Google Nabs Bing Maps Architect 94
theodp writes "In another case of Microsoft's-loss-is-Google's-gain, GeekWire reports that Google has made a big hire from Microsoft, bringing aboard TED crowd-pleaser Blaise Agüera y Arcas, the well-known software architect and designer who was among the Redmond company's elite ranks of distinguished engineers. Known for his work on services including Photosynth and Bing Maps, Agüera y Arcas called the move 'the hardest decision of my life'. A stunning preview of Photosynth was released by Microsoft last week, and TED just released a video of Agüera y Arcas demonstrating the technology at a conference earlier this year."
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There's just a lot of "woohoo microsoft" phrasing in this, that makes it feel far too much like an advertisement to actually investigate.
It seems clear they are saying that this guy worked on some good and interesting projects, not that Microsoft's products are the best evar.
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It seems clear they are saying that this guy worked on some good and interesting projects, not that Microsoft's products are the best evar.
To bad "good and interesting" mapping projects weren't on his resume.
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Googles not in the fuddy-duddy category like Microsoft is... but cool it ain't.
Geeky, yes.
Retaining talent (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft pays well, but the way it treats employees is pretty bad. I am so glad I got out of that place.
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"radiologist in India for diagnosis" hey maybe they can afford toilets then
They have better imaginations in India perhaps.
After all it takes a great deal of imagination to read most Xrays, and it its a lost art in this country, its only because
there are so many better imaging technologies that imagining soft tissue shadows in an Xray is simply worth pursuing any more.
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Silicone Valley? What is that? A mammary implants mecca?
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My thought as well. Sounds more like Hollyweird.
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Silicone Valley? What is that? A mammary implants mecca?
More importantly, where is it? Perhaps a google maps link, good sir?
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Google is no different.
It used to be, then they started squeezing harder and harder now it's just a shell of what once was
Looking forward to a new challenger
Once the techie founders become "business suits" the decline is already being signalled to the employees. Google stopped being "cool' long ago; now Google is a data collection source for the NSA and its brethren.
Re:Retaining talent (Score:4, Interesting)
Once the techie founders become "business suits" the decline is already being signalled to the employees
That usually happens right around the time the founders reach the unpleasant realization that they actually have to make money if they want their corporation to survive.
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UFO Sighted near Redmond. (Score:5, Funny)
Witnesses described it as 'chair shaped'.
Re:Slashdot bias.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember this guy. This happened more than a year ago.
James Whitaker was a Microsoft exec who left Microsoft to join Google for a bit and then go back to Microsoft at a higher level. His main motive in joining Google was apparently to get a promotion back in Microsoft and to make some money on the side by writing a book. Ridiculous microsoft politics at work. And yes this was covered extensively on slashdot.
Of course recoiledsnake is a well known paid microsoft shill who will misrepresent facts.
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Of course recoiledsnake is a well known paid microsoft shill who will misrepresent facts.
Anonymous name-calling isn't very convincing. If you want to dis someone, put your name behind your words so we can see what your own agenda might be.
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Huh? Just check recoiledsnake's comment history. You don't need my name for that.
Dissing anonymous comments just for the sake of dissing them is very hacker newsy. Welcome to slashdot where things work a little differently and people judge comments by their merit instead of whether they are made by anonymous perosnas . Also you have a handle. Not a name. So you are as anonymous as I am.
So why not apply that to my post as well instead of judging it by looking at my previous posts? If you think someone gets paid to post on this dying site, you are completely mistaken, at least in my case.
Anonymous users calling registered handles paid shills is exactly like pot calling the kettle black. I dared to put a handle on my post and I am taking the karma hit, while you're just taking potshots while being too cowardly to even register or use your real handle. How can you call into question my commen
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His main motive in joining Google was apparently to get a promotion back in Microsoft and to make some money on the side by writing a book. Ridiculous microsoft politics at work
Nice way to slander someone who you don't even know, while not even being signed into Slashdot. Add the karma bonus for accusing OP of being a paid MS = +5 INTERESTING!!!!
The same old chair jokes and MS bashing in most of the posts and modding down any contrary comments and destroying their karma, guess I am not the only one getting bored with the echo chamber and the circlejerk, from the past few years Slashdot activity and readership seems to be dropping a like a rock.
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In your rush to post something Anti-Google, you totally missed the point of the very article you posted.
It wasn't even about Google. It was about ship-jumping techies scorching the earth as they head for the exit, regardless of what company they were leaving.
The most telling quote in the article: Whittaker's criticism merely burns a bridge.
What you are seeing here is the petulant child syndrome of someone who didn't get their way, or was passed over for promotion. Its not the way a grown-up leaves a job.
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My intent wasn't to post something anti-Google, it's to show that people move all the time, and it's not particularly newsworthy. For example here's an article from a few years ago which showed some people moving from Google to Microsoft.
http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/06/29/TheGOOGMSFTExodusWorkingAtGoogleVsWorkingAtMicrosoft.aspx [25hoursaday.com]
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I would and always will give precedence for individuals comments over corporate public relations. I read them quite simply as ex-insider frustration, nothing more and nothing less. These people are not burning bridges, they are expressing what would need to change for them to return. Once you have left a company why maintain that companies Public Relations (PR=B$) charade, why not critique it.
