Bloomberg is reporting that Richard Williamson, one of the engineers who led Apple’s charge to replace Google Maps on the iPhone and was fired when results were less than satisfactory, has been hired by Facebook.
Cue all kinds of Facebook social graph mapping jokes.
Humor aside, however, Williamson was one of the top engineers that Steve Jobs put on the iPhone, and has worked at Apple for more than ten years. And the Apple Maps debacle was not caused by engineers or even the company’s actual work on mapping applications per se, but by Apple’s hubris in assuming it could duplicate in a year or two what took Google many years and thousands of engineers to do: build a great mapping experience.
There’s no official word from Facebook confirming the hire, though I have asked Facebook for a comment.
Williamson’s LinkedIn account, however, shows a spiffy new title: Director of Engineering at Facebook after two roles at Apple.
Image credit: Ricardo Bilton
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