TechCrunch is reporting that after 5 years, Engineering Director Mark Lucovsky is leaving Google for a role with VMware.  It reports that Lucovsky has been in integral part of Google's APIs, including the search APIs.

It used to be that Microsoft was losing valued engineers and employees to Google.  Now?  It looks like it's Google's turn.  At least in this case, Google loses someone to VMware - a place that is becoming no stranger to ex-Microsoft employees.  Lucovsky is rejoining his former boss, Paul Maritz.

While at Microsoft, Lucovsky gained the "Distinguished Engineer" title and was a principle architect on Windows NT.  He wrote most of the kernel executive, kernel32, and the Windows API.  He was also the architect for Microsoft's Hailstorm project, porting older Microsoft applications into .NET. 

It will be interesting to see what yet another ex-Microsoft, now ex-Google employee can bring to the virtualization giant's table.