October 9, 2010

Microsoft kills Live Labs; leader resigns, team goes to Bing

Microsoft has killed Live Labs, a group that developed data visualization products such as Photosynth and Pivot, and is reorganizing the team of 68 under Bing.

That's excluding Live Labs leader and technical fellow Gary Flake, who in a terse Twitter message announced he is resigning from Microsoft. A spokesperson said Flake will stay through October to help with the transition.

Microsoft created 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.

Here's the official statement from Microsoft on today's Live Labs news:

After nearly five years as a lab within Microsoft, the Live Labs team is transitioning to Bing, where we'll play a more direct role in future Bing innovations.

We're 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.

The 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.

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