Google Wave Creator Quits, Joins Facebook

srimadman found an interview with Wave creator Lars Rasmussen where he talks about his recent decision to join Facebook, leaving Google behind. Apparently getting personally pitched by Zuckerberg helped. He says, "I've got a job description of 'come hang out with us for a while and we'll see what happens,' which is a pretty exciting thing." The article talks about Big vs Small companies, and notes that about 20% of Facebook's staff are former Googlers.

Comments

Google What Now?

[Rogerborg]

Seriously, can anyone explain to me in words of two syllables or fewer what Google Wave is/was (other than a Firefly reference) or why I should have bothered to find out for myself?

Re:Google What Now?

[Anonymous Coward]

It tried to blend all kinds of things into one platform hosted on a central server.

It wasn't meant to be hosted on one central server. Google released a federation protocol that was going to be used to allow Wave platforms on other servers to intercommunicate just like email. It just never got that far because it was chock full of bugs and forced users to learn an entirely new system to do the same things they were already doing.

In my personal opinion, Wave had a lot of potential. It's great for collaboration (when it's not freaking out from all the bugs). I think one of the main problems is that Google just tried to roll too much into it. It was email + social networking + collaboration tools + IM --- all updated live. If they would have dialed back a few features, didn't hype it so much, and worked out more bugs before they released it, I think it would have done a lot better.

Re:Google What Now?

[Enderandrew]

Supposedly Google used it internally for meetings.

Someone would create a wave of the meeting agenda and invite the people who were going to attend.

As the meeting went along, everyone could edit the wave in realtime collobaterion. The agenda evolved into the meeting notes.

And if you missed the meeting, you can re-play the wave and see the steps of every comment and note as it went along.

The failure of wave as I see it isn't that it couldn't provide killer new features, or a failure to boost productivity.

The problem was that if I want to email or IM someone, I can do so through Gmail and every contact I need is there. With Wave, only so many people had it, so I couldn't colloberate with the people I needed to.

Re:Google What Now?

[Anonymous Coward]

The other problem with Wave is that they released it at the same time as Buzz, and gave Buzz all the attention. I thought Wave was spectacular, but apparently I was the only one.

What's the attraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, what's the attraction of working at Facebook? Is it just the money?

Re:What's the attraction

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also a lot of coke, if you get to hang out with the Zuckerberg like this guy.

Re:What's the attraction

[slim]

What, you think being a prostitute is popular because these women like to have sex?

Oo-hoo, what a tangent!

1. Is being a prostitute "popular"?
2. I'm sure there are lots women working as prostitutes, who don't enjoy it but can find no alternative.
3. ... but they wouldn't be the only people in the world who don't enjoy their job
4. Yet equally, some people enjoy their jobs, and they tend to be the ones who are best at it
5. So I bet there's women working as prostitutes who have alternatives, but enjoy the sex (as well as the money) and are good at it

I have never been a prostitute's client, but if I were to, and I could afford it, I'd want it to be one who enjoyed her work.

(OTOH I believe there are men who get off on the exploitation and misogyny)

Facebook doesn't have all those restrictions

[milonssecretsn]

Yeah, sweet gig. He doesn't have to be tied down by all of google's restrictive rules like "not being evil".
He won't have those problems at facebook.

Seriously though, it is pretty sad to see him go. Bright mind.

Re:You got Google Wave on my Facebook!

[entotre]

His brother (the other guy who made google maps) will stay with google. So it seems that relations between the two internet companies, at least at the top, are not as hostile as they often are portrayed.

Re:Should have seen this coming...

[AnonymousClown]

Mark is a 24-year old billionaire...

If he invented some incredible green energy break through, I'd be thinking way to go!
If he found a way to eliminate much of the poverty and sickness in the Third World, I'd say way to go kid! You deserve every penny!
If he came up with some sort of medical breakthrough that eliminate breast and ovarian or prostate cancer, I'd be really happy for him.

No, he didn't.

He became an instant billionaire by selling what is basically personal web pages that broadcast updates automatically.

Tesla did more for humanity and he died penniless.

Excuse me, I'm having an attack of mumbling "Bullshit!"

Re:Should have seen this coming...

[IndustrialComplex]

That website helped me connect and stay in touch with people that I normally would not contact as I'm not a 'phone' person and they are not 'letter' people.

It's been of use to me. If you can create something which becomes useful to millions of people, you don't see THAT as being worth some money?

Granted, I think people are insane in setting the potential value so high, but it's certainly worth several million. (In general, I think that advertising expendatures have become a self fulfilling prophecy. Just because it is/was self fulfilling doesn't mean that it isn't now the reality)

Re:Money is nice

[Macka]

A colleague of mine used to work at Google and told me there is considerable pressure put on you to come up with something concrete and constructive from that 10%. It's not a free time to just dick about with whatever takes your fancy, it has to be for the betterment of Google.

Re:new boss, same as the old boss

[Anonymous Coward]

A problem my wife (elem school teacher) ran into and she doesn't even have a facebook account, is people posting pics of her or that include her to their facebook pages. She nor I have any idea it is even out there since it isn't tagged and then all of a sudden someone will mention a picture they saw of her on fb. We then have to track down the person and ask them to remove the pic. Her school is crazy about any photos of the teachers online and a few have been fired for something as simple as a photo of the teacher *holding* a beer bottle in a pic. It's insane and while I don't agree with the school, what can you do?

It's a real mess.

Re:Money is nice

[houghi]

You make it sound if the money part is a bad thing.
What if this is not OR/OR but AND/AND? AND he can work on a project that he is passionate about AND he earns more money.

A small bet

[wonkavader]

I will bet anyone an imaginary nickel that he's there for just about exactly one year.

Re:You got Google Wave on my Facebook!

[slim]

Just look at the dominant languages in Google: not C++ or C. Not serious languages.

Google only normally permits their developers to commit C++, Java, Python and Javascript to their source tree.

(maybe now Go as well)

Without being snide about Javascript (since it's fairly obvious why they use it), which of these is not a serious language?

Re:new boss, same as the old boss

[Jesse_vd]

To be fair, it sort of HAS to remember that you were untagged, to prevent anyone from re-tagging you. And it's nice that it does do that. At least other can't easily find the photos

Wait...

[Red_Chaos1]

So "about 20%" of Facebook is made up of people who went from "Do no evil" to "Sucks to be you." I guess it's better they aren't at Google anymore, but now I have to wonder how many other people still work at Google that just don't give a fuck.