Redmond, Washington — Software major Microsoft over the weekend has decided to restructure its once highly touted “Live Labs” — a nearly five-year-old incubation project that brought us PhotoSynth, SeaDragon, Pivot, and more, will now be “transitioning” the group to Bing, as former Yahoo executive Gary Flake, who headed the development effort now plans to leave the company.
The company noted the changes in a posting on the Live Labs Web site, stating that nearly all of the 70 or so Live Labs members are shifting over to Bing by next month. The Live Labs website has been shuttered, too:
“After almost five years as a lab within Microsoft, the Live Labs team is transitioning to Bing, where we will play a more direct role in future Bing innovations,” the team wrote in the post. “We are looking forward to contributing our Web UX and data visualization know-how to improve your Bing experience. Our transition to Bing and the associated details will be worked out through the remainder of October.”
That is but with one notable exception: Technical Fellow and Live Labs leader Gary Flake, who in a terse Twitter message (page now removed — but screenshot below) announced he is resigning from Microsoft. A spokesperson said Flake will stay through October to help with the transition.
Microsoft formulated the Live Labs division nearly five years ago with about 130 employees. Much of what they worked on was experimental, though Photosynth made its way to Bing. The team also worked on the Seadragon Web-based image viewer, which Microsoft acquired in 2006. A spokesperson said the former Live Lab team members will work mainly on user experience, visualization and visual search on Bing.
Flake joined Microsoft in 2005 from Yahoo Research and headed up Live Labs when it was created the next year. Live Labs was a joint project between MSN and Microsoft research. At Yahoo, he founded Yahoo Research Labs, ran Yahoo’s corporate R&D activities and was Overture’s Chief Science Officer.
Bing, in many ways, is a natural habitat for Live Labs, as the Live Labs team was focusing most recently on new visual search technologies with its Pivot work. A number of Live Labs projects never made it out of the labs. Microsoft execs often touted Live Labs as an example of Microsoft being an innovator, rather than a follower.
A Microsoft spokesperson stated that Flake plans to stay at the company till the end of the month to assist with the changeover. As Flake is departing Microsoft, the unit’s 68 other employees will shift over to the Bing unit. So far, nothing has been decided about the company’s current projects, which include Pivot, Microsoft said. Nevertheless, roughly half the team was moved into other Microsoft product groups, with the remaining half focusing on search and data retrieval and discovery projects.