A seemingly ironic and untimely event, Chris Wilson, the man once dubbed the "IE Platform Architect" has now left Microsoft after working at Redmond for 15 years for the Internet search giant, Google. He will not be working on Chrome, at least for another year until his contract with Microsoft is up, but instead is being hired as a Developer Advocate.
With the recent huge release of Internet Explorer 9 Beta, it is a mystery as to why Wilson chose right now to join Google. In a blog post, Wilson says that he "reached the conclusion that I’d helped IE along as much as I could, I felt it was a good time to reassess where I ultimately want to go with my career, and I realized that I really needed to stretch my wings beyond Microsoft. "
Wilson's 15 year long journey began in 1995 when he joined Microsoft's Internet Explorer team, according to The Register. From there he became known as the "IE Platform Architect" and continued to improve the browser up to version 9, where he was the Principal Program Manager of the Open Web Platform and working with the team that built Internet Explorer 9's JavaScript engine, Chakra.
Further on in the blog post, Wilson mentions how Google is one of the top innovators of the web and that he wants to work on continually building the consumer a better web platform. First he has written the software, and now his goals are for the web itself, although he would not give a clear cut reason for leaving.
63 Comments - Add comment