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Google Wave Creator Quits, Joins Facebook

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-there-aren't-that-many-choices dept.

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.

6 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Google What Now? by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    1. Re:Google What Now? by Enderandrew · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  2. Re:You got Google Wave on my Facebook! by entotre · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:Should have seen this coming... by AnonymousClown · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!"

    --
    RIP America

    July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001

  4. Re:Money is nice by Macka · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:You got Google Wave on my Facebook! by slim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?