Google Nips Mark Lucovsky - Distinguished Microsoft Engineer - from Microsoft  
by Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. - 1 Comment, Last updated 03/05/2005

Mark Lucovsky may not be a household name in your household, but his name is well-known among Microsoft pundits and geeks. However soon his name will be associated with Google, and not just because “Lucovsky” turns up more than 13,000 hits in a Google search. It’s because Mark Lucovsky, who held the honour of “Distinguished Engineer” at Microsoft, and is considered by many to be one of the key architects of Windows, has unceremoniously left Microsoft and gone to work for Google.

While the appeal of working for Google is legendary, what many are wondering is what Google would want with Mark Lucovsky, a 16-year veteran of Microsoft, and by all accounts an OS guru. Can we expect a GoogleOS on the horizon? Or, as some speculate, does Google want Lucovsky for his key involvement with the “Hailstorm” project, which was the codename for the .Net My Services suite of personal web services which Microsoft never quite got up and running, although many of the intended offerings have been folded into other Microsoft products.

Although this news is just breaking now, Mark Lucovsky actually left Microsoft back in November. While it’s unclear when he first started at Google, what is clear is that by the time he left Microsoft, he may not have been their biggest fan. An entry on his newly minted BlogSpot blog entitled “Shipping Software” takes the Redmond giant to task, saying “Isn’t this an odd state of affairs? Microsoft is supposed to be the one that “knows how to ship software”, but you are the one doing all the heavy lifting. You are the one that has to ship their software the last mile, install it on end user machines, ensure their machines still work after you perform this platform level surgery.”

Sometime between then and now he joined Google, where his boss, unlike Bill Gates, may not be a knight, but they certainly know how to deliver what their users want.