Google has hired Christopher Poole, the founder of the notorious internet image-based bulletin board 4chan.
Poole founded 4chan when he was 15, and ran the forum for over 11 years before leaving in January 2015.
The site claims to attract 22 million unique visitors a month. A Japanese entrepreneur acquired 4chan in September 2015.
Poole said in a blog post that he will contribute his own experience from a dozen years of building online communities to Google.
"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.
"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."
News of Poole’s appointment was also tweeted by Google’s Bradley Horowitz, who founded Google+ and is currently vice president in charge of streams, photos and sharing.
Horowitz said: "I’m thrilled he’s joining our team here at Google."
Poole will reportedly help Google in tackling social media, an area of the internet in which the company is failing to make any competitive advances in.
Google+, an interest-based social network, experienced strong growth in its initial years, even though usage statistics have changed, based on how the service is defined.
In November 2015, Google redesigned its Google+ social network to become more mobile-friendly and make life easier for users.
The initial area of focus of the redesigned version is Communities, which was introduced in 2012 to compete with Facebook.
The next focus is on Collections, which was unveiled in May. The feature allows users to group posts into topic-based sections.
Google+, which was launched in 2011, has over 2 billion users.
