Back in 2005, when Tim O’Reilly saw HousingMaps.com, he called it “the first true Web 2.0 application.” The site, created by Paul Rademacher, was the first mash-up using Google Maps, and tied it in with Craigslist data. The mash-up was so impressive that it got Rademacher a job at Google. And now, over five years later, he’s leaving the company, we’ve learned.
Rademacher, who was an engineer at Dreamworks Animation before he started HousingMaps, had worked his way up the engineering ranks at Google over the past several years. Most recently, he was the engineering manager for Google Maps frontend. At Google, Rademacher also created the Google Earth Browser Plugin, which brought the impressive software into the web browser for the first time. Here’s his post on it from 2008.
Now he’s the latest talented engineer to leave the Googleplex. And his departure comes right on the heels of the news that Lars Rasmussen, the father of Google Maps, has left the company as well. If there’s a silver-lining for Google, it doesn’t appear that Rademacher is following Rasmussen to Facebook — at least not yet. For now, he’s likely to pursue his own thing, we hear. His LinkedIn profile confirms that he’s left Google, but doesn’t say what he’s doing next beyond continuing to run HousingMaps. Google has yet to respond to our request for a comment.
Update: We’ve figured it out. Rademacher is joining Joshua Schachter on a new startup.