Google recently made a move that raised a huge question mark above the head of various members of the public – the employment of 4chan founder Chris Poole. Poole is a notorious presence in the online community, especially when it comes to bringing people together; or rather set them up for a method of freely expressing themselves under the anonymity of the internet.

In other words, Chris “Moot” Poole is the face of the very controversial website 4chan that he founded back in 2003, originally intended as an image-sharing hub for those interested in and fans of Japanese anime. An unquestionably innocent project, you would think, but given the website’s lack of censorship, 4chan soon became a rather controversial place to be in, at times becoming downright offensive to groups and individuals and the birthplace of the concept that we nowadays call ‘memes’.

However, Poole sold its website to the founder of the popular Japanese message board 2channel – the very inspiration of 4chan, before it went off track into an entirely different direction that nobody saw coming.

But while you cannot place the blame of an entire rather gigantic community on the name of one person, the public reacted with the least enthusiasm when they heard that tech giant Google had actually hired Poole in their company, for an unknown position. While no official information has been provided on the nature of Poole’s role in Google, rumors hint that he may be placed in charge of the failing Google Plus social platform.

According to Poole’s blog in a post he made right after the announcement that Google was picking him up, whatever position he will be occupying within Google will be making use of his experience of working for a dozen years in building online communities. While this isn’t the only likely option that Poole has at Google, it is most likely that Google+ will fall into his responsibility.

Google Plus has had an abysmally low rate of success with its users, who almost always chose the more popular alternatives when it came to social platforms. Despite numerous efforts that Google made to make up for the failings of its social platform, attempting to appeal to a different group of targeted users and whatnot, Google+ is currently still slowly advancing towards its imminent death.

Is Poole’s employment a sign that Google is giving its social platform another chance, or will the former 4chan founder play a completely different role within the company?

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