According to Microsoft Watch, Mark Lucovsky, one of Microsoft's key Windows architects, has defected to Google.

A 16-year Microsoft veteran, Lucovsky was one of a handful of "Distinguished Engineers" at Microsoft. He is credited as one of the core dozen engineers that came from Digital Equipment Corp. to Microsoft and built the Windows NT operating system. He was charged with building the Windows NT executive, kernel, Win32 run-time and other key elements of the operating system. NT was the precursor to Windows Server.

Mark Lucovsky recently said I am not sure I believe anymore, that Microsoft "knows how to ship software".

Why Google would need a Windows architect? It seems that Google's architecture is based on Linux solutions. But as someone says on Slashdot: Google is setting out to build a web service infrastructure, powered by its 100,000 node (at last count) Linux supercomputer. And after all, this guy's job (Mark Lucovsky's job) at Microsoft was to build a web infrastructure.

Via Slashdot and John Battelle