Lars Eilstrup Rasmussen is a Danish computer scientist, technology executive, and the co-founder of

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panorama, interactive panoramic views of streets (Google Street View, Street View ...

. He was later the director of engineering for

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

in London.Hutcheon, Stephen
Why I quit Google to join Facebook: Lars Rasmussen
''The Sydney Morning Herald'', 1 November 2010. In early 2003, Lars and his brother Jens co-founded a mapping-related startup, Where 2 Technologies, which was acquired by Google in October 2004. Rasmussen became the head of the Google Maps team and worked at Google until joining Facebook in late 2010.

Qualifications

In 1990, Rasmussen graduated from the University of Aarhus with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. He gained his MSc in Computer Systems Engineering from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

in 1992. Rasmussen began his PhD, working with Mark Jerrum and Alistair Sinclair in the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science at Edinburgh, then moved, with Sinclair, to

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

, USA. He received his PhD from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in 1998, for his thesis "On Approximating the Permanent and Other #P-Complete Problems".

Where 2 Technologies and Google Maps

In 2003, Lars and his brother, Jens, with Australians Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma, co-founded Where 2 Technologies, a mapping-related start-up in Sydney, Australia. This company was bought by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

in October 2004, to create

. The four of them were subsequently employed by Google in the engineering team at the company's Australian office in

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

.Sutter, John D.
The genius brothers behind Google Wave
CNN, 27 October 2009. Lars and Jens are also the originators of the

Google Wave Google Wave, later known as Apache Wave, is a discontinued software framework for Collaborative real-time editor, real-time collaborative online editing. Originally developed by Google and announced on May 28, 2009, it was renamed to ''Apache Wa ...

project.

Facebook

On 29 October 2010, Rasmussen announced that he had left Google, and was moving to

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

to work for

. At Facebook he was, among other things, the engineering director for the Facebook Graph Search project which is a

semantic search Semantic search denotes search with meaning, as distinguished from lexical search where the search engine looks for literal matches of the query words or variants of them, without understanding the overall meaning of the query. Semantic search seek ...

engine for the social network. In 2013 he and Tom Stocky were listed as number 79 in ''The 100 Biggest Stars In Silicon Valley'' by

Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...

. Rasmussen had been working in the Facebook London office.

Music start-up

On 27 April 2015 Rasmussen announced his departure from Facebook to co-found a music start-u
Weav Music Inc
with his partner Elomida Visviki. Lars Rasmussen has since moved to

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

and became an angel investor.

Awards

On 19 October 2010, Lars and Jens Rasmussen were awarded the Pearcey Award for NSW ICT Entrepreneurs of the Year. In 2020, Rasmussen was named the recipient of the Green Oaks, Libertyville, Mundelein, Vernon Hills Chamber of Commerce second annual Stephanie Smith-Howard Volunteer Heart Award.

Investments

Rasmussen has made personal investments in a number of technology startups including

Canva Canva is an Australian multinational proprietary software company that provides a graphic design platform that provides tools for creating social media graphics, presentations, postcards, promotional merchandise and websites. Launched in Austr ...

, an online design tool; and Posse, a point of interest-based recommendation service.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rasmussen, Lars Living people Google employees Facebook employees Aarhus University alumni UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Danish computer scientists Danish expatriates in the United States Danish expatriates in the United Kingdom Danish company founders Danish expatriates in Australia Year of birth missing (living people)