Facebook may be about to launch what some have perhaps over-excitedly described as the headline-grabbing “Gmail killer”, but it will do so without the help of Google alumnus and FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit.

Readers with short-term memory will likely recall that Mark Zuckerberg took on the mighty talent of Buchheit – the man who created Gmail, built the first AdSense prototype and coined Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto – when Facebook acquired FriendFeed in August 2009.

But after a little over a year of hanging out with Zuck, Buchheit is moving on to cast his start-up eye on emerging talent for seed funding investor Y Combinator.

The Los Angeles Times was first to report his departure on Friday.

In an interview with the paper Buchheit said he had no involvement in Facebook’s so-called “Gmail killer”.

“One of the downsides of having worked on something like that [Gmail] that was notable is that everyone keeps expecting that you are going to work on that again," said Buchheit. "I have very little desire to work on e-mail again in the future. To me, there's a lot more interesting stuff out there." ®