The blogosphere and the Internet have been swamped with a flurry of activity after Motwani's death. Google co-founder, Sergey Brin took to his personal blog this weekend after a nine month hiatus to pay homage to his mentor. "Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him dearly."

Brin wrote that Motwani's "legacy and personality lives on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched. Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it."

David Hornik, a partner at August Capital, where Motwani attended partner meetings wrote: "Motwani worked tirelessly, meeting anyone and everyone who requested an audience with him."

In his blog, Kevin Burton, CEO of Spinn3r, a web crawler and social media aggregation company, writes "It's always sad when someone passes away but when it's someone who has contributed so much to the industry it's even more of a loss."

The funeral service arrangements have not yet been announced. However, family members and well wishers will be organising a public memorial at Stanford University in two weeks.