Microsoft Loses Key Engineer to Google

galdur writes "Microsoft Watch reports Marc Lucovsky, one of Microsoft's key Windows architects has defected to Google. His confidence in Microsoft's ability to ship software seems to have waned, too. Some hypothesize Google working on an OS but in the wake of Google's inroads into Ajax tech applications (GMail, Suggest, Maps), I think Google may have other plans for the chief software architect for Microsoft's .Net My Services ("Hailstorm")" CT Many users are reporting 404s on the Microsoft Watch article, but its working fine for others. Hopefully they'll fix their server soon.

Comments

The Bullet

[fembots]

It'll be interesting to see if there is any "Restriction of Trade" in the old contract.

And how useful is this Windows architect to Google if it is to come out with anything built by this guy? With the current silly-patent lawsuits happening every day, this might just give MS a bullet. What this guy "thought of" might have already been patented by MS, and in most cases, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong.

Re:The Bullet

[ArbitraryConstant]

People that are good at designing robust, orthogonal, extensible APIs are few and far between. If that's what Google wants to do with him, they can get their money's worth and more without ever touching any Microsoft IP.

Re:The Bullet

[tesloni]

Hmmm...

What if he was a Trojan horse?

Maybe Billy gives him proposition to infect Google with MS ideas and to prepare for a google's takeover by him...

Remember of old Ericsson software stuff which was been great Unix based, until some of MS high stuff was hired by Ericsson... After that they can't recover from MS intrusion...

Re:The Bullet

[cduffy]

In the case of IBM and Corel, they blew their shitty products away with better alternatives.

There was much, much more going on there -- perhaps you're unfamiliar with Microsoft's involvement in OS/2?

Re:The Bullet

[dmccarty]

It'll be interesting to see if there is any "Restriction of Trade" in the old contract.

I just finished reading Showstopper, the story about the creation of Windows NT. IIRC, Lucovsky originally came to Microsoft with about a dozen or so former Digital employees. But instead of a nice honeymoon period, the first thing that happened was a showdown over MS's no-compete clause in their contract. After a legal standoff that lasted most the day, MS relented and the employees were allowed to start working without agreeing to that clause.

Some other interesting tidbits about Lucovsky, from the book:

Many people felt that Lucovsky was a jerk. He was hard to manage but showed the pep and initiative that every team needs. Even more valuable, Lucovsky sought to understand how the many pieces of NT interacted as a system. [...] Lucovsky had a rare ability to learn the intricate details of his own pieces and at the same time clearly see how all the pieces fit together.

At Cutlers behest, Mark Lucovsky, the team's most versatile programmer, filled the gap. He tracked check-ins on a white board in his office and managed the now twice-weekly builds. Before each build he compiled a list of proposed changes, then spoke with each code writer about the rationale for the change and its affect on the stability of NT. Lucovsky's opinions carried weight; he probably understood the mosaic of NT better than anyone else, including Cutler. And he didn't tiptoe around fellow code writers but battered their egos with criticism. "If Lucovsky didn't write it, everything is a piece of shit," said one colleague.

And for those of you who would make cracks about NT or its children, 2K and Win server, please read the book or know what you're talking about before you pipe up. Sure, MS gets a lot of things wrong, and I'm no MS apologist, but name one other company/organization that has released a world-class, brand new OS in the last decade that runs most of the world's servers and computers. Cutler, Felton, Kimura, Whitmer, Abrash, Lucovsky and a host of others I'm probably forgetting. If those names don't mean anythign to you then you don't know some of the best software engineers alive. From an engineering standpoint, NT was a damned fine achievement.

Google OS

[danielrm26]

This is big. As the parent touched on, the possibility of "Google OS" is definitely real. It would be utterly non-trivial, to be sure, but if anyone can pull it off, it's Google. Between their cooperation with the Firefox project and now the acquisition of a key Microsoft architect, the sky is the limit for this group.

Re:Google OS

[gimpynerd]

That seems to be a distinct if somewhat distant possibility. Google has slowly been on the rise for the past years. There would be no end of support for this type of venture considering the anti-Microsoft sentiment. Google might receive help from Linux as well, extending the relationship started witht he FireFox project.

Re:Google OS

[Auckerman]

Where would an operating system fit in there?

Google already sells search appliances. Perhaps this is a market they want to tap into further. Operating systems are not just for playing video games on.

Re:Google OS

[miffo.swe]

Think about it for a minute.

What if google makes a bunch of swell services that are server centric? All computing is made on google servers and the user is just presented with a web interface like for eg. cgiirc.blitzed.org. I think thats whats going on, extending the google concept of clean easy interfaces to other services like IM and stuff.

