Gawker: valleywag, adam bosworth

Adam Bosworth going to Facebook?

Megan McCarthy — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 18:18:12 EDT

We're hearing whispers that Adam Bosworth, ex-Google and Microsoft engineer who created XML and the Access database, will soon join hot social network Facebook. Not 100% on this yet — Facebook PR head Brandee Barker is traveling and unavailable for comment — but the rumors seem strong and very plausible to us. If true, this sheds new light on Bosworth's swift and sudden departure from Google, where he was head of Google's beleaguered health project. The most surprising rumor is Bosworth's supposed new title: Vice President of Engineering, a position currently held by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Know anything more? Please fill us in.

Google Health claims its first victim

Megan McCarthy — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:14:14 EDT

Just as we predicted, the Google Health project has killed off one top exec. And in record time, too! Head of the project Adam Bosworth has decided to move on from the company once he gets back from vacation. Now in charge? One Marissa Mayer, long the object of Valleywag's fascination. While the powers that be will try to spin this as a promotion, we think that Marissa might want to dust off the old resume. Becoming the head of health is the tech equivalent of being named the drummer for Spinal Tap. After the jump, the email explaining the management change sent to all Google Health beta testers.

Dear Trusted Testers:

Some of you may have recently seen the news about Adam Bosworth. Adam has decided to pursue other opportunities and is currently on vacation. While we are sad to see Adam go as he is a great talent and was instrumental in starting Google Health, we will be moving forward with our product plans and are 100% committed to health. Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products and User Experience and Adam's former manager at Google is leading the health team. Marissa had been keeping track of our product progress through weekly meetings with Adam and myself and other key Product Managers.

For those of you who may not know Marissa - she is best known for being the first female engineer at Google and helped launch Web Search. She currently owns the User Interface design for all search related products and manages over over a 100 Product Managers at Google who in turn influence thousands of engineers. She is known throughout the tech industry for her expertise in user interface design and user experience and has also been widely quoted and featured in prominent publications such as Newsweek ("10 Tech Leaders of the Future"), Red Herring ("15 Women to Watch"), Business 2.0 ("Silicon Valley Dream Team"), BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Fast Company. Her bio is included below to help you get familiar with her.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/execs.html#marissa

We also have recently added staff to the health team and we want to introduce you to them as you will be working with them on testing. Jerry Lin, M.B.A. recently joined Google as a Product Manager and will be managing coding and UI. Maneesh Arora, a seasoned Product Manager at Google, has come over to the health team and will be working on partner support and scaling our Third Party partner services. Roni Zeiger, M.D. will continue to work on the Health Guide and I will continue to be involved with partner integration. As many of you know, we launched our product internally for testing to a subset of Google employees on August 16, 2007. We are continuing to get feedback from employees and will be expanding the number of employees who can test in the next few weeks.

If you have any further questions about our staffing, feel free to contact my colleague Missy Krasner at missy@google.com

Thank you again for your ongoing support.

Eric Sachs
Product Manager
Google

A glimpse inside Google Health

Mary Jane Irwin — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:24:53 EDT

Google Blogoscoped has posted tipster-supplied screenshots of a prototype of Google's upcoming health-information service. Presumably, these are screens from the demo reportedly being shopped around to health professionals and other advisors. While the amount of data Google Health plans to store is impressive, and potentially helpful, it's terrifying to contemplate the prospect of one company controlling all of your personal data — from communications and business documents to medical records. If we're lucky, Googler Adam Bosworth's make-work project will never get off the ground.

Why Microsoft and Google's health plans are sick

Owen Thomas — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:11:07 EDT

Microsoft and Google are getting into the healthcare business, according to Steve Lohr, the New York Times' most reliable transcriptionist of big tech companies' plans. Both tech giants want to put patients' health records online and help them search for medical information on the Web. But Lohr entirely misses the point. Tech and healthcare have a long, parlous history, intertwined with the industry's laborious regulations. If change in the industry comes about, it's going to emerge from hospital halls and the lobbies of Congress, not from Silicon Valley. So why are Microsoft and Google putting some of their biggest brains on the project?

To get them out of the way, of course. Yes, yes, Adam Bosworth, the former Microsoft engineer, was a glorious hire for Google back in the day. Yes, yes, he invented XML and the Access database and so on and so forth, and he sort of invented Ajax, the set of technologies used by most modern websites (but not really). But what, exactly, has he done for us lately? Exactly. So it makes perfect sense for Google to get him out of the way by putting him on an obscure, sure-to-fail healthcare project.

It's a time-honored tradition in tech: If you have an executive you can't stand but can't get rid of, put him in charge of your "healthcare initiative." That's what Intel did to Steve McGeady, after all. When he was in charge of the chipmaker's software business, McGeady frequently sparred with Microsoft, and even testified against the software giant in the Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit. Stripped of his software job, he was put in charge of Intel's Internet Health Initiative, and quit a few years later.

As for Microsoft's Steve Shihadeh, look no further than his resume: He's a salesman, not a technologist. His goal is to sell Windows server licenses to hospitals, and if some patter about revolutionizing healthcare means he can sell more software, of course he'll add that to his spiel. Like any good salesman, he doesn't really believe it.

So keep that in mind when you read about any tech company with high-minded healthcare plans, and its "health architect" wants to schmooze you up. Either you're dealing with someone who's got something to sell — or someone who's got nothing but time on their hands. Either way, their career's not looking healthy.