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After almost 8 years with the company, Vic Gundotra — the man behind Google+ — is leaving Google. Gundotra announced the news via his Google+ profile minutes ago and while we don’t know where Vic is headed, is appears Google+ engineer David Besbris has been chosen to be his replacement. Google’s Larry Page chimed in on Vic’s going away post, saying:
“Vic- thank you for a tremendous almost eight years at Google. You cut your teeth on our mobile apps and developer relations, turning our disparate efforts into something great. When I first used turn-by-turn navigation, it blew me away. And, walking onto the stage at I/O last year, it was amazing to see developers so excited about Google. These were vintage Vic projects.
Then you built Google+ from nothing. There are few people with the courage and ability to start something like that and I am very grateful for all your hard work and passion. I really enjoy using Google+ on a daily basis, especially the auto awesome movies which I really love sharing with my family and friends.
Good luck with your next project after Google. In the meantime we’ll continue working hard to build great new experiences for the ever increasing number of Google+ fans.”
Gundotra’s exit is another recent high-level departure hitting Google in recent months. It wasn’t too long ago we saw Hugo Barra take a job offer in China to help with Xiamoi’s global division, and although he’s still with Google, Andy Rubin recently stepped down from his roll with Android.
Restructuring and departures are normal for any company, and we wish Vic the best of luck in his future endeavors.
Honestly it seems like Google views the Android battle as already won and are transitioning their top talent to other projects/allowing them to be poached. With their top leadership leaving and the rumors of discontinuing the Nexus program, I hope this doesn’t lead to stagnation because Android’s trajectory has been pretty impressive over the last few years.
According to rumors (tech gossip), Google is moving a lot of their G+ team to mobile/Android. See: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/google-is-walking-dead/
Why not – G+ is demolishing all the other great Google assets….
Google+ performs perfectly on the M8… so go on… ask the Internet.
ummmm I might be mistaken but I thought Andy Rubin left the Android group. As far as I know he still works for Google.
ditto.
Yeah, almost forgot. He’s making real Androids now. *Updated post.
An Android powered Android fleet to beat out (or maybe support) Amazon’s house delivery fleet.