Things like theese makes it easier to later on make another OS since they pull code away from the client into the servers. I dont think Microsoft likes that, not one tiny bit...expecielly since theyve lost the battle of the web long ago.

Re:Google OS

[DarkSarin]

Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't matter much.

The real possibility is not an OS, but a windows abstraction layer for linux (ala WINE) that really works. Would it violate his NDA? Probably, but that's his choice, and probably (in this scenario) underwritten by Google. Would I do it? Not likely, but I can't say for sure. It depends on their side of the contract, how the terms are written, etc.

Are NDA's truly enforceable? (As in, what is the guy's compensation for adherence beyond the term of his employment? OR, does the law allow for this type of contract?)

Who knows? IANAL, so I don't.

Re:Google OS

[biglig2]

To me, the real OS that is going to replace everything is called the browser, and who better than Google to make that happen?

I mean, what do people actually do with a client PC that you couldn't, in theory, do with a browser and some plug-ins?

You can read news, e-mail, IM, blog, phone, listen to streaming audio and video, look at a recipie database, access an ERP or CRM system, upload the pictures from your digital camera, configure a firewall.

What if Google introduced a GWord that let you do basic word processing and store the documents in your gmail account? And a GSheet? GQuicken? (privacy nuts would freak, of course) GCalendar with a way to sync with a mobile phone? (SMS messages perhaps? Or would your always on 3G phone just access gcalendar.google.com/pda and beep when the alarms are due?)

Google are ideally placed to keep expanding this until Windows, Linux, OSX, etc. become irrelevant except for a handful of specialised tasks. Everything is in a browser; wireless is everywhere; and your computer becomes a phone handset or a TV/PVR or a imac style intelligent screen in it or a tablet or a seat in an internet cafe or a thing between PDA and tablet the size of a thin paperback novel.

I read somewhere something that gave me pause for thought. When electricity was new, companies had electricity departments and electricity managers and chief electricity officers and so on. Nowadays that sounds silly, electricity just works. Won't computing go the same way?

Re:Google OS

[bushidocoder]

I'm amazed at how people have have misinterpreted this news. Sure MarkL was a higher level engineer on the NT team, but lets be honest - most senior engineers at MS through the 90s worked in platform services or Office.

What's much more interested is that he was chief engineer on Hailstorm (MS Passport) for the past 5 years. Given Googles service spread and the fact that MS axed the Passport team, its much more likely he moved to Google to continue his vision of a centralized web authentication system.

If I was going to make wild predictions out of this announcement, I'd say Google is going to try a run around the Liberty Alliance and establish themselves as Passport with a more friendly face. Of course, just about everyone was predicting they would start working towards this months ago, so its just reinforcement.

Re:Google OS

[OldManAndTheC]

I highly doubt Google are going to create an OS. They are already in a position of profit.

Also, where is the value? Who cares about your desktop, icons, etc in the web-centric world? Today's computer users sit down at their PC and open up a web browser to do what they need. As more services are made available on the web, the need for desktop apps will decline. Why pay money to the OS vendor when the perceived value is on the Internet?

Re:Google OS

[16K Ram Pack]

I don't think they care less about the OS, as long as it can reach their services.

The next big battle in computing is software as service vs software on PC. I bet it's a battle that Microsoft doesn't want to deal with, but I have little doubt that it's the direction that everything will go.

There's already things like CRM solutions on the web. A lot of software has been or is getting beat by the web (route planners, encyclopedias, movie lookups). If someone made a project management tool like MS Project, but which you could rent and manage the whole thing via the web, people would start shifting to it in huge numbers. If Google made a calendar to work with Gmail, I'm sure that people would start uninstalling Outlook.

The web is simple. No software, no installs, less chances of viruses, more choice of clients. Get your data whereever you want. You just need the bandwidth and servers (both of which are getting cheaper and cheaper).

The end of Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure this is very similar when a key architect from Novell who created Borland Pascal, defected to Microsoft so that they could create MS Money which ended up dominating the accounting software field in the 32-bit arena.

I hope that Microsoft does not see this as Google trying to appropriate insider-knowledge so they can created a FreeBSD-based variant of Windows that supports Win32 API and DirectX because that could have a serious impact in their corporate market share.

Perhaps if MS didn't overwork their staff (read any horror stories of MS driving their coders to exhaustion for NHL Madden 2005 on the XBOX) they retain the talent.

