When Google put their faith in Wave, an ambitious new project last year, they knew it was a gamble. But a big part of it was the team behind the project. A team led by Lars Rasmussen, the engineer best known as the co-creator of the hugely successful Google Maps. And now he&'s left the company. And from what we hear, he&'s heading to Facebook.

Rasmussen confirmed his departure on his Facebook page. Yesterday was his last day of work at Google. He didn&'t give any indication where he&'ll be heading next, other than he&'d be &''a whole big ocean closer&'' (he was living in Australia where the Wave team was based). But the fact that he put all this info on Facebook is telling. From what we&'re hearing, he will be joining Facebook.

Neither Facebook nor Google has returned our request for comment yet.

This is a huge loss for Google and a huge gain for Facebook. But it&'s hardly surprising that Rasmussen is leaving Google given that the search giant killed his ambitious Wave project barely a year after it was first unveiled.

Rasmussen&'s defection is the latest in a series of moves from Google to the pre-IPO Facebook. But his move is likely the biggest one since Chrome OS lead Matthew Papakipos made the same jump in June.

We&'ll be very interested to hear what he&'s working on at the social network. No word yet on what his brother Jens, who also helped co-create both Maps and Wave, will be joining him there.

Update from Facebook:

As matter of policy, we do not comment on potential employees until they start.

In other words, when he gets back from his vacation in between jobs, they&'ll confirm.