A man who, according to his LinkedIn profile, "started and manage[d] the Chrome OS project" is now leaving Google.  Matthew Papakipos announced this afternoon on Twitter that his future paychecks will come from Facebook, instead.

You can read Papakipos’s tweet about the shift for yourself below.  It actually makes the situation sound almost positive for Google, in a the-real-work-is-done-and-now-I-want-another-challenge sense.

Still, no matter how solid the first version of Chrome turns out to be, it’s hard to imagine that Google wouldn’t prefer to keep Papakipos around.  Papakipos, an engineering director, founded PeakStream before it was acquired by Google, worked at Nvidia prior to that, and earlier still, earned a degree from Brown.

That means he should be a valuable asset for Facebook, anyway.

Of course, Facebook and Papakipos haven’t seen fit to tell anyone what he’ll be doing there.  It’s hard to guess, too, given that Chrome and most of the other stuff Papakipos has worked on over the years isn’t similar to any known project at the social network.

We’ll see what happens; a Facebook browser or operating system would certainly be interesting.

Hat tip goes to Eric Eldon.