As it is, I feel that Google has gained a valuable resource into their fold and may be able to provide intellisense or similar functionality in their searches.

Which is nice.

Re:The end of Windows?

[m_c_rose]

I would say its most like when Marc Lucovsky left DEC and took his knowledge of VMS to Microsoft to write what became NT, do you think it was a coincidence that it ran on the Alpha chip.

In response to MS overworking their employees I would guess someone this high up the chain is only overworked when he chooses to be.

GooOS

[Virtual Karma]

I'm telling you man.. this is all about GooOS Link: http://virtualkarma.blogspot.com/2005/02/is-google -planning-gooos.html

What about a Google Boxed up Linux Distro?

[NYTrojan]

They have already heavily modified Redhat for their own uses, so they know it inside and out. Could google be the group that finally gives us a distro with the ease of entry to lure away the windows crowd?

Fan-fscking-tastic

[LesPaul75]

Anyone else get a chill when they read this?

Luckovsky isn't sparing harsh words for his former employer, however, pointing fingers at everything from Microsoft's difficulties in shipping software to its users on time, to its policy of requiring users to validate that they have non-pirated versions of Windows in order to obtain fixes and downloads.

I sure did. Way to go Mark. It's rare that big shots will speak openly about their former employers in a move like this. Granted, there's usually good reason to keep your mouth shut. But it took guts to say that and it really hit close to home, for me at least. Microsoft's validation thing is garbage, and it just makes me angry every time I need to download something.

Re:Fan-fscking-tastic

[devphaeton]

Microsoft's validation thing is garbage, and it just makes me angry every time I need to download something.

It's especially disheartening when it is wrong. I was repairing a machine with its Active X controls all hosed up (from spyware). MSKB suggested to reinstall ActiveX on top of itself.

But since ActiveX was messed up, their download site's test for a valid WinXP image failed, thus keeping me from downloading the latest ActiveX.

This was an OEM install on a 3-month old Dell Dimension.

Re:Is it ethical?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS does it without blinking

Back during the peak of the bubble, MS hired one of two key personel from a promising Silicon valley startup. Started by doubling his salary, etc. Went up to 1 million, and the guy took off.

Then MS went after the second guy. The victimized company matched dollar for dollar until MS blew the doors of with a ridiculous 4 million dollar bonus AND he didn't have to work for a year.

Who could refuse that? The programmer apologized and took off.

The company was dead in the water.

MS didn't get these guys to have them work. They got these guys to kill that company.

Now, I don't know if it google's action was ethical, but at least MS finally got a taste of their own medicine.

Microsoft's business is RESELLING, not MAKING SW.

[Spy der Mann]

I read the blog entry and comments. And I frankly agree with Marc.

However, he misses the whole point: Microsoft is not a software business. It's a software RESELLER.

Nearly ALL software Microsoft has sold us had been bought before. Visual Basic, FoxPro, MS-DOS, they even stole the GUI from Apple. Microsoft wasn't founded by a programmer - but by a businessman with a keen eye for investments.

I recall the previous "Ask slashdot" post where this guy left the company because he wasn't comfortable with Microsoft tools.

Is it a mystery that they don't know how to deploy software? And with their flawed architecture, is it a mystery all software updates are major headaches? Of course Microsoft can't deliver software! They designed it (I'm speaking of MS Windows) to be HARD to configure, with their undocumented features, proprietary API, proprietary formats (MS Word)... (btw, I think this is why Microsoft is whining about Linux and GPL - they can't figure out a way to adopt it, embrace it and get money from it).

Microsoft can't deliver software updates because their business model was designed to sell COMPLETE PACKAGES (MS Office), not software updates. And with the major bugs and vulnerabilities, Microsoft is having to cope with their own demons.

My applauses to Marc, i think this is his smartest career move. Keep up the good work.

Honestly...

[bonch]

I think the "Google OS" rumor was started by overzealous Google fanboys. We've heard all sorts of things, from a Google browser to a Google operating system.

They're a search engine company. In fact, their search results have been in the crapper since 2003 when they adjusted their algorithms (some believe it was because they needed to increase the DocID integer size in order to not run out of them).

Google also employs several ex-NSA guys with security clearances. I mean, if we're going to draw conclusions, why not look at Google's privacy policies that state they'll happily turn over anything the government requests on you? Did you know Google sets an IP-tracking cookie that doesn't expire for 30 years? There are bigger things to be talking about regarding Google.

Apple

[bonch]

I would argue that Microsoft used to know how to ship software, but the world has changed... The companies that "know how to ship software" are the ones to watch. They have embraced the network, deeply understand the concept of "software as a service", and know how to deliver incredible value to their customers efficiently and quickly.


