Picasa chief departs Google for Fetch
Mike Horowitz, product manager for Google's Picasa software for managing photos and the Web site for sharing them, has left the company for Fetch Technologies.
"Mike was a valued member of the Picasa team and Google, and we wish him well in his new endeavors. We have a talented team working on Picasa, and we're excited about the future," Google said in a statement. The company didn't say who would replace Horowitz.
According to Horowitz's LinkedIn profile, he began his new role in December as chief product officer at Fetch, an El Segundo, Calif.-based company founded in 1999. The company sells an artificial intelligence product called Fetch Agent Platform "for extracting and integrating information from multiple Web sources, and transforming the data into a form that is useful for business applications," according to the company.
Horowitz has held a variety of high-profile positions at Google, including the product manager for Google Apps and for AdSense. He also launched AdSense for Domains and Google's personalized start page.
In September, Google launched Picasa 3 with a variety of photo-editing features, including better retouching and the ability to make slide-show videos and big collages. On the Web end, the new service groups similar-looking people to make them easier to identify. And the software and Web site can stay synchronized so editing changes on a person's computer are mirrored on the Web site.
(Via The Inquisitr.)
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
Not much in the story about what this guy's strengths and predilections are. Picasa's been around for ages, he show up only in the last year, then leaves. No story here.