We're hearing whispers that Adam Bosworth, ex-Google and Microsoft engineer who created XML and the Access database, will soon join hot social network Facebook. Not 100% on this yet — Facebook PR head Brandee Barker is traveling and unavailable for comment — but the rumors seem strong and very plausible to us. If true, this sheds new light on Bosworth's swift and sudden departure from Google, where he was head of Google's beleaguered health project. The most surprising rumor is Bosworth's supposed new title: Vice President of Engineering, a position currently held by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Know anything more? Please fill us in.

Just as we predicted, the Google Health project has killed off one top exec. And in record time, too! Head of the project Adam Bosworth has decided to move on from the company once he gets back from vacation. Now in charge? One Marissa Mayer, long the object of Valleywag's fascination. While the powers that be will try to spin this as a promotion, we think that Marissa might want to dust off the old resume. Becoming the head of health is the tech equivalent of being named the drummer for Spinal Tap. After the jump, the email explaining the management change sent to all Google Health beta testers.

Google Blogoscoped has posted tipster-supplied screenshots of a prototype of Google's upcoming health-information service. Presumably, these are screens from the demo reportedly being shopped around to health professionals and other advisors. While the amount of data Google Health plans to store is impressive, and potentially helpful, it's terrifying to contemplate the prospect of one company controlling all of your personal data — from communications and business documents to medical records. If we're lucky, Googler Adam Bosworth's make-work project will never get off the ground.

Microsoft and Google are getting into the healthcare business, according to Steve Lohr, the New York Times' most reliable transcriptionist of big tech companies' plans. Both tech giants want to put patients' health records online and help them search for medical information on the Web. But Lohr entirely misses the point. Tech and healthcare have a long, parlous history, intertwined with the industry's laborious regulations. If change in the industry comes about, it's going to emerge from hospital halls and the lobbies of Congress, not from Silicon Valley. So why are Microsoft and Google putting some of their biggest brains on the project?