Now does everyone see the benefit of an OS X update every 1-2 years? "Real artists ship."

Re:Is it ethical?

[Spy der Mann]

Let me answer with a question.

Is it ethical to forbid your employees to work for your competitors if they ever leave?

In Mexico there is this case. The largest TV company in the country, Televisa, had this "shunning" clause on the contract, saying that all artist that left the company were forbidden to make TV appearances in competition's broadcasts.

Due to this fear, all the people were "loyal" to the company. They had no choice, it was the only major TV company.

And we ALL know Microsoft is a monopoly. Don't give them more ideas, please.

Usefullness ??

[Anonymous Coward]

If he came over in 1993 or so with Dave Cutler from DEC, then he should be well into the millionaire status from cashed out stock options.

My guess is that he is just tired of working on the same software for 5 versions. Too much baggage, too much non-motivation to rewrite what you have rewritten 5 times in the last 10 years.

I would really like to see him, Dave Cutler, and all of the ex-Digital people do an open source VMS for pocket PC class machines.

Re:Blog entry is gone already?

[southpolesammy]

Buried in the comments to Marc's blog entry is this reply from Marcelo Lopez, Jr.:

I've come to believe that the ability to DELIVER software is INVERSELY proportional to the size of the company.

Now I'd rephrase that as proportional to the size of the product, not the company, but this comment is almost exactly on the mark. Windows has become so bloated, so patched, so susceptible to every ailment in the IT world, that it is almost impossible for Microsoft to get new updates to the customers because the amount of QA and UAT needed validate the new releases can delay product releases almost indefinitely. That they can release anything at all due to having to test for every single bug on the planet is amazing in and of itself.

Re:not an *OS* - a platform

[biglig2]

And how hard would it be for them or anyone else to make a system that was a Linux kernel + firefox + plugins, and put it in ROM on a range of cheap ARM-based tablet PCs in 3 sizes (paperback book, trad tablet, imac style desktop version) with wifi (and maybe GPRS/3G) and sell them? Then they have a chepa package that contains everything you need to run their platform.

That 4 letter fictional abbreviation.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Playing" with a technology for a few months shouldn't give someone license to name a technology that others have been using for years. I agree. Ditch the stupid name.

I've been doing JS/DHTML type stuff for years. I generally refer to it as 'livepage' (or 'liveevil') because that's the name of the concrete, open source, software framework that allows me to sit down and write the code.

If anything, name the technology or framework being used, or just say "Javascript RPC" or something. but for crying out loud. that 4 letter abbreviation should be anti-memed. And definately never mentioned in a front page slashdot post.

Re:not an *OS* - a platform

[RM6f9]

Or, without any real offense intended to the potential users, "Dumb Terminals"??? As so many millions of people want simple easy-to-use, safe, God-please-don't-bother-me-with-details machines, your foresight shall come to pass.
Yea, verily, and the unconscious prescience of our society will have predicted the phenomenon of having a display from that dumb terminal heads-up-displayed in front of their face, and they shall truly be... (wait for it!)

*Google-eyed*

O, the wonder of it all.

MS couldn't get away with it

[gottabeme]

I really don't think MS could get away with that. It wouldn't take long for a techie on here to dig out the code and prove that MS is doing it, and then it wouldn't take long for the media to pick it up and plaster it all over the Net and TV, etc. That would kill what's left of MS's image in the eyes of corporations and many individuals, not to mention anti-trust implications.

Re:How can MS kill Google?

[gottabeme]

Right. What I meant was an OS to compete with Windows for the consumer market, which is what some people seem to be suggesting. I wouldn't entirely rule out Google someday releasing something Linux-related to the OS community (if they haven't already), but I can't see them releasing an entire OS or Linux distro, just by itself. What would the point be? That's not their thing.

What they have done is make their search appliances. I assume that they run on Linux or *BSD. But they don't give those away, nor the software that runs on them.

Re:Former Microsoftie Here

[einhverfr]

IANAL, but I remember two court cases of interest here. The first held that a non-compete in at least one case was invalid because it was intended to take skills off the market. The second held that even without a non-compete agreement, one cannot hire a worker where there is a reasonable expectation that trade secrets will be used in further employment in an anticompetitive way. These were, I think in similar juristictions, and I am sure that YMMV in others such as CA..

In my somewhat educated-non-lawyer opinion, I suspect that noncompete clauses may inform what is acceptable contact in this framework but neither create destroy this framework by their existance or lack thereof.