’s lessened his supply. I haven’t observed that in my 45-calendar year-extensive profession. He’s striving to pull off the ultimate soiled trick on his spouse and three teenage young children.”

Hassan told The Put up that solutions that he does not want to give his ex and little ones any belongings are “not correct.”

A genius at robotics, Hassan is characterised as a high-tech Dr. Dolittle who can communicate to computers. Despite the fact that he was by no means an employee of Google, Hassan’s impressive early contributions signify he is recognized as the company’s unofficial third founder, together with Sergey Brin and Larry Web page. Right before he and Huynh wed in 2001, he received the proper to cheaply acquire shares in the enterprise, which, right now, would be value billions of bucks.

But as divorce settlement proceedings are scheduled to start out Monday in San Jose, Calif., Hassan is embroiled in a much significantly less prestigious on the internet endeavor.

Right after becoming accused by his ex, he has admitted to launching the site AllisonHuynh.com earlier this yr, seeding it with back links to beneficial content published about his ex — but also links to court docket documents from three uncomfortable lawsuits that require her.

“Scott was trying to bully me into dropping my [fight for assets] and accepting a pittance,” Huynh informed The Publish.

Requested if he put up the web site, Hassan admitted to The Write-up: “I did, but I have taken it down. It came together in a second of frustration, when I felt Allison and her legal professional have been telling one-sided tales to the press. I assumed aggregating publicly readily available facts devoid of commenting or editorializing would assistance … It only ended up earning our dispute more public and tense, which was never what I meant.”

In just the files posted are sexual allegations relevant to Huynh’s wrongful termination match versus her previous employer Samuel Ockman and Penguin Computing in 2000. They assert that Huynh threatened to “kill [Ockman] and then herself” if he ever left her and “kept track of when Ockman was out with a new girlfriend,” according to the cross criticism filed by Ockman and his legal professional in response to Huynh’s fit.

(The situation, in accordance to a the latest filing from O’Donnell, was “settled in Allison’s favor.” Ockman refused to comment.)

Huynh discovered out about allisonhuynh.com on August 5. “It was mainly supposed to shame and scare me by impersonating me and attempting to transform the environment towards me,” she claimed. “I was distraught.”

She quickly suspected her ex-husband of staying guiding the website. O’Donnell hired forensics execs to determine it out. According to Huynh, they unsuccessful and she took matters into her individual palms.

“I stayed up all night and identified a back again doorway that Scott inadvertently did not near. I was in a position to establish that the Google Travel site [which contained the lawsuit documents] was registered by Scott Wendell — Scott’s middle identify. The e mail contact had ‘Hassan’ in it,” she advised The Write-up. “So the genius of Silicon Valley was uncovered by his wife, employing her complex information. Poetic justice?”

When the couple satisfied in 2000, Hassan was presently a rock-star programmer — famous for owning assisted build the lookup motor that billions of persons use every single working day.

“Without Scott, there would be no Google,” Adam Fisher, writer of “Valley of Genius,” informed The Write-up. “He was at Stanford and utilized to produce code for persons who ended up big thinkers. He acquired to know Sergey and Larry, rewrote their code and confident them that this was a item. They sold him founders’ stock. That labored out very properly.”

In accordance to courtroom files, for his coding — which Hassan explained to The Write-up, “we wrote in three months” — he was specified the prospect to invest in 160,000 shares of not-nevertheless beneficial Google stock for $800.

He and Huynh, who both equally went to Stanford, ended up launched by mutual friends in Silicon Valley. He came from a armed forces loved ones and grew up on Air Pressure bases all around the world she was a superior-obtaining Vietnamese immigrant who attended the university on a scholarship.

“Scott was tremendous clever and paid out a good deal of interest to me,” she recalled. “We shared a whole lot of interests and he addressed me as an equal.”

Hassan remembered a courtship of “hiking, sailing and heading to see musicals.”

They had been being at his grandmother’s Canasteo, NY, cabin, in 2002 when matters got critical. “We ended up hiking and he proposed to me,” claimed Huynh. “I asked if he was absolutely sure. He requested why I would talk to. I reported I was an independent-minded particular person who believed in equality and fairness. He claimed that was why he cherished me. I then reported, ‘Yes.’”

For all of Hassan’s accomplishment and smarts, Huynh claimed that things began out modestly. They wed at the Minimal White Chapel in Vegas after, a court document states, she compensated for their engagement celebration. Huynh told The Post about remaining married to a amazing husband with carpal tunnel syndrome — “He had been programming since he was five and was starting up to burn out,” she mentioned — and a stress of student debt.

“I served to nurse him back again to wellbeing and financially supported us early on. Scott claimed he was going to function and supply for our spouse and children,” Huynh claimed. “He assured me that we ended up teammates.”

