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Google Nabs Bing Maps Architect
theodp writes "In another case of Microsoft's-loss-is-Google's-gain, GeekWire reports that Google has made a big hire from Microsoft, bringing aboard TED crowd-pleaser Blaise Agüera y Arcas, the well-known software architect and designer who was among the Redmond company's elite ranks of distinguished engineers. Known for his work on services including Photosynth and Bing Maps, Agüera y Arcas called the move 'the hardest decision of my life'. A stunning preview of Photosynth was released by Microsoft last week, and TED just released a video of Agüera y Arcas demonstrating the technology at a conference earlier this year."
Microsoft pays well, but the way it treats employees is pretty bad. I am so glad I got out of that place.
Witnesses described it as 'chair shaped'.
Someone should take off their heads !
[wdw]
he left because he hates Windows 8.
Turns Google into a dumping ground, it does.
I am waiting for the headline that Ballmer has decided to move to Google !!!!
The new Photosynth looks less impressive than the original one that allowed you to move arbitrarily around a point cloud. What they have now is less sophisticated than Google street view and essentially pointless with the ubiquitous availability of video recorders.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
WOW! I'm impressed with the new photosynth moving pictures. Seems almost like a video, only crappier.
Seriously I was expecting to be able to float around the target like in MeshLab or something. This new photosynth is just crummy video. What's so cool about that?
I heard he got fired already. He tried to use Siri to get directions to his new office. He's in Belgium now.
rewriting history since 2109
Google is no different.
It used to be, then they started squeezing harder and harder now it's just a shell of what once was
Looking forward to a new challenger
The new challengers are gonna come from outside Silicone Valley. Silicone Valley is in the echo chamber of ideas (social media and the pimping of user data for advertizing) and this prejudice of where the next big thing is going to come from (it's only coming from 20 somethings).
Just look at what parts of society that have been lagging in automation and IT services - and I don't mean your typical back office type of stuff - I mean where software innovates an industry like the Sabre system did for airlines back in the 70s.
I got an idea, myself. There's an industry that hasn't been penetrated much by technology because the powers that be were old and stodgy and the allocation of money is totally fucked up. The new kids coming up though, are quite tech savvy and we're already seeing some changes.
By the way, when you hear folks getting laid off from their healthcare job, it's NOT because of Obama care - it's automation.
Yes, that's the industry I am talking about - healthcare and the new young docs don't have a problem with tech.
There are some really big things gonna happen in healthcare soon, but it won't hit us consumers for a while. There are organizations who are going to fight tooth and nail (AMA) to keep things like - having an X-ray tech take your x-ray and send it to a radiologist in India for diagnosis and emailed back to save you and your insurance company a lot of $$$$$. It CAN be done because I worked on that software at a company that is so rich and powerful, McDonald's wouldn't dare sue it for using "Mc".
Just say'in.
Oh, if you think you got some great iOS or Androind medical app, well, do your research. We probably already did it.
Some people really don't have any real problems.
If the hardest decision is whether to work for one nasty tech gorilla or another slightly younger but turning out just as nasty tech gorilla, you've never really done anything of relevance to humankind.
From everything (and I mean it, everything) I read about working conditions and the environment in Microsoft, it's a place unfriendly to creative guys, and those who question authority. In general, it seems an unhealthy place to work, regardless of the good salary.
Actually, I heard he hates Visual Studio 2012 even more. Something about using bland, similar monochromatic icons tends to bother people who work with image processing and innovate the field using all that wonderful color information in those images.
Same difference though... some idiot exec at Microsoft has decided the world needs Fisher-price Playschool operating systems and development tools.
...I am waiting for for a free programm and an adapter, where you snap an android phone to the new kinect, connect it to a battery pack and record really impressive 3d scenes (hopefully it get's exported as an usable 3d format)!
There's just a lot of "woohoo microsoft" phrasing in this, that makes it feel far too much like an advertisement to actually investigate.
It seems clear they are saying that this guy worked on some good and interesting projects, not that Microsoft's products are the best evar.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
MS is not cool. I would argue that it was never cool (the desktop was never all that cool) but now it is one of the most uncool hi-tech companies out there. Google can be whatever you want, but, for better or worse, uncool it ain't. MS is a bit like the Cadillac of hit-tech: Few organizations are associated with "old and out of touch" like a Cadillac car or an MS product.
That's nice, but can we please bring the Wikipedia location-based entries back to Google Maps?
I used to work with this guy and he is incredibly overrated. He's been the architect of Bing Maps for 5 years. What earth shattering innovations has he led in that time? Somebody above mentioned that this 'incredible' v2 Photosynth 1) isn't even as good as v1 and 2) has never been developed into anything more useful than a TED demo. He worked on the same team as Gur Kimchi, the guy behind the Amazon delivery drones. Between the two of them, they are the king and queen of vaporware. Neither one produced a damn thing in 6 years at Microsoft, so fuck it Google can have him. He's a one man hype machine.
Google: We want you. Here's a million dollars.
Agüera y Arcas: Okay.
It seems clear they are saying that this guy worked on some good and interesting projects, not that Microsoft's products are the best evar.
To bad "good and interesting" mapping projects weren't on his resume.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Funnily, Slashdot doesn't usually report things when it's the other way around(guess why??!!)
This employee could see the Google+ disaster coming from a mile(which actually made some real people cry, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs )
http://www.informationweek.com/team-building-and-staffing/google-exec-joins-microsoft-trashes-google/d/d-id/1103367?
Google Exec Joins Microsoft, Trashes Google
Google's focus on social and advertising is killing entrepreneurship and innovation, insists former engineering director James Whittaker.
Slideshow: 10 Essential Google+ Tips
(click image for larger view and for slideshow)
James Whittaker resigned his engineering director position at Google last month and took a job at Microsoft, where he had worked previously. Then on Tuesday, in a Microsoft Developer Network blog post, he explained his reason for leaving Google: The company has lost its way by blindly trying to compete with Facebook.
"The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate," Whittaker wrote. "The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus."
Whittaker's lament recalls the so-called Peanut Butter Manifesto published in 2006 by then-Yahoo SVP Brad Garlinghouse. There's a difference however: Garlinghouse proposed reforms for Yahoo; Whittaker's criticism merely burns a bridge.
It also echoes a post made by Tim Bray, who upon joining Google in 2010 as an Android developer advocate, took the opportunity to slam Apple's lack of openness (though Bray did not work at Apple).
And then there's a website devoted to the problems with Windows 8, presented by Mike Bibik, a former Microsoft program manager now at Amazon.
"Why I Left" is also now playing outside the tech community. Departing Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith offered a comparable condemnation of his former employer in a New York Times op-ed on Wednesday.
Perhaps this particular literary form should be known as a "Whine-I-Left" letter.
[ Not everyone believes Google has lost its way. Read DARPA Director Leaving For Google. ]
Whittaker draws a contrast between Google under former CEO Eric Schmidt and Google under current CEO Larry Page. The Schmidt regime, he asserts, "was run like an innovation factory, empowering employees to be entrepreneurial through founder's awards, peer bonuses and 20% time." Ads, the company's primary source of revenue remained in the background.
Whittaker appears to believe that ads, like a parent at a teen's party, should remain out of sight, to avoid the embarrassment of exposing who's really in charge.
Under Page, Whittaker says, Google has devoted itself to making its products social, at the expense of innovation and entrepreneurship. And to make matters worse, Whittaker believes Google's social focus is a failure.
Google was wrong to claim that sharing on the Web is broken, Whittaker argues. "As it turned out, sharing was not broken," he said. "Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn't part of it. ... Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn't invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google's party became the elephant in the room."
Whittaker's pique appears to be tailor made for Microsoft. He acknowledges that he doesn't enjoy the invasiveness of Google's social integration or the company's ads. Microsoft has been talking up Google's disinterest in privacy for years and many people nowadays, particularly legislators, are listening.
Current and former Google employees have been quick to question Whittaker's motives. In a Google+ pos
This space for rent.
Somebody has the gall to point out that this guy is not all we prop him up as being and they get modded to oblivion. Go ahead slashdot create your own narrative, one that fits your world view.
You got me there for a moment with all that talk of "penetrated" and "fucked up," I thought you were referring to the San Fernando Valley. You, sir, will certainly benefit from using either Bing or Google maps!
...Chair flying weather reported in redmond, WA...
Googles not in the fuddy-duddy category like Microsoft is... but cool it ain't.
Geeky, yes.
#DeleteChrome
The Photosynth demos look nice, but surely there's a point where it becomes simpler just to shoot an HD video of your "walk" (or "spin") rather than having to reconstruct all those intermediate frames?
Photosynth may be useful if you didn't think of that beforehand, but since those demo images were presumably taken specifically to demonstrate Photosynth, it seems a bit of a waste of time - like demonstrating your colourisation program on a black and white version of a colour movie.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I can picture how his reasoning went:
"Should I work for the NSA, or should I work for the NSA? This is one hard decision."
[Sound of crickets]
Have gnu, will travel.
> the hardest decision of my life
Cut the guy some slack. You environmentalists should love him -- I'm sure his decision was very, very Green.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.