Epress.am News from Armenia
Lars Rasmussen, the Sydney-based co-founder of Google Maps has spoken publicly for the first time about why he quit his job and joined the growing band of high profile Googlers who have switched allegiances to Facebook, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.
“It feels to me that Facebook may be a sort of once-in-a-decade type of company,” Rasmussen said in a telephone interview last night, explaining how he decided to end his six-year tenure at Google after a “compelling personal pitch” from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.
With more than 500 million members worldwide, Facebook has become the web’s hottest destination, while Zuckerberg, 26, has become American’s youngest billionaire.
“I think if you were to ask me two or three years ago if Facebook was going to be this big, I wouldn’t have picked it. And I have a great deal to learn there from Mark and his team,” he said.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the appointment saying that the company was “thrilled [that Rasmussen will] be part of Facebook’s world-class engineering team to help design transformative technologies”.
Alan Noble, Google Australia’s engineering director, said: “Lars made great contributions to Google in innovative products like Google Maps and Google Wave. He was also instrumental in starting engineering in the Google Sydney office. We wish him all the best.”
Rasmussen said one reason for leaving was that Google was becoming too unwieldy. He made several comments about Facebook’s smaller size and how this made it easier to make an impact and get things done.
While Google employs 25,000 staff members, Facebook has about 2000.
“The energy there is just amazing, whereas it can be very challenging to be working in a company the size of Google,” Rasmussen said.
Another reason was that the Facebook offer was just too good to refuse. Rasmussen said that Facebook’s offer was “much more compelling both financially and in terms of the work there”.