Facebook hires fired Apple Maps exec

This is interesting. Facebook has hired Richard Williamson, the man who led the development of Apple Maps, widely criticized for its inaccuracies and bizarre glitches.

Williamson’s LinkedIn profile indicates that he’s now a director of engineering at the social network and, according to Bloomberg, has been working there for a few weeks now.

The former Apple employee was among those who got the chop after senior vice president of iPhone software Scott Forstall was fired, apparently over his refusal to sign an apology for the much maligned Maps product. Williamson was pushed out by senior vice president Eddy Cue, who benefited from the management shakeup in that came along with Forstall’s departure.

Apple launched its own mapping software in a bid to break free from Google, whose mapping service had been baked into iOS since the launch of the original iPhone in 2007. The split was part of Apple’s to distance itself at every opportunity from its fiercest rival in the mobile OS game.

The roll out seemed a bit hasty though, and Tim Cook was forced to apologise for launching a product that wasn’t ready for mass adoption.

According to Mashable, Williamson began working at Apple in as a senior software engineer in 2001, taking over as director of iOS software four years later. According to Bloomberg he is one of several people to have worked in Apple’s iPhone division who have made the jump from Cupertino to Menlo Park.