You whole point of being subservient and servile to corporations once you have been employed by the them is pathe
Let's just get this straight (Score:1)
he left because he hates Windows 8.
Not just Windows 8 (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I heard he hates Visual Studio 2012 even more. Something about using bland, similar monochromatic icons tends to bother people who work with image processing and innovate the field using all that wonderful color information in those images.
Same difference though... some idiot exec at Microsoft has decided the world needs Fisher-price Playschool operating systems and development tools.
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Let me know when it only uses two colours. Black and Green.
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You should really try black and amber!
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Re:Google hurting itself (Score:4, Insightful)
It also was overloaded with fresh-undergraduate talent. However some tasks require a substantial number of people with significant experience, yet Microsoft only rarely went after them. In at least some cases the sole reason they hired talent was to silence them (Mark Russinovich I'm looking at you) not to benefit from them.
Their search engine effort is notorious for the lack of inside experts, and the person in charge is, as best as I understand, a non-techie.
Musical Chairs (Score:2)
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So, any company wanting the opportunity to move billions of dollars into Ballmer's pockets in return for visionary leadership like... making the Zune? ... should hire Ballmer. The primary thing Monkey Boy has ever shown success at is grabbing cash from other people and stuffing it in his own wallet, to the order of billions of dollars --- perhaps not a useful return on investment, unlike the highly valuable services performed by janitors. What has Ballmer done to make the world a better place, rather than 1
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I am waiting for the headline that Ballmer has decided to move to Google !!!!
Why do you hate Google? :-(
Stunning preview? (Score:1)
The new Photosynth looks less impressive than the original one that allowed you to move arbitrarily around a point cloud. What they have now is less sophisticated than Google street view and essentially pointless with the ubiquitous availability of video recorders.
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Google Streetview is realised with equipment $200k (Car, GPS, Lidar, IMU), while Photosynth is done with public pictures on the web, most likely taken with cameras around $1k.
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Google also does that. They integrate panoramia pictures in some locations.
Go to "Old Tucson Studios" in google maps (not the preview). Grab the man and drag him to a spot on the map. You will get pictures of the different buildings. In some you can click on other areas which will transition to another picture a different person too. You can move around like this. It's all from public pictures.
Google hasn't integrated this into the preview yet, so they clearly don't know what to do with it yet.
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I was going through some of the new synths, and I truly felt like I was walking through a 3d environment.
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Have you seen many videos where the user can pan at will or zoom in on important details without loss of resolution?
Photosynth looks like video, but pretty clearly has benefits video can't offer. Of course video also has strengths where photosynth is weak - the two aren't really competitors.
I heard (Score:1)
I heard he got fired already. He tried to use Siri to get directions to his new office. He's in Belgium now.
'the hardest decision of my life' (Score:2, Insightful)
Some people really don't have any real problems.
If the hardest decision is whether to work for one nasty tech gorilla or another slightly younger but turning out just as nasty tech gorilla, you've never really done anything of relevance to humankind.
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If you mean other than having a direct effect on millions of web users then yeah, he's done nothing for mankind.
Good for him. (Score:1)
From everything (and I mean it, everything) I read about working conditions and the environment in Microsoft, it's a place unfriendly to creative guys, and those who question authority. In general, it seems an unhealthy place to work, regardless of the good salary.
Very nice demo videos... (Score:1)
Overrated (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work with this guy and he is incredibly overrated. He's been the architect of Bing Maps for 5 years. What earth shattering innovations has he led in that time? Somebody above mentioned that this 'incredible' v2 Photosynth 1) isn't even as good as v1 and 2) has never been developed into anything more useful than a TED demo. He worked on the same team as Gur Kimchi, the guy behind the Amazon delivery drones. Between the two of them, they are the king and queen of vaporware. Neither one produced a damn thing in 6 years at Microsoft, so fuck it Google can have him. He's a one man hype machine.
Photosynth demos look nice, but... (Score:2)
The Photosynth demos look nice, but surely there's a point where it becomes simpler just to shoot an HD video of your "walk" (or "spin") rather than having to reconstruct all those intermediate frames?
Photosynth may be useful if you didn't think of that beforehand, but since those demo images were presumably taken specifically to demonstrate Photosynth, it seems a bit of a waste of time - like demonstrating your colourisation program on a black and white version of a colour movie.
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Another important aspect is that the pictures don't even have to be all from the same camera, taken in one session.
I know they can be, but that's not the case with these demos. They've gone to great lengths to give Photosynth great input - but by doing so they're entirely failing to demonstrate Photosynth's true strengths (which, in another inversion, won't give you results as good as the demos).
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You realize there is a 3D model build in the background, right?
You get nice pictures, simulated walk video AND a 3D model of a place.
Apple Maps Architect (Score:4, Funny)
[Sound of crickets]
Environmentally friendly (Score:1)
> the hardest decision of my life
Cut the guy some slack. You environmentalists should love him -- I'm sure his decision was very, very Green.