Microsoft's "Distinguished Engineer" title is given to those who have made great contributions to the company. A Microsoft.com press page states the following:

To honor technical workers who have made exceptionally important contributions to the company's products and technologies, Microsoft has since 2000 awarded the title of Distinguished Engineer.

One such Distinguished Engineer, Marc Lucovsky, was responsible for the design and implementation of many core parts of the Windows NT operating system, such as the process and threading subsystems. He was the senior architect for the Windows 2000 team, as well as overlooking the integrity and direction of the core operating system.

So why is all of this important, you ask?

Marc Lucovsky is now working for Google. Of all companies, he has defected to one of Microsoft's emerging mega-archrivals. He left the company on November 18th, 2004, but not much more is known. Whether it was a falling-out, boredom, or a better offer that had him jump ship, we probably won't know, unless he mentions it on his blog.

Winer, like a number of industry watchers, are wagering that Google hired Lucovsky to help the search-engine king build an operating system.

But no one knows for sure. And even Lucovsky, whose newly minted blog lists Google as his employer, isn't saying what his new role at Google will entail.

Luckovsky isn't sparing harsh words for his former employer, however, pointing fingers at everything from Microsoft's difficulties in shipping software to its users on time, to its policy of requiring users to validate that they have non-pirated versions of Windows in order to obtain fixes and downloads.

Very interesting stuff. The man is obviously extremely talented and bright at what he does. With Googling dabbling its fingers in every pot lately, we could see some more awesome stuff coming from the company.

Let me just say this ... if in fact they are building an operating system, please, please, please don't let it be another UNIX/Linux clone. We have enough as it is.

Article Link: Microsoft Loses Key Windows Architect to Google

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