In accordance to the transient submitted for Huynh, by 2003 “the Google shares had gone from 160,000 to 2.56 million through a series of stock splits.” Just one calendar year later, Google’s IPO transpired and Hassan’s stock was suddenly well worth hundreds of millions of bucks.

According to the short filed for Huynh, Hassan planed to use all over $50 million to fund a business that would produce open supply know-how. He released the robotics-oriented businesses Willow Garage and Suitable Systems, which, as per a court doc, generated $20 million in gross sales above the course of the marriage.

As their wealth enhanced, “I upgraded our family property from a three-bed room home in San Francisco to a even bigger, newer dwelling in Palo Alto,” Hassan told The Submit. A industrial constructing in Menlo Park was procured. “We also received a great weekend home in the hillsides.”

In the spring of 2005, in accordance to the short, Hassan sought tips from a prosperity manager. Immediately after the conference, Hassan had a stunning proposition for his wife — what O’Donnell characterizes as a submit-nup. It reportedly stated that, if they had been to divorce, she would get a few serious estate attributes and $20 million in Google stock.

“This proposal, which he called a acquire-out, came from out of the blue,” Huynh claimed. “I was in shock. Who is this man? Does he want a divorce?”

Huynh told The Post that she gave Hassan an ultimatum: “Either me and your relatives. Or your funds and a divorce.”

Hassan selected his family — he and Huynh have three children, now 13, 15 and 18, of whom they share custody — and relationship. Searching again on it, Hassan stated, “My target was to make her come to feel financially protected. Allison interpreted it as a suggestion of seeking a divorce. She was incredibly upset.”

Some aren’t surprised that Hassan didn’t foresee how his information would go about.

“Scott Hassan is super awesome, but he just can’t determine out what other people may be contemplating,” an aged mate of his informed The Post. “He does not have an understanding of how he arrives off. He is not the most effective at social conversation.”

Right after that blow-up, points went back again to usual. Hassan produced a firm, Greenheart Investments LLC, investing huge sums of money — “hundreds of hundreds of thousands of pounds,” as for every his courtroom brief — to again several real-estate investments and start-ups.

“We have been pleased,” said Huynh. “I was the major caregiver of our a few little ones and he behaved like a male who was not scheming … to cheat our a few kids and me out of the rightful share of our financial investment.”

Throughout the drop of 2014, there was even a intimate excursion to Fiji. At the resort, Hassan professed his adore for his wife in moist concrete. “He wrote forever, ‘Scott + Alli,’ with a major coronary heart all-around it,” Huynh remembered.

A thirty day period or two later on, her whole entire world fell apart.

“Scott sent a text [to Huynh] that reported, ‘I’m leaving and the marriage is more than,’” legal professional O’Donnell said. “He promises to have still left ‘age-suitable notes’ for their young ones.”

Huynh explained to The Post that she “had no inkling this was coming.” 

But Hassan explained that he experienced his motives: “The catalyst for our separation was an argument in which Allison falsely accused me of infidelity in front of our children, between other items. That crossed a line for me … It became obvious that we needed to individual forever and I communicated that to her.”

Huynh’s law firm disputes this: “Not genuine,” he told The Write-up. “Scott abruptly remaining his loved ones with no warning.”

According to O’Donnell, Hassan checked into the Four Seasons while Huynh remained at their Palo Alto home with the little ones. Zillow.com lists the home’s worth at $20 million.

The estranged couple simply cannot even concur on the date of their separation. According to a court doc filed by Hassan’s lawyer, he maintains that they break up up on Nov. 4, 2015. Huynh statements that it was two months afterwards. The marriage was terminated on May perhaps 18, 2020.

Even though Huynh acknowledges she has no assert on the Google shares, she believes that she is entitled to her share of revenue produced during the marriage.

Meanwhile, Hassan acknowledged during court docket proceedings that he had established up Greenheart, which a court docket submitting states was valued at $1 billion in 2015, as his personal business “to hold selected belongings ‘completely separate’ from Allison.” She insists it is group property — which associates should, normally, divide equally beneath California legislation.

Hassan maintains “that the disputed belongings are appropriately characterised as my different residence — this does not necessarily imply that the neighborhood, or Allison, will not be compensated,” Hassan mentioned. “I presently agreed to present her with a important quantity of dollars each individual thirty day period.”

“She can get alimony and boy or girl assist? Give me an effing break,” O’Donnell reported. “The legislation entitles her to baby and spousal guidance. We are speaking about her rightful share of the home. The base line is that Scott needs them to get practically nothing — which includes the relatives home. Ahead of he remaining, there was a rely on-fund for the kids for $20 million. He minimized it to $500,000, in full, for all three kids. It does not pay out for college or university.”

“His miserly situation is ludicrous,” Huynh told The Article of her ex. “I pray that a Large Tech billionaire will not get away with his try to cheat his children and me although he walks away with almost everything.”