Bret Taylor is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He was the co-creator of Google Maps

Google Maps

Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...

 and the Google Maps API. Taylor left Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 in June 2007 to join venture capital

Venture capital

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

 firm Benchmark Capital

Benchmark Capital

Benchmark Capital is a venture capital firm responsible for the early stage funding of some very successful startups. In 1997, the firm invested $6.7 million in eBay, which became worth more than $5 billion by the spring of 1999. Other high-profile investments include Ariba, Juniper Networks, Red...

 as an entrepreneur-in-residence, where he and Jim Norris, another former Google employee, created the social network

Social network

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...

 web site FriendFeed

FriendFeed

FriendFeed is a real-time feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed...

. Taylor was the CEO of FriendFeed

FriendFeed

FriendFeed is a real-time feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed...

 until August 2009, when the company was acquired by Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

 for an estimated $50 million.
Taylor is currently the CTO of Facebook.

Taylor also co-wrote and maintains Tornado web server

Tornado (web server)

Tornado is a scalable, non-blocking web server and web application framework. It was developed for use by FriendFeed; the company was acquired by Facebook in 2009 and Tornado was open-sourced soon after.- Performance :...

. The software was created at FriendFeed and was open-sourced after FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook in 2009.

Taylor attended Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, where he earned his bachelors degree (2002) and masters degree (2003) in computer science.