Nov 1, 2010 09:20 GMT  ·  By

One of the common themes around Google recently revolves around its apparent inability to hold on to its talent. A number of high-profile people left the company, many of them heading to Facebook. Lars Rasmussen, the co-creator of Google Maps and Wave, has now confirmed that Facebook is his destination as well, after news that he was leaving Google surfaced.

He has also detailed some of the reasons he is leaving and, unsurprisingly, he praised Facebook saying that it's a really interesting company to be working for at this point.

"It feels to me that Facebook may be a sort of once-in-a-decade type of company," Rasmussen told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"Obviously they've already changed the world and yet there seems to be so much more to be done there. And I think that it's the right place for me to be," he added.

The former Google engineer says that Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally convinced him to leave Google and join his company.

That's hardly surprising given Rasmussen's portfolio which includes one of Google's biggest products to date, Maps. Granted, Google Wave was less successful, but the technology behind it has been very appreciated.

Rasmussen doesn't yet know what he'll be working on at Facebook, the company just wanted him to join. With the scale Facebook has now, there are a number of products he could be working on, especially with geo-location.

While he wasn't overly critical of Google, he does say that the company is no longer a great fit for him. Of course, Google shutting down Wave was a big part of the decision.

Rasmussen believes that Google moved to fast and should have waited for the product to find a market.

He is also saying that Google has gotten too big and it's starting to become hard to get things done. This criticism has been common lately and it's probably going to get worse as the company keeps on growing.

Google is pushing towards 25,000 employees while Facebook has about 2,000. Of course, Facebook is growing at a fast pace as well and it's probably going to run into the same problems Google is having now a few years down the line.