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YouTube founder Steve Chen worked, briefly, at hot social network Facebook, after cofounding YouTube but before the video site took off. His short tenure there made, nevertheless, a lasting impression on the staff. "Steve Chen is notorious for never turning in his laptop," one Facebooker remarked when the YouTube founder's name came up in conversation. Chen, according to Facebook office gossip, never returned his Facebook-issued computer after leaving the company, despite requests for its return. A Google spokesman disputed this account, saying that Chen did return the laptop, and that Facebook CEO "Mark Zuckerberg is aware of it." Asked when the computer was returned, the Google spokesperson replied, "I assume when he left the company." And what do they say about assuming?

Our source explains that Chen worked at Facebook because he needed to pull down a steady paycheck while he was creating YouTube. (We've all been there, Steve.) We're still waiting for a Facebook spokesperson to confirm or deny Google's version of events. But one plausible explanation: Chen may have kept the laptop long enough after he left Facebook to finish building YouTube, and then returned it after YouTube received its funding. What's a laptop, after all, between Internet moguls?

Update: A tipster says, "We got his laptop back 2-4 weeks after he left. It was in a completely wiped state with OS only. We never did forensics on the laptop to see if we could restore the data on it." So apparently Chen's laptop was just a short-term loan. But what data, one wonders, was he so eager to hide from his former colleagues at Facebook?