Facebook`s tech chief to quit social networking service next month

Bret Taylor, chief technology officer and a key executive at Facebook, will leave the social networking service next month. He is the first high-ranking member of Facebook to quit since its initial public offering.

On a Facebook post Friday, he said, "I wanted to let you all know that I`ll be leaving Facebook later this summer," adding, "I`m also extremely grateful for my relationship with all of the amazing people I`ve worked with here. I want to give a special thanks to Mark Zuckerberg."

Taylor left Google to join Facebook in August 2009, and is considered to have elevated the technology level of Facebook`s service. In 2007, he established the social networking service Friend Feed with three other Google staff. Facebook`s function that enables visitors to mark "Like" on posts was a technology originally held by Friend Feed.

Zuckerberg took over Friend Feed in August 2008, a move designed to woo Taylor as Facebook`s top tech chief. At the time, the term "acqhire" was coined in Silicon Valley, a play on the word "acquire."

After departing Facebook, Taylor plans to establish a new company with Kevin Gibbs, a former Google engineer who led the development of the technologies "Google Suggest" and "Google App Engine," while working with Google. Google Suggest is a function that presents candidate search words in real time when a web user types in part of words, and allows convenient searches. Google App Engine is a cloud computing service.

coolj@donga.com