Slashdot Mirror
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'.
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.
MS always had talent. The problem was that MS wasted it with a corporate structure that promoted intracompany fighting rather than cooperation.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
Silicone Valley? What is that? A mammary implants mecca?
Google also does that. They integrate panoramia pictures in some locations.
Go to "Old Tucson Studios" in google maps (not the preview). Grab the man and drag him to a spot on the map. You will get pictures of the different buildings. In some you can click on other areas which will transition to another picture a different person too. You can move around like this. It's all from public pictures.
Google hasn't integrated this into the preview yet, so they clearly don't know what to do with it yet.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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.
"radiologist in India for diagnosis" hey maybe they can afford toilets then
They have better imaginations in India perhaps.
After all it takes a great deal of imagination to read most Xrays, and it its a lost art in this country, its only because
there are so many better imaging technologies that imagining soft tissue shadows in an Xray is simply worth pursuing any more.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It also was overloaded with fresh-undergraduate talent. However some tasks require a substantial number of people with significant experience, yet Microsoft only rarely went after them. In at least some cases the sole reason they hired talent was to silence them (Mark Russinovich I'm looking at you) not to benefit from them.
Their search engine effort is notorious for the lack of inside experts, and the person in charge is, as best as I understand, a non-techie.
I remember this guy. This happened more than a year ago.
James Whitaker was a Microsoft exec who left Microsoft to join Google for a bit and then go back to Microsoft at a higher level. His main motive in joining Google was apparently to get a promotion back in Microsoft and to make some money on the side by writing a book. Ridiculous microsoft politics at work. And yes this was covered extensively on slashdot.
Of course recoiledsnake is a well known paid microsoft shill who will misrepresent facts.
In your rush to post something Anti-Google, you totally missed the point of the very article you posted.
It wasn't even about Google. It was about ship-jumping techies scorching the earth as they head for the exit, regardless of what company they were leaving.
The most telling quote in the article: Whittaker's criticism merely burns a bridge.
What you are seeing here is the petulant child syndrome of someone who didn't get their way, or was passed over for promotion. Its not the way a grown-up leaves a job.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
[Sound of crickets]
Have gnu, will travel.