Mark Lucovsky Leaves Google, Calls Company “Unstable”

Mark Lucovsky, a former key member of the original Microsoft NT team, has left Google 20 years after first joining the online giant.

“I have decided to step away from my role at Google, where I was Senior Director of Engineering, responsible for OS and Software Platform for AR and XR devices,” Mr. Lucovsky tweeted yesterday. “The recent changes in AR leadership and Google’s unstable commitment and vision have weighed heavily on my decision.”

“Moving forward, I am eager to explore opportunities that allow me to further advance Augmented Reality technology and its intersection with generative AI,” he continued. “I approach the next chapter with enthusiasm and anticipation for the exciting possibilities that lie ahead.”

While it’s not unusual for the high-profile tech elite to lash out at their former employer publicly—Id Software co-founder John Carmack did the same thing this past July when he left Meta—this criticism comes at a tough time for Google, which is seen as a laggard in the exploding AI space, casting doubts on Sundar Pichai’s leadership.

And here’s a fun bit of tech history, as Lucovsky is no stranger to leaving badly. He came from DEC to Microsoft with several others to create NT and played a key role in that project, including, among other things, co-defining the Win32 APIs for developers. And when he told Microsoft’s then-CEO Steve Ballmer that he was leaving the company to go to Google, Ballmer infamously threw a chair into the wall of his office.

“F$%^ing Eric Schmidt is a f$%^ing p$%^sy,” he screamed at Lucovsky. “I’m going to f$%^ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f$%^ing kill Google … Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.”

Lucovsky wasn’t actually at Google this entire time: he left Google at some point to work for VMWare, and then he joined Facebook (now Meta) to work on a new OS for AR/VR in 2019. It’s not clear when he returned to Google, but it’s interesting that he’s still interested in AR/VR, given the general assumption that this technology will never be broadly popular. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, however, so he must be onto something.