Maps and Wave creator leaves Google for Facebook

Lars Rasmussen, the engineer behind Google Maps and later Google Wave, has left Google for pastures new.  Like a great number of ex-Googlers these days, those new pastures are Facebook.  Rasmussen has worked with Google for around five years, since it bought his brainchild mapping project – the product that would eventually become the great Google Maps.
Rasmussen’s next big endeavour, Wave, was pitched as a modern and revolutionary replacement for email.  It featured real-time elements and deep, integrated collaboration tools.  Although initially lauded, eventually its broad feature set would be its undoing, with many early adopters abandoning Wave soon after launch, stating simply that they couldn’t find a use for it.  Google eventually pulled the plug on the project.  In an interview Rasmussen said Google had been too impatient with Wave, and shouldn’t have killed it before it was even a year old.
Whether Google’s euthanasia of Wave was a factor in his decision to leave is unknown, however he says he was lured over to Facebook after a personal pitch from Mark Zuckerberg.  This is the first known instance of Zuckerberg having a personal hand in poaching an employee, although it’s certainly not the first time high-profile employees have changed hands between the two tech giants.
Rasmussen says that Google’s increasing size (23,000 employees and counting) makes it hard to get things done – that a smaller company like Facebook leaves more room to bring the really revolutionary ideas to the fore – however at 2,000 employees Facebook is hardly a minnow.
Rasmussen is the latest in a series of high-profile departures.  Firstly YouTube founder Chad Hurley showed himself the door, then just a few days ago CEO of recent Google acquisition AdMob Omar Hamoui followed suit.  What’s notable is that all of these departures come from companies Google has bought – raising fears that Google is in danger of becoming the next Yahoo (a.k.a. The Place Startups Go To Die).