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Google Earth’s long time senior programmer, Wes Thierry, has left the company. He was the senior engineer for the client side of Google Earth and has helped the company in developing its software package for the application. Before Google, he served at Keyhole, the satellite mapping firm, which was acquired by the prior back in 2004.

His blog reads:

Well it’s done. I’ve cut the Google ship loose. Yesterday was my last day at Google. I gave them four years of my life, and it all started about six years ago at a small company named Keyhole, at that time, the Google Earth ancestor was known as Earthviewer 3D.

He also said that there were some tough times when he started at Keyhole, where people were working without getting paid, but things started getting better with the advent of Iraq war. Back then CNN started using the application frequently. The news network was a paid customer so it helped the company a lot, but the major financial lifeline in the initial days was CIA, said Wes.

Furthermore he said:

Keyhole was always scrambling to please our biggest customer, the Agency, which used our cool interface to view their own top secret data.

Even today, the Agency is a large customer of Google’s, but their importance and influence on day to day development has waned since their money is no longer a significant part of Google’s income.

On leaving the company he said:

I have been working on the same product for quite a while now. I liked working for a smaller company in the early days, and even at Google in the Early days. The team has become very large, and I left because I just need a change. I will always have fond memories of Google, but it just isn’t the same company it was a few years ago.

It seems that he is not happy with things in the company right now but he didn’t say anything on that.

His next venture will be a virtual reality company but before that he is gona spend some time away from the daily routine and have a trip to Europe.