I’d venture to say that I’m as excited about Chrome OS as anybody. 99.99 percent of my working day is currently spent in Chrome currently, and I’d be just fine with it being 100 percent if it gains a few features that Chrome OS is promising. But there’s a mildly worrisome trend occurring leading up to the launch of Google’s first desktop operating system: defections. Also interesting: what does Facebook want with these guys?
Specifically, another Chrome OS engineer has decided to leave his job at Google to go work for Facebook. This time it’s not nearly as huge of a blow as Director of Engineering Matthew Papakipos, the man who created and led the Chrome OS team for Google, leaving for Facebook. But it’s still someone else leaving the team to join Facebook, the enemy.
David Garcia, a software engineer who has been at Google for nearly four years has left the company to accept a job at Facebook, we’ve confirmed. You don’t need to look any further than this page to see how involved with Chrome OS development Garcia has been over the past several months.
That said, he wasn’t a high-level engineer on the management side of things like Papakipos was.
After Papakipos left, Google sent us a statement pointing to their “deep bench of talent” and saying they weren’t worried about missing a beat when it comes to Chrome OS development. That’s undoubtedly true, but I’m still wondering why people continue to leave such a massive project after months of work, before it has ever launched — especially since we seem to be so close to the launch.
But I’m even more curious about what Facebook is doing with these people. If you add former Android Senior Product manager (who joined Facebook in May) into this mix, you’re starting to get quite the little collection of people with various OS experience from Google. Oh, and there is what ever project Joe Hewitt is currently working on.
Maybe these people are thinking about phones, maybe not. Maybe they’re thinking about Android, maybe not. Maybe they’re thinking about a browser, maybe not. Maybe something else. But the talent continues to pour into Facebook — and much of it from Google. Despite counter-measures.