<<After nearly 5 years with the company, Engineering Director Mark Lucovsky is leaving Google for a role with VMware, we’ve learned. Lucovsky has been an integral part of Google’s APIs, including the all-important Search APIs. (...)

Lucovsky may be best known for the role he played in a complete and utter meltdown that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once had. As the NT architect, Lucovsky was clearly pretty vital to Microsoft, so when he went in for a meeting with Ballmer in 2004 to let him know he was leaving, you can be sure the CEO was a bit on edge.

“Just tell me it’s not Google,” Ballmer reportedly said according to court documents (for a case surrounding another Google ex-Microsoft hire). When Lucovsky said it was Google, Ballmer allegedly picked up a chair and threw it across the room.

What he apparently said next, will live on forever in Internet history ...>>

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/13/google-loses-engineering-director-who-once-caused-steve-ballmer-to-melt-down/