Mark Lucovsky left Microsoft today. Now, Mark is a legend, so I don't think he needs further introduction. What interested me was that he left to work for Google. Looking back at what Mark has done, you'll see things like 'Designing NT kernel', 'Designing in-house sourcecontrol system for win2k' etc. Not your average notepad-style projects.
What made him move to Google, a company who competes with Microsoft but in a complete different area? For that, you have to look at what Mark also was: designer at the Hailstorm team. Now, let's enter speculation mode. What if Google hired Mark to architect the all-you'll-ever-need-website/services system for Google, which combines all Google's current and future services? Strange thought? Perhaps, but let's look closer at what he has to say in his brilliant posting about shipping software. He tries to explain that Microsoft is not that good at shipping software. Some people in the blog community read in those words that Microsoft wasn't able to create CD's.
NO, silly!
What Mark meant was that the way software is shipped, by installing it on the client through CD's, DVD's or a cumbersome download process, is slow and the number of clients affected is not controlled by you and it will take some time before all clients have installed your software. That's not MS fault, it's the disadvantage of the way their software usually is distributed. However, with an online service website, a new feature is distributed to all users in one go. He gives that example.
You still think he'll work on some OS? Think again. Oh, and while you're firestarting your braincells, please think about what kind of impact this will have for how we use computers.
Read: Google is going to build a Hailstorm++